well, i don't know how grand it is, but this will be the end of the story.
i wish i could figure out why my pictures load in a different order than i pick them (any suggestions bloggers?), but the nutcracker pictures should be first. dearma treated the [raleigh harrelson] girls to the san francisco ballet this year to see the the nutcracker. i believe she said her goal was to treat all of the girls in the family to this ballet at some point, and it was our turn. we met her downtown early in the day and my dad, bless his heart, offered to car pool us down and also have the boys over so raleigh could work. the girls and i had a good time gussying up for the ballet and joined dearma with great anticipation of the day. conversation was fluent, learning of other nutcracker adventures she had had over the years. i can't say enough to express the good time we had. i dream of treating raleigh and the boys to the ballet in years ahead. i do believe they would enjoy it too.
and last but not least came Christmas. we had a very pleasant holiday season this year. celebrations started early with a harrelson family party the sunday before Christmas. i regret that my camera had been damaged on our san francisco trip and i couldn't take pictures of the fun events of the rainy day. cousins running everywhere, playing ping pong, making ornaments, decorating cookies and eating snacks. raleigh and some of the other men played and sang Christmas songs while finishing touches were put on the evening meal. then on to opening gifts in order from youngest grandchild to oldest, and then a group effort to cleaning up the messes. the day passed by rapidly and soon we were dropping off to bed.
Christmas eve we went to my grandma's traditional party. it was indeed another fast paced event with many children running to and fro. this year was a bit sad for me however, watching my grandma sitting in her chair, hardly able to hear what anybody was visiting about, with kind of a blank look at times on her face. when i was a kid she did all of the preparations for the holidays and to see her aging is a bit sobering for me. oh how she loves to see family though, and would occasionally blurt out a past memory or speak of how cute one of the kids were. she recently said she figured that this was her last Christmas, which made my heart ache.
as we moved on to a quiet Christmas morning we enjoyed spending time just the six of us. raleigh figured out how to make our camera work and managed to get these kind of corny pictures of the kids. my mom came up for a bit to give the kids their gifts and have a cup of coffee, then later in the day we had a turkey dinner with my dad. the day couldn't have been nicer.
so, that is the end of harrelson december 08. now we are enjoying the start of a new year with anticipation of all the wonderful things God will do in our lives in 2009. raleigh is still off work and we are very much enjoying the time with dad too.
1 comment:
It is indeed a GRAND finale. Thanks for sharing all the details. Even though I was a part of some of these events, it's a treat to read about them in your words.
About the pictures. Here is the solution I've come up with, actually 2 solutions. The easiest is to load the pictures in the opposite order from which you wish them to appear. Blogger puts the last picture loaded in the first position. Recently I learned that if I go to the tab HTML Code and load pictures, they appear in code instead of as an image in the draft, but the neat thing is that then you can cut the code and paste it anywhere you want in the post. When you click Publish, the picture is right where you want it.
Love, Dearma
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