Picture Presents

I'm not sure why it is that I can never learn from natural disasters that I create.  But I don't. Ever.  Last year at Christmas time, I thought it would be a fabulous idea to make a pillow case for each of the 200 missionaries in my mission.  The Christmas gift turned into a Valentine's Day present which turned into a nightmare among all the family members I enlisted to help with them which turned into a great summer gift for most of the missionaries.  But did I learn from that catastrophe?  NO!  I did not!  This year, on the 22nd of December, Jolene had arranged for a woman to come over to teach us to make temple pictures.  I thought it would be just a wonderful idea for each of my children to have a hand made, customized picture of their wedding temple to display proudly in their homes.  Then, when people came into their homes, they could point lovingly at the picture, and say, "Yes.  My mother made that for me.  Isn't it wonderful?"  What was I thinking?!?!  First of all, IT WAS THE 22ND OF DECEMBER AND WE DIDN'T START UNTIL NIGHT TIME!!!!  That fact alone meant that there was no way these pictures were going to be in Delaware, Pennsylvania or Texas the day after tomorrow.  We had to paint the frames, and the frames wouldn't even be dry until the day after Christmas!  I had so many to do that I made Coralie (my niece), Kristi and Jolene (my daughters), Kailyn Slaugh (my Delaware neighbor-in-law) and even the teaching lady help me with mine.  We painted the frames, glued the pictures to a backing board, painted them with this stuff that made them antique-ey, and then put the pictures together.  There were 15 in all.  And they were ginormous!  Seriously, they are about 4 feet by 6 feet.  Or something like that.  Nothing dried quickly, so they sat in my basement for a couple of weeks.  Okay, okay.  There were actually dry, but they sat in my basement for a couple of weeks anyway.  Then I loaded them all up in the back of the Expedition and hauled them over to the UPS store, where the guy told me they'd be $100 each to wrap for mailing, and $200 each to mail.  I told him I didn't love my kids that much and took them back home with me.  They rode around in the back of the truck for several days.  Then they sat in my garage for a week or so.  Finally, I bought 45 miles of bubble wrap, several hundred rolls of packaging tape and boxes that were twice the size I actually needed.  I spent about a jillion dollars on wrapping supplies.  I spent about a jillion hours wrapping the stupid pictures in boxes that I had to cut in half and refashion.  It was absurd!  And the boxes, for some reason, didn't actually get put together symmetrically, so most of them were shaped in some sort of oblique-ish fashion.  By that time, however, I didn't care what they looked like or how awkward they were to ship.  I wanted them out of my house!  I sent Kristi off to the post office with them.  They were each a few inches too large for the post office to send them by regular mail, so they had to go by Pony Express - AND - they were "excessively large" so I had to pay the excessively large price of $75 each to ship them to my darling children.  Next year, I'm going to save myself the trouble and give each child a $3,000 check for Christmas.  I figure I will come out ahead financially, with far less frustration.  So, Jason, Loni, Jarom, Nathan and Jolene, watch your mailbox, sometime in the middle of February a Pony Express Rider is going to stop at your house and give you a picture of the temple where you were married.  All I can say is you had better appreciate it!!!!  I sure do love you.

See these pictures???  See how happy we are???  This was at the beginning of the class.  We had no idea...

This is the picture that I made for Bruce and gave it to him for Christmas.  I was really glad that I didn't have to mail it.  The next mission president's wife is going to wonder who these people are in the picture on her wall, and she is going to HATE me for rubbing vinyl letters on her walls.  Oh well.