KittyCards: A Christmas Tradition

For several years now Stephanie and I have been featuring our kitties on our Christmas cards. The first year we tried to get the cats to pose with ornaments, etc. but that didn’t work out too well. Now we just take pictures throughout the year and try to get a few good ones to put on the cards. This year we didn’t even do that much… we just used the images of the 5 kitties as “ornaments” on our tree.

We usually do the normal stuff inside the card… recapping the years events and telling a few stories. If you don’t know us and just randomly stumbled upon this then you are in for a treat, maybe. Here’s this years letter and accompanying picture:

This year has been a good one for us. We are completing our second year as co-owners of Litho-Craft Printing, Office and School Supplies in LaFollette, TN. Running a business has been a learning experience (for example, don’t ever wear your favorite sweater around the ink rollers) but we are slowly getting to know our customers and are enjoying taking on new tasks. We’re also learning a lot of local history, as much of our walk-in business consists of photocopying old pictures. We’ve even been asked to reproduce a negative or two.

In addition to his duties at Litho-Craft, Ken completed seventeen years at the University of the Cumberlands (formerly, Cumberland College) this year. He is currently teaching Management Information Systems courses as part of the faculty of the Hutton School of Business.

This year has been a good one for our “family” as well. This summer we added two new cats, Jonah and Seth, to our household, bringing our total up to five. Annabelle (our white cat) still thinks that she is Queen, but Jonah and Seth have proven capable of holding their own. Games of “kitty tag” are frequent in our living room now, but all five “babies” can be sweetly affectionate, especially toward bedtime when they are content to curl up beside us and relax.

Things are going well at our church. Easter saw the dedication of Main Street’s new Worship Center. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is gorgeous. Ken is now part of the Audio Visual team and helps project the verses to our hymns on screens placed on either side of the choir loft.

Stephanie is co-teaching the same class that she had last year. That’s right, when “her” children turned five, she moved up with them. The class has learned some interesting facts this year and were specially interested in China’s favorite color being red and the availability of chocolate covered bugs in parts of Kentucky. (We just learned about that treat. We didn’t sample it ourselves.)

Ken and Stephanie have both started blogs this year. Feel free to visit our website, http://www.thesimsplace.info/ for updates on our church, classes and life in general.

Holiday Joy to you all!

You never can tell what we’ll put on the back of the card… last year it was an advertisement for the print shop… sort of. This is the one time of the year that I actually think about trying to write something that has a little bit of meaning. The inspiration for the back of the card this year came in July … if you have read Stephanie’s blog about her birthday present then you know what’s coming.

Celebrating Friendship

This past summer Stephanie got one of her biggest wishes fulfilled, sort of. We came home about 10:00PM on Friday, July 6th, the day before her birthday, and found (right in the middle of the living room floor) a 6 foot swimming pool complete with 8 inches of water and a floating, inflated, Loch Ness monster (now and forever named Nessie, of course). You see, for some time now Stephanie has been asking for an indoor swimming pool, and this year she got one for her birthday.

I knew immediately who to blame … er … thank for helping this wish of hers come true. We have some very good friends that we usually spend time with each week watching TV, movies, or just hanging out. A few years back we gave them a key to our house “just in case” we got locked out or we needed them to check on the cats if we were out of town.
Now I have to admit that I knew they were planning on doing something interesting for Stephanie’s birthday but didn’t realize it would involve over 100 gallons of water in the middle of our living room floor. Amazingly, none of our cats were curious enough to investigate or jump in and flood the place. I think Ben & Jen were worried when we didn’t call them sooner than 10:00PM. We weren’t in a big hurry to get back from the shop, and had stopped to eat. It started off just like a normal Friday for us. I think I enjoyed Stephanie’s gift as much as she did. Thanks guys!!
The Christmas season is a time to celebrate these good relationships that we have with other people in our life journey. Good friends learn to think like each other… to “share a mind” so to speak. Good friends simply just want what is best for you … no strings attached. Good friends get to see your dirty dishes in the sink when they visit, and they don’t mind. Good friends help make birthday wishes come true, too.
Faith in our friends is important. A good friend is someone that you not only trust with keys to your house, but with a whole lot more. Scripture says “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13). Christmas is a celebration of love, first and foremost of God’s love for us in giving His son to us as a Redeemer and Savior, but also of the love of friends. The person who thinks Christmas is only for them is sadly mistaken… Christmas is for our friends, and maybe even for those people we don’t think of as friends. Celebrate Christ this season by loving someone with no strings attached, and just maybe you’ll get a glimpse of what Christmas is really all about.

 

Well, that’s our card for 2007. Hope you enjoyed it. I’m sure the Kitties will be all excited about showing off for you again next year.