And I do appreciate you bein' 'round . . .

Well, the lost albums have all been found. Here are just three from the famous collection of mine that had been lost for several years. The story behind the "big find" was a true miracle! The cousins were visiting one day and we were at lunch discussing the Christmas list of their Mom, my sis. So I asked . . .would she like any music? And the cousins said yes! So I asked, what kind? "Well, she likes lots of stuff . . . Beatles . . " WAIT! Sister didn't own any Beatle records that I knew of so I pressed further . ."Your Mom has Beatle records?" Yes," they said, "there is a bunch of them on a shelf downstairs in our basement." Well, that is all I needed to hear! My mind raced back to the fall of 1995, when we were preparing for a major construction project at our house and almost every area was to be invaded by construction crews. I didn't want to bring my records (most of which were purchased in the 70's) to the storage facility, it would be too cold for them! So I brought them to Sister's house for safe keeping. And safe they were! Even through one major move. Uncle P was just loading and unloading boxes and my record box was included. He didn't know when he was opening boxes whose records those were! And so, with great anticipation and excitement (much like Ralphie from the Christmas story as he dreamt about his Red Rider Rifle), I waited! On Christmas Day, before dinner and after presents, Sister and the whole family and I crept downstairs into their basement and there they were - just like I had remembered . . . but a few were missing - The Red & Blue Albums and the Love Songs collection. "Oh dear! Where could they be?". Well, Sister came to the rescue again - the three missing records were on her desk, near her turntable. She had recently been listening to them! So I came home from our dinner together, warm from the holiday and thrilled that my babies were back home safe!

So this is Christmas . . . and what have you done?

So here are Sweetie and Cutie pie by our tree - the official picture of the 2005 Christmas season. Sweetie has her Click 5 concert T-shirt from the recent trip downtown to the Chicago Theatre on State Street for a KISS FM concert called the "Jingle Ball". That trip is a story onto itself and will have to be retold some other time. Let us just say that a snow storm, four hours on the Kennedy heading into the city and a plane crash a few miles away made it an interesting evening. Anyway, the holiday is here and we wish you all the best for the season and for the New Year!

Your Mother should know . . .

I am still testing out the new camera and desperately trying to figure out Photoshop. Did you know that there is no less than 4 available magazines devoted to the subject of using Photoshop. Who-da-known!

Anyway, here is a quick shot of sweetie pie giving me the "my Mom has the camera again" during rehearsal at her recent Holiday Concert. It was a nice concert and it is always fun to hear "Sleigh Ride". That was always the closer song for the Holiday concerts at my High School and I can remember the music well. In fact, my French Horn friends and I would try to sneak in a few extra notes as the music for the Horn section was pretty blah - mostly upbeat notes. You French Horn players will know what I am talking about.

So more pics to come. I did figure out that I had some setting on my camera to make all pictures to be 8 X 10 so had to condense that. One step forward . . .