Merry Christmas

May the joy and love

you feel this holiday season
extend to every day
throughout the year.

Christmas 2009

I love a quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson – “This time, like all times, is a very good one if you know what to do with it.” Isn’t that a wonderful challenge for all of us – knowing what to do with our good times? Christmas is an especially enchanting time and it is with joy that I greet each one of you – family and friends.

There have been a lot of changes this year at the Mathews’. Last spring, when Gary was still feeling fairly able, we had his 65^th Birthday Party/Open House and many of you came or wrote to share your love with Gary; he loved the day. It was a short six weeks later that cancer took his life and ended his three and a half year battle with various health challenges. It has been a pretty good life and, I am sure, he is in much better health now.

Needless to say, there has been some adjusting for me to do. Beth has been here at home with me and we thought that she would be here until she returned to school next fall. But an email yesterday has changed all that. She will be returning to Taiwan for another six month stint as an intern/teacher in a Chinese preschool where she will be teaching English to 3-5 year olds. She loved her first semester there and is excitedly looking forward to another.

Beth and I have spent a fair amount of time sorting and “sifting” through the layers of accumulation from 29 years of living in this house and 34 years of living in Toledo. I am sure that many of you can identify with the pain, the memories, and the release that comes with going through and reducing your holdings. It would be good to be lighter in weight in many ways. There is always next year.

Earlier this fall I went to New England with my mother and brother – to visit “home” and places familiar and places new. The next month I went with our eldest son, Ben, wife, Sonia, and their children, Katrina (8), Samuel (6), and Sarah (4) to Disneyland. I highly recommend going to such a place with children – such a wonderful, happy adventure!

Before the New England trip, I got to spend a bit of time with our next oldest grandchild, Jacob (3 years old and son of Libbey and Erick). We added Aubrey (daughter of Joel and Becky, in Virginia) to our family in February and even got to see her before Gary died. We will be adding another granddaughter in April of next year – Nathan and Sallee’s first.

This time of year is a wonderful time for acknowledging blessings and gifts from our Heavenly Father. They are many and time makes them more evident; foremost is the gift of our Savior. May you enjoy a time of blessing and peace this Christmas season and into the New Year.

Jessica Sprague Class - Day 2

Today we learned to load and add brushes to our photos. I have been somewhat blindly finding my way around PhotoShop Elements. It is good to learn how things are "really" supposed to work.

For today's lesson, I chose one of my favorite pictures of my sweetheart -- before his accident. We were waiting in the Portland Airport for Kyle to arrive home from his mission to the Philippines. I love the gentle strength that I see in this picture. The addition from the class is the frame and text.

I just started a new online class at jessicasprague.com called "Photo Editing: Frame-Ups & Special Effects." The first project was to add a .png frame and word art to an existing photo. I chose one of our granddaughter, Sarah. I don't know who in the family took the original picture (it was on my camera, so I have claimed it), but I love it -- even unadorned.

A New Toy on Loan

Yesterday a package arrived via FedEx. Kyle had told us that it was to be expected, but not what it contained. Our neighbor, James, has been trying to convince me to buy a WebCam, so my first sight of the "gizmo" suggested that it was a WebCam. But, NO! This is an honest-to-goodness digital video camera that is smaller than my Palm. I took it to one of Dad's appointments yesterday, hoping to read the instructions (yes, I am one of those) and take a video or two. The first instruction was to plug it into the computer to charge the battery. I was stuck until we got home and then for seven hours after that. I ended up waiting until this morning, per advice from Beth, and then couldn't get it to turn on. The screen indicated that the battery was fully charged but did nary a thing when I tried to turn it on. To shorten the story by ten or fifteen minutes, I will just say that I had the battery in upside down; once turned over, the camera worked fine. It is such fun and much easier to work than I had anticipated. The videos aren't going to earn any Oscars, but they will provide fun and memories. If I can manage to post them, the first one will be of Dad greeting his family and the second was as I was "putting him to bed" or "The Good Night Kiss." The videos play back just fine on the camera, but the sound is out of sync when I play them back on the computer. You may find that to be so on this blog, as well.








There are several more videos (already), but I feel a bit like the brand new grandma, ready to pounce on any unwary soul, loaded down with a parcel of baby pictures.

O-o-o-o. It has been a long time since I have written here. Two things that are rather exciting happened today. Well, lots of things, but two that I am going to write about here. The first I have been planning for and hoping for for quite a long time. I ordered a digital SLR camera from Costco. It is a Canon Rebel XSi 12.2 MP with a 3" viewing window and two lenses: 18-55mm IS & 75-300m, the same one that Ben has and that I tried over Christmas. I also spent some time on the phone with JerriLynn Woolley, confirming that it would meet my "needs." It won't arrive for 10 - 15 working days, so I hope to be able to contain my impatience.

The second thing I did tonight was find the announcement and supply list for a Shimelle Laine class that sounds exciting. I love her classes because they help us to celebrate the extraordinary in the everyday. I think that we usually discount the wonder of the ordinary -- without some help such as Shimelle consistently gives. The class is called "A Little Book About You THS YEAR." It ensures that there will be at least one picture of me this year, besides the formal one that Gary and I have taken together. A lovely picture that Shimelle has posted as sort of a "logo" for the class is this one:The connection that this has to the buying of the camera is rather tenuous, but here goes; I haven't really minded our little point-and-shoot cameras all that much, until I wish to do as she has done here -- have one portion of the picture in focus and the rest more or less out of focus. I played with that feature on Ben's over Christmas and fell in love with the results all over again -- this time in digital.