She’s in kindergarten this year and learning fast how to read and write. I don’t know about you but I didn’t learn that stuff until first grade. Here it is

The funny thing is that you I can tell which letters the teacher has gone over with them because they are much better than the other ones. I’m sure you’ll need some translation so here goes:

Dear Santa

Bratz House
Mommy’s Gotta Go Doll
Princess Bedroom
Potatohead

Love Savannah

I’m not sure what some of that is, but I’m sure I will find out before Christmas!

Brett

I’ve lost count, but I believe 2007 marks the ninth year that I’ve created photo calendars for my family. Every year I scare them by telling them that I just didn’t make enough photos this year to come up with a good calendar. They never take me seriously and I have always managed to put thirteen photos (one for each month and one for the cover) from the year gone by into a calendar that they can enjoy until the next year.

Back when I started doing this, there were no online photo services and very few digital cameras, if any. The first two or three calendars were made by Kinkos. I would label the photos by the month and they would make color enlargements and laminate the photos and the calendar pages and assemble the calendars. Then as inkjets and scanners improved I started scanning my 35mm prints and printing my own enlargements for the calendars. I even did my own assembly by borrowing some time on the laminating machine and binder at my work. That was less costly, but needless to say the quality suffered.

This year I had plenty of photos. As you’ve noticed I have also been experimenting with Flickr and photo sharing online. My favorite online photo sharing and backup site has become Phanfare. More about them later. On Phanfare they give links to order prints, etc. One of the companies they use for printing is Shutterfly.

If you sign up with Shutterfly, they give you 10 free 4×6 prints to try out their service. I ordered my 10 prints right away so I could get an idea of their quality. If the prints were good then I wanted to give them a shot on this year’s calendar. I placed the order for the 10 prints and got them back in about a week. They looked great! I got busy right away uploading my calendar photos. I was able to choose special borders and even put in custom dates for the birhdays and anniversaries in our family.

My 2008 calendars arrived yesterday and I was beyond pleased! They did in fact look exactly like the Shutterfly previews, custom dates and all. No silly lamination here. The pages are heavy card stock with a nice white spiral binding and the photo results were of the highest quality. I like doing things myself, but there’s no way I could get this kind of quality doing the calendars myself. I can’t wait to see the reaction this Christmas eve!

If you’re looking for a printer, especially for calendars, I highly recommend Shutterfly.

Merry Christmas!

Brett

Time flies…..seems like yesterday that Savannah and I were in the back yard picking up walnuts. Here’s a photo of this year’s version of our annual “event”.

Brett

Today I’m learning to post from my Flickr account. I’ve been getting back into photography lately and I ran across this photo of Savannah from earlier this year. I just loved her expression in this photo so I decided to use it as the guinea pig of my Flickr posting experiment.

Brett

If you’d like more detail on the photos, visit my Flickr site.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Having said that I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!  This is a special one for us since we have a three year old in the house.  We do believe in Santa Claus around here!

We’ve had a magical couple of days since I have taken vacation days to supplement the regular holiday days off.  Amy, Savannah and I have just enjoyed each other’s company along with some shopping, baking cookies and wrapping gifts.  Savannah is VERY aware of how Christmas “works” now.  Her favorite movie is Elf with Will Ferrell.  I think she watched at least most of it three times yesterday.  I’m a little bit tired of it but there are a couple of scenes that are funny. . .I don’t care who you are!

I have big plans for the rest of my time off.  Planning for 2007 is high on my list.  I’m happy but not thrilled with my personal growth in 2006.  Considering I didn’t HAVE a personal growth plan this time last year I guess I can’t complain.

All the best from our family to yours!

Brett Weaver

P.S. Don’t forget to start 2007 with a plan.

It’s nice to have a child around to keep you humble, but today I got an added benefit. You see every year about this time I have to spend most of an afternoon picking up walnuts that have fallen off the tree out behind our house. Otherwise I can’t mow the grass. Last year Savannah “helped”, but this year she really made this chore easy for me

We were home alone since my wife Amy was out of town, so we were just hanging out in the back yard. When I pointed out the walnut situation (with no intention of actually going into it today), Savannah insisted that she wanted to pick them up. I wasn’t about to look that gift horse in the mouth so I promptly provded her with a suitable container and she went to work. Within just a few minutes the entire area was walnut free and se was asking for more. I assured her that in a couple of weeks the rest would fall and she would have ample opportunity to be helpful. In a way I wish kids would stay this age. . . .

I’m not in the habit of burning every light in the house so there was ample opportunity for her to be faced with the object of her fear. I sympathized with her that I too was scared of the dark when I was about her age. She’s very mature for a three year old so I proceeded to share with her some things she needed to know in order to face the fear and build her courage. Following is a grown up version of the conversation.

You see, Savannah’s fear of the dark is actually a false belief that something is waiting in the shadows that would harm her in some way. I have seen the acronym False Evidence Appearing Real used to describe fear and I think it is a good definition.

In the house I grew up in there was a looong hallway (well it doesn’t seem nearly as long to me now as it did back then). My bedroom was at the very end of the hallway and I had to pass two other rooms in order to get to my room. Every night I had to face my false beliefs that the “boogey man” was waiting in the spare bedroom waiting to get me. Each time I faced that fear and walked past those dark rooms despite my fear I built COURAGE.

I shared with Savannah the concept of courage. It was a new word to her, but by the time it was over she understood that each time she faced her fear of the dark and went in to the room anyway that it would easier because she was building courage. She didn’t express a lot of interest in participating in this activity and was quite satisfied to be classified as a “Fraidey Cat” for now!

If we want to grow personally it is important to first identify the false evidences that we tell ourselves are real on a daily basis. Fears can paralyze us and stand in the way of moving toward whatever goal we are currently pursuing. We must also create habits that cause us to be able to build our courage and push through the fear.

This personal blog is a source of fear to me for instance. To write about my own experiences and publish it to the world is kind of scary. Making myself transparent to the world (potentially anyway) is not something I am used to doing.

I have a couple of things that I want to share in the next couple of days are very important to me. The topics I have in mind should probably have been in my first post to this blog, but I let my fear of what somebody might think stop me. No more. Stay tuned. I hope this little story inspires you to share a story of your own courage building. I look forward to hearing from you!