Christmas cards

Merry Christmas to All!

December 25, 2010

Thanks to anyone who takes time out of their busy lives to stop by and read this drivel. I am truly honored, because I know how hard it is to carve out time in my own day to read other’s writings.

It’s Christmas and WE MADE IT!

(I mean, I think I made it. I’m actually writing this on Christmas Eve, so I guess I can’t be 100% sure I made it. But that’s kind of morbid, isn’t it?)

These last few weeks/months have been a whirlwind of ugh. I’m trying to enjoy this time in my life, but honestly, it’s just too crazy. I’m not “living in the moment,” I’m living in the minute. I can’t even think about tomorrow or even what going to be happening tonight. I just tick through the day reacting to whatever needs the most attention at at that very second.

And I know I’m not alone.

We live in crazy times.

So enjoy Christmas, if you can. I’ve tried hard to focus on the true gift of Christmas this year. I was far from successful, but I was better than last year. And hopefully I will be better next year. It’s one foot in front of the other and…

Oh CRAP! I JUST REALIZED I FORGOT ABOUT THE BREAD DOUGH RISING IN THE REFRIGERATOR!

And with that stunning revelation of hope, I leave you with my 2010 Christmas Card. It is far from my favorite, but it’s what I could manage at the time.

My cousin Kev told me that he got my card and started reading it and was like “What the heck? What is she talking about? This is totally random.”

“And then,” he said, “It all came together at the end. It was brilliant.”

Brilliant. Brilliant! Obviously, I couldn’t agree with him more. Finally. Finally. Someone besides me has called me brilliant.

The best Christmas gift of all!

Merry Christmas!

It’s Christmas Eve!

December 24, 2010

Christmas Card Retrospective 2006 – 2009, aka “the Really-Big-Pictures” years.

OK, well, I lied. But not intentionally. 2006 was not a really big picture. It was a really bad picture. I look like an 80’s rock star. A male one. Dave looks like an ax murderer. But the kids looked OK, I guess.

I’ve never understood the photos of just kids. All you people who just send photos of your kids. You drive me crazy. I want to see YOU! My friends! And compare age lines and gray hairs.

You take all the fun out of Christmas.

Or maybe you are just scared of sending a bad picture. But when you got people like me, willing to send out photos like this, how bad can it be?

It was a really stupid card. Not funny at all. The concept was good. But the delivery lacked clarity.

You probably can’t read the notes, which is probably a good thing. It was just supposed to be my “to do list” starting in November and going into December, all the while trying to find a good family photo. You know, to justify my sending out cards with the photo I used.

Anyway, let’s not belabor it. It was a miss. Let’s move on. Things do get better.

2007 was a great picture. I couldn’t recreate that if I tried. It was just a self timer on a hike in Wyoming. Dumb luck. I think it’s my favorite photo. There’s always a lot of yelling at me as I situate the camera on some wobbly rock or stump and run back to get in the picture. They just don’t realize how talented I am.

I had moved on from writing new lyrics to just picking sort of a “theme song” and wrapping the letter around it somehow. This letter is probably one of my top three personal favorites. As I sit here typing this, I can remember the very conversation I was speaking of. So in case you were wondering, yes, it was alllll true.

2008 was another self-timer, summer vacation, family photo. A true miracle of epic proportions. We were in Glacier Park at the top of a mountain at a tiny lodge that you can only hike to. I had just dunked my entire head into a glacial stream to cool off. And my hair dried like that! If that isn’t a miracle of epic proportions, I don’t know what is.

And now for the letter. My all-time favorite letter ever!

It was brilliant. A work of art. But here’s the sad part: not everyone received it. The Chief Controller, deeming it too sensitive for the general public — and even some of our members — withheld it from select recipients. So reading it here is actually, I don’t know — maybe against the law? It’s like WikiLeaks!

Seriously though. He took the letter out of some people’s cards. …But you’ll read all about that in 2009. I really don’t give the guy a break ever. Poor Dave. And I really mean that. I’m a true trial.

But a fun one.

2009 was a cool picture just by accident. Who knew regular old white lights would look like THIS out of the camera?!

(I love that bit at the bottom of the photo. We do look scarily close, don’t we?)

As you can see, I stole the format from the 2007 card. I figured no one would remember. Of course that was before I ever thought that I’d have them all lined up in a row on a blog post. Oh! The things we can think!

And to think this all started with the Fiesta Movement. The blog, I mean. Not Christmas. 2010’s cards brings that full circle. But you will have to wait until Christmas morning to open that package!

Tonight is a special night for quiet and rest. For snuggles and love. For peace and forgiveness. For unto US a CHILD IS BORN!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Another Christmas Retrospective

December 23, 2010

Christmas Cards Years 2000 – 2005. AKA, the Psycho Years

Yeah, I was pretty psychotic during those years…

And that was actually before menopause. At least now I have a culturally acceptable reason for it.

We start off with the photo from 2000. It might look like we are having fun in this photo, but actually I think Dave was in the process of tossing Charlie into the swamp.

He wasn’t cooperating. Also not sure about those eyebrows of Dave’s. They look kinda scary…

I believe that this might have been the first year Dave and I had an all-out fight about the Christmas letter.

That, too, was to become an 11 year tradition. When I re-read this particular year I don’t even find anything objectionable. I wonder what he didn’t like… It must have been the sarcasm. He worries incessantly that people will think I’m serious. I don’t know how to tell him that I am being serious…

Strangely, this year there was no argument about our letter. Hmmm. I hadn’t really thought about that until now. Could it be the Holy Spirit is also working on DAVE? To accept that I am more wonderful than he previously realized?

Yeah, no, I don’t really think that’s it. I think it’s that my card must actually be pretty boring this year.

That is sort of upsetting.

Anyway, 2001 is probably my overall ugliest card. Well, except for 2006 when I looked more like Axl Rose than my beautiful self.

As you can imagine, we had some strong words about this letter, as well. But you know what? Everyone. And I mean everyone, can relate on at least some tiny level.

Can’t they?

Please say yes.

2002 brought our private, marital Christmas card battle public.

Things came to an explosive head and after a particularly big fight about the letter. I drafted a new one in anger and haste.

Dave wasn’t much happier about the second one than the first.

If you can’t read it, I basically lay out the fact that we had a big fight about the letter and that instead of sending it I was taking a poll. If the receiver LIKED my sarcastic cards they were to respond, via email, with a “yes” vote. For their efforts, they would receive the originally drafted letter that had been edited to be approved by Dave.

I received over 50 “yeses” and one “no.” The no-voter was a Dave brown-nosing woman (she knows who she is) and I didn’t mind. It made the survey more believable.

The annotated and approved letter was much funnier before the additions required by Dave for public consumption. It was the identical letter without all the stupid (TRUE) and (FALSE) indicators.

I still laugh about that one. So much fun, these stupid letters have given me!

2003 was the start of a short-lived phase where I re-wrote the words to Christmas songs. I also liked this card because it’s a good family picture. Well, except for Dave. And I liked the photo so much of me and the kids and wanted to use it so badly (it’s true, I’m that vain) that I found a good picture of him from the same day and photoshopped his head over the bad one. And I think made it too big.

If I hadn’t told you that, you’d never notice. But now that I have told you, he will start to look freakish. We call this one “Big Head Dave and the Monsters”

It was a good letter though.

2004 was hilariously hideous. I don’t think very many recipients actually realized we took that photo in December in the freezing snow. Note the strategic placement of children to cover Fatty’s rolls…

I was amazed at how many people remembered this card the following year saying they couldn’t wait for the naked card in 2005. I feel they need to seriously get a life.

2005 was the best song ever. It has become a much-loved Christmas carol sung by moms everywhere.

Go ahead, sing it out loud (to Jingle Bells). I just did. It’s catchy!

See you tomorrow! It’s Christmas Eve!

The Five Days of Christmas

December 21, 2010

Of course, it was supposed to be the TWELVE days of Christmas, but… You know how it goes.

I DIDN’T GET AROUND TO IT, OKAY? I’d love to detail all the goings-on in the Menke house, but

your eyes would roll back into your head and you might never come back here.
you don’t care.
you can probably top my list.
I don’t have time.

So here was the plan:

I would display our Christmas cards from the past twelve years and end with my current card on Christmas day. Brilliant!

Before you tell me you don’t give a rat’s ass about my Christmas cards, and particularly the ones from year’s ago, let me say this:

My cards give a unique perspective into the devolution of a soul. That is to say, Jennie becoming a parent. For better or worse, and often against her will.
Yes, I was just speaking of myself in the third person.
No, I don’t know why. It just sounded better that way. Maybe by disassociating myself with the horrible things I say about my family makes it somehow better.
Anyway, my cards are funny. In some ways, they are my best work. (Which is pretty sad, if you think about it…)
Plus, I’m busy. And I don’t have time to think up anything else to write about this week.

Due to the time constraints — there being only FIVE days until Christmas instead of TWELVE — I will be ganging them up. Such a bummer, but it is what it is. The only real dilemma I face is whether to include the boring ones from before kids.

And since this is about the devolution of a personality, I think I will. It will help to get, you know, the whole picture.

Now remember, the first… oh, eight or nine years are pretty boring. I’m mostly including them so that if I ever lose my hardcopies, there will be a place they exist so that I can poor over them and confirm how witty I am when I’m feeling low.

Consider this stupid blog my off-site back-up of essential memories.

What’s crazy when you look back this far in time, is how far we’ve come. Not as people, but in technology! Back in 1990 we couldn’t even fix red-eyes.

Or photoshop new heads on to our bodies, which I believe I did to Dave in 2003…

So 1990 was the beginning of it all. Marital bliss with my beloved Dave.

Would you just look at those shoulder pads on that dress? (Don’t look at the youthful face inside of it. I’m much prettier now.)

Then we got a puppy. Which I refer to as our “first born” because we fought more about parenting that stupid dog than we ever did our kids… Casey is the middle one.

Look how happy we look in 1992…

…Maybe it was the Red Stripe beer.

…Or the Jamaican sunset.

…Or the fact that we didn’t have kids or volunteer anywhere or have mean roosters yet.

1993 was clearly the year I finally got a laser printer. I remember it well: An Apple Personal LaserWriter NT. My parents bought if for me as a surprise and very generous gift (it cost more than the Mac II I had back then) and I turned a corner. I would make every card from that year on. The beginning of the end.