Well, not only have I recently deleted JBJ's myspace page, today I deleted 'Santa Junkies Anonymous' the Yahoo group that I started WAY back in 2000. It only had a few real members, and tons of spam. I was tired of deleting it, so I just dumped the whole thing. It hadn't had a real post since 2004 (besides mine). So I say, goodbye to an old friend,
I did purchase santajunkiesanonymous.info, and will probablly start developing it into something, but I don't know what yet. Actually I have an idea of what it may be... It was only a buck for the domain, so it was kind of a compulsive buy. You know, one of those 'I didn't need it, just wanted it' kind of things. So I say "Hello!" to the site to come...
Anyway... if you wanna help me decide what to do with the domain, drop me a line... webmaster@jinglebelljunction.com .
Here's the first ever logo I created for SJA, I think I actually used paint to make it... it wasn't very pretty... but I feel I should give it a home somewhere.
Here's Love... this picture made the front page of the newspaper, this past Christmas! She is the tallest one wearing a Santa hat standing on the right, not looking at the camera...
She joined the choir at school and they got to go caroling about a week before Christmas. This picture was taken at the local bank just a block away from the newspaper's office. This small town is amazing. They have a Christmas parade every year, then a big festival downtown. It's great.
I found the cutest picture of Lovie today! It was taken sometime in Dec. 2001. She had a teeny Christmas tree in her room that year, and Santa even left her a couple of small gifts under it! How cute!!
BTW... I deleted my myspace page today... just wasn't for me.
We can all remember as children laying in bed every Christmas eve waiting to hear those
sleigh bells coming, while we pretended to be sleeping. Pretend was the best we could do,
because the anticipation of Christmas morning wouldn't allow us to sleep for real.
I remember my Granny trying all kinds of trickery to coax me to sleep.
Like saying she had just saw on the news that santa had already been spotted in our town,
or the year she threatened to actually put me on the naughty list at the last moment.
Even the threat of coal for Christmas didn't seem to help me get to sleep any faster.
Of course, now I know why it was such a big deal, she wanted
to throw my gifts under the tree and get some sleep. She knew that I'd be up at the crack of dawn
wanting to rip through all the goodies that Santa had left for me. The rest of the day would be spent
assembling, insert batteries, and reading instruction manuals. All while taking pictures, cooking the Christmas
feast, and talking on the phone with relatives. I look back on it now and lovingly call it "Christmas Chaos".
Being a parent myself, and drawing on my childhood experience, I've devised a strategy for my own Christmas Chaos.
First of all, I would never threaten with the naughty list. I think that's a bit unfair just for
not being able to sleep due to all the excitement. Kids wait all year for Santa, it's their big day.
So here it is, the plan I've devised:
On Christmas Eve, right after dinner, I let my daughter open all her gifts from her dad, and myself.
That's it. Simple, huh?
So let me explain my logic... I found that letting her open the gifts from us, keeps her busy all evening.
She goes to bed tired, and not nearly half as wound up as I was as a kid. She gets a good night's sleep and
wakes up Christmas morning ready for round two.
Now, you may think that it takes away from Christmas morning... Not Hardly!
It by no means takes away from the spirt of Christmas either, if anything it makes it even more special for her.
Santa always brings her special gifts that we never thought of!
It works for us, and we've adapted it as our very own special holiday tradition.
Well, I've been working on my websites ALOT lately. I've also been hanging out at the forums over at My Merry Christmas.com. There's alot of nice people there, and it's good to know I'm not the only one who wishes Christmas would hurry and get here again. Ah, but theres still 221 days left...
I was messing around at Jinglebell Junction today and decided to make a video of myself decorating the Christmas Tree. I'm going to post it here for your viewing pleasure although, It's grainy and not the best quality, and made me realize that I have WAY to much time on my hands. I should be seriously working on one of the 7 websites that I'm responsible for... but yeah, I'm a slacker! For real though, after I post it here, I'm really going to get back to work!! Anyway, you too can waste time decorating the tree by visiting Jinglebell Junction. Just scroll about half way down the page and right above the Talk Christmas banner you'll see a link for the tree. It opens in a pop-up window. The tree was my first ever attempt at using DHTML. I got the script from over at Dynamic Drive. You'll have fun decorating....
