Fun Facts & Untold Stories

"Incredibly Late" returned to the label this year, but at least the cards were in the mail by Valentine's Day!  Our best chance to take the picture in 2022 was over Thanksgiving, but Covid snuck in and dashed our plans.  In January we hustled the gang over to Sharon Park once again (see 2008) for the fastest photo on record!  The tubes were from poolside at the Biltmore on a fun trip to AZ to celebrate their Grandmother Shirley's 90th birthday! 

Once again we felt fortunate to get the kids together after Thanksgiving. Kristen's mom Brenda joined the fun but drew the line when it came to the picture lol.  Taken in our kitchen this was one of the quickest photo sessions ever with hardly any yelling!  Couldn't work Darby into the shot but he is watching below for dropped caramels!  Big surprise was we got some cards in the mail before Christmas, causing several friends to text us and ask if everything was ok lol!

Very fortunate to get all 3 kids together in November (with their sidekicks) when Ben and Kristen were out looking at labs in CA for his postdoc.  Luckily for us they chose Berkeley!    Jack brought a few of his New Glory beers down and the crew enjoyed those while Gail was inside hot glue'ing the felt hats!  Darby posed perfectly in his hat lol. Taken in our back yard in the height of COVID we were very careful to keep each pair 6ft apart and masked before/after the shot.

Taken Christmas morning in our living room with two new faces, Ben's girlfriend Kristen (on his right) and Sam our "daughter" for the past year.  Darby, who makes a cameo on the front, is begging for bite in the group shot.  It's getting harder to get the whole gang together, so don't be surprised if anyone is missing next year!     

 This is the fourth card from the greater Charleston area. This shot was taken on beautiful Isle of Palms, SC. You’ll notice we finally broke down and switched to one of the popular online services this year. Though this card departs from our past labor intensive print, cut and paste formats, at least we’re still signing ours (lol).  It may be the end of an era as it’s hard to get Ben4, Jack, and Addie together. They are all doing great. We’re not sure but next year we’re thinking of just taking pictures of the dog! Fostering continued in 2018.  

Third card from SC (see 2001, 2014) and second from visiting sister Cheryl in Charleston. It was the last day of an awesome wedding celebration for their cousin Matt (and Carrie) in June. The shot was taken in front of the Talos missile outside Patriots Point Naval & Maritime Museum in Charleston Harbor.  In other family news, as foster parents we welcomed 6 kids (two sets of 3 siblings) into our home this year!

We "cheated" and took this card on the same trip at the previous year's.  Disney wouldn't let them go solo, so the kids strategically positioned themselves to the side of the boat and we photoshop'd six other people out of the shot.

The first of the Disney series.  The "kids" only had to ride the cups a dozen or so times, lol.  Pretty cool effect in photoshop where you can trace an object like the kids in their cup, and blurr everything outside of the trace.  

Do you know how hard it is to get large blocks of ice?  We picked them up in San Francisco and then melted slots in them to insert the ships.  Not as easy as you might think.  Fun to have a blow torch in the family though.

Shot in our dining room, there was no use of photoshop for either Jack or Ben IV's hair, lol.  They both were rocking fro's back then and with just a little brush out and some halloween hairspray we had the perfect Chia Heads for the Seeds in Greeting.  The posing was modeled after a Rembrandt painting too.  No detail is left undone...

After driving almost 500 miles for the previous card, we decided to stay close to home and took this shot in our back yard where we roasted "chess nuts" back in 2000.  It was also a nice way to introduce Nellie, our first "rescue" dog.

This roadside attraction stands in the parking lot of the Super 8 Motel (formerly the Olive Tree Inn) a short 227 miles from our house.  Yes we drove there and back in 1 day just for this shot!

Our first card after moving to California.  We decided to set up a little camp fire in the back yard.  We made the kids' shirts from iron on transfers using the inkjet printer - a real novelty at the time!

We "borrowed" the decorations at a County rec center and posed the kids in front of them.  The "mutt" costume was re-purposed Lion costume from the Wizard of Oz that we still use today.  Jack couldn't move (notice his neck) because the candy cane (foam, chicken wire) weighed a ton and was as stiff as a board.

We got creative with our change of address announcement letting people know we had moved to NJ.  This wooden globe was a great find by Gail in an "off the beaten path" park, a stones throw from I-78 near Clinton.  The costume was a giant tube that Gail sewed and the hat was something else to behold.  This took a ton of skill by the kids to maintain their position - if one of them swayed too much it would mean a 10 ft fall for all three!

We borrowed the Harley for this one from Andy Eckler, a COBE coworker and friend of Ben's.  It was a struggle getting the bike into the living room of our house in Golden for the shot, which was arguably a huge hit.  We also went high tech printing in color on an HP 7475 plotter (see the HP computer museum).  The cards took hours to get all printed. 

 Taken atop the "oxen" at the Denver Zoo, we "sweet-talked" them to letting us in 20 minutes early to take the shot.   You'll notice that Addie is "roped" in.   Gail would get the kids to smile or laugh by having them say "Daddy wears diapers" before each shot.  Ben IV drove thru Denver in the summer of 2015 on his way to MN and visited the zoo and confirmed the oxen were still there

 Taken on our kitchen table in the Littleton house.  I'm not sure everyone realized Addie was in a roasting pan.  We still have the roasting pan as well as the kitchen table which we bought in Indiana and drove it across the country inverted on top of a Honda Civic.