This morning when I went over to my computer to do some editing of a photo shoot I did on Saturday, I discovered an elf in my coffee cup with a memory card.

The back story about this elf is that about two months ago a friend took me to a “Seconds” store in Carson City Nevada to “look around”.  I discovered some darling elves made by “Annalee”.  I purchased six elves dressed in red and green to add to my collection of bendable elves.  Everything was fine until we brought down the Christmas decorations from the attic.  That’s when the mischief began.

I’ll take a look at the memory disc and see what he’s been up to, but I have a weird feeling about all this.  I don’t know too much about shelf elves, but I’m thinkin’ they are supposed to stay on the shelf.  At any rate, here’s a couple of my favorite photos from the photo shoot.

Red Dress and a Mink

Red and Green look good on her

Blue Truck Red Truck

I’m sensing a theme here…

It’s been a rough season for us as my dad has been in and out of the hospital since the middle of November.   This will be the first Christmas that he has not spent with his family…ever.  He’s in a full care nursing  facility at this point after living in an assisted living apartment just a month ago.  The difference?  A stroke.  Strokes are not good for anyone, but it is especially hard on him because he is also struggling with his memory.

So, I’ve been trying to document all of our Christmas activities in word and photos…like a docudrama…so that he will be able to participate through photos.  I was over there today visiting him and I brought my little photo book.  He was able to pick out several members of the family and even smiled a little.

These photos are for my dad, who has always been there for me.

My brother sent me a beautiful flower arrangement with a candle in the middle.  I used my star light filter to get the lights to sparkle.

The other day it snowed and I wanted to go out and take some photos, but the roads were pretty icey.  So, I settled for taking a photo of our street on the way home.

Corby has been actively involved in decorating the house this year, unlike years before.  Usually he dreads the whole Christmas decorating thing, but not this year.  It even makes this little snowman happy to see my husband involved.

We like to make a gingerbread house every year, but this year it hasn’t turned out so well.  First, the frosting was too stiff and we couldn’t squeeze it out of the container.  Then, we thinned it out a little which made it too soft, so the roof kept falling off and the walls were caving in. Sigh.  When the houses (we did two this year) were finally ready to decorate, all the decorators had given up and gone home.  I wonder if the dumb houses will last till next year.

This is a picture of my oldest son trimming the tree with some of the ornaments we have collected over the years for him.  It was always our tradition to purchase one special ornament per child per year so that when they got their own home, they would have a start on their own ornament collection.  Even though my son doesn’t live with us anymore, he put his ornaments on our tree because he didn’t have a tree of his own.  Maybe next year.

So these are some of the photos I made for my dad’s Christmas photo book.  So far, he likes them.  They are good memories for me, too.