I Had This Great Idea...

...for our Christmas picture. Unfortunately, we had to wait for Amanda to get here and then when she got here it was 12 below zero and because I have many years of experience trying to get my family to pose for a Christmas picture, I knew better than to ask them to do this in below zero conditions. So Saturday it went to 7 above. So we went to take the picture. Along the highway.

The great idea involved changing the population sign. With white electrical tape. It also involved Alex on Dave's shoulders to accomplish this. And Amanda on Dave's shoulders because I wasn't happy with where Alex placed the '9', and he refused to do it again and Amanda (who has more Christmas picture experience recognized the crazed look in my eye and didn't want to hear for the rest of her life how we never got the picture in 2008) agreed to climb up and move the '9'.

The great idea also needed a one hour photo developer which we found one hour from here. It involved e-mailing said photo and driving an hour to pick up the prints. And so today I was just going to pick up a box of cards in town and mail out those great pictures. But, of course, I live in DODGE CITY where there are no boxes of Christmas cards. So now I can not send out the cards until I actually have them and I'm thinking the nearest cards are probably an hour from here. And it is 5 degrees and snowing. And I'm not going out there. So here is the picture:

Please note that it is not photoshopped. We really changed the sign with electrical tape, stood along the highway in single digit weather, and took this picture of ourselves. If I could photoshop, I would have taken the picture in October, changed the sign with photoshop and photoshopped Amanda in. But what fun would that have been?