Monthly Archive for December, 2006

Yes, I’m Bored

I’m having a great time playing around with Adobe Photoshop tonight. I did the image below of Emma and I decided to see if I could “Hollywood” the picture I took of Sandy and me at the party last night. This just goes to show you that celebrities look just as “raw” when they aren’t airbrushed on magazine covers.

Before Photoshop -

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After Photoshop -

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Merry Christmas from the Morgan Family

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Merry Christmas! Be safe and happy!

Love, The Morgans!

Merry Christmas from the Swensens

I was going to create a Christmas card with this picture, but the time got away from me. So here you go. We love you guys so much and I am sure Mickey wishes you a Merry Christmas as well. Love you!

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The Branch

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This is our Branch President, Khamphee, and his wife. If you want to meet more of our Branch family go to Flickr and see the photos. Be sure to read our comments for each picture and enlarge them because some of them have notes.  Just pass the curser over the picture once you enlarge it. 

Cook Family Christmas Party

Good times were had by all at Rod & Jenny’s house in Heber City tonight. We ate, chatted, ate, opened presents, ate, played games and basically enjoyed each other’s company and the holiday fun. Thanks to Rod & Jenny for hosting. While the Fossils weren’t at the party physically, they were here in spirit. Check out the photo below and head over to Flickr to see the rest of the pics.

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Flickr is Freaking Fun!

So, this is how you would post using Flickr. You’d say some text like you normally do. Blah, blah, blah, this picture is of us in the summertime when we were all tan and didn’t look like the living dead. Why didn’t I photoshop this? Maybe I’ll go back and retouch them. Blah blah blah. Here’s a picture of our family, you can see the rest of them at Flickr.

When you go to Flickr, please note the comments below the pictures and the notes within the picture (mouseover the picture to see where the notes are). These are all cool features, I think. Also, give it a shot for your next post. If you like it, let’s try it out. I think you guys will and I think you’ll enjoy the page loading much quicker.

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Merry Christmas & Thank You!

I realize I’ll be seeing all of you tomorrow at the family Christmas party, but I wanted to publicly tell each of you how much I appreciate and value your friendship and love. Yeah, I know, I know. Mushy. But people always talk about what a husband and wife must do to keep the fire burning and one thing that never gets mentioned, at least very often, is extended family. I can honestly say that all of you feel like true family to me and I think that’s because we’re all friends. I’ve told Sandy on several occasions the friendship I feel toward you isn’t because of obligation. It’s real and I think we could all be friends if we weren’t connected via marriages. It’s something I treasure and hold dear. So, honestly, thanks.

Also, thanks for making this site so fantastic. I love the banter that goes on between us. So far we have 195 posts and, even better, 822 comments. Keep it up.

Lastly, one small item of business for 2007.

I know we’ve had some issues with photos loading and photo size and some confusion in that arena altogether. Another concern is oftentimes the homepage takes an extremely long time to load because of how many pictures are uploaded in a post. I don’t want to discourage people from posting pictures because that’s what this blog is for, however, here’s my idea:

Write a post and put one picture on the post to “tease” and then upload the rest to a Flickr account I created for the family. You can access Flickr by going to Flickr.com and signing in with the username fredoteabaggins and the password norman32. From there, it’s quite simiple. Just go to upload photos and then put the link in your post. I’ll do a sample post to illustrate what I mean. Some other cool things about Flickr are the ability to add notes inside the picture (I’ll illustrate) and the not-so-good thing is that if we want unlimited bandwith and uploads every month, it’s $24.95 per year. However, split between eight households that equates to 26 cents per month, which, I pray, everyone can manage. :)

Hopefully you all think this is a good idea. If not, please email your complaints to crymeariver@youhavenochoice.com.

Just kidding. I love all of you.

Here is a great BIG hug from Grandma and Grandpa to the sickies!

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We hope that the Chicken Pox doesn’t ruin your Christmas and that you still have a great time.  I’m sure that Santa will still find you and you can have fun with Mom and Dad and Chase!  MERRY CHRISTMAS to ALL Grandma and Grandpa

Emma’s Wish

I thought this was really cute! Shows you what kids imagine when we say things. I told Emma that Grandma was “home sick” and Emma imagines Grandma being literally sick! So funny! Like when I told Emma that Grandma is kinda a “red neck” and Emma said, “Ohhhhh, no wonder her neck hurts all the time!” Also when Emma says that Grandma and Grandpa “only get to answer questions” she is talking about how they can only talk about the gospel when someone asks them. She thinks they should be able to share the gospel with EVERYONE whenever they want.  I guess we kinda take that freedom for granted. Hope you enjoy it and that Grandma will not be sick anymore! :-)

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Family Tradition comes to Lao

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Kim forced the ginger-bread house tradition to migrate to Lao and we thank her for that.  Above is the result!  We would like to see your ginger-bread houses!!  Merry Christmas to all!