Attention All Christensens!

My Grandma Chris tells the best stories. She's been telling them for years and each one is just a treasure. She and my grandpa have to stay home just about all the time now, and I wanted to find a way for her to tell her stories to all her grandchildren and great grandchildren all over the world without ever having to leave my grandpa.

So when I found some digital recordings of five of Grandma's stories I was SO excited. I transcribed each story, illustrated it and put it in a book- complete with an About the Author section full of pictures of Grandma and Grandpa's life. I got the books printed and burned some CDs with the digital recordings to make a 'Read Along with Grandma' book. I just love how they turned out! I gave a copy to Grandma and promised to get the word out so that each of her grandchildren and great grandchildren could get a copy and hear her stories.

So if you're one of my Christensen cousins listen up! To get your very own read along book you'll need two things: The book and the CD of Grandma's voice. Here's how to get them.

The Book
There are two was to get the book. One is easy, the other cheap.

-The easy way is to go to this address http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1031190 and buy your own hardback copy. They cost about $30 + shipping (you can order up to 5 books and pay the same for shipping, so if you live close to a sibling that might be beneficial)

-The cheap way is to go to this address http://jessicageorgedesign.com/TheGreatestFarmerOnline.pdf where you can find a PDF version of the whole book that you can download and print from your own computer. (because of the large size of this file it will only be up for a limited amount of time so get it while it's hot!)

The CD
The audio files can be found at http://grandmastories.posterous.com/ this site will allow you to listen to the stories or download them to create your own CD.


*end note* after I made this I've heard of quite a few other recordings that Grandma has done. If there are enough, I might just work on compiling a volume 2 book. (If I get some people to help me- this was a big job! Let me know if you'd like to help on the next one. Even transcribing one story would help a lot) If you have any of recordings please email me (jessicaageorge {at} gmail.com) a digital copy so we can all enjoy it!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

My brother Andrew and I have this tradition of watching A Charlie Brown Christmas together each Christmas Eve. We started when we were little and have found it's much harder to keep since we've gotten married. But we're still staying true to Charlie Brown.

This year Andrew and Lauren were in Maryland at Nathan and Alisa's house and we were in Utah. But never fear, we still watched good old Charlie thanks to the amazing abilities of Skype. We met Andrew, Lauren, Nathan and Alisa online on Christmas night. After taking them on a brief tour of our home (Alisa hasn't ever seen it, so I carried our laptop around for her to see how it looked through our web-cam) we watched our movie. I think it was even cooler than watching it all in the same room. Here's a picture of our computer monitor- our computer was facing the movie on our TV so that the Maryland folk could watch the movie through their computer. So on our screen we could see them watching (and of course hear them make comments all through) and a reflection of our TV playing good old Charlie Brown.

The rest of Christmas was also great. It was nice and simple since I've been so stinking sick lately, but honestly I kind of enjoyed having an excuse not to get involved in all the holiday stress this year. No neighbor gifts (sorry guys) or Christmas cards and I bought just about everything online. It was really nice to just enjoy the season.

My parents flew in for Grandpa's birthday and Mom was able to stay here until Christmas day. It was our first Utah Christmas -both Doug and I had a hard time really believing it was Christmas since we've have gotten so used to traveling to either Idaho or Ohio. It's almost like the flight/car ride is always what marked the beginning of the Christmas season.

Christmas Eve dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Chris and Christmas Day dinner with Doug's family definitely made staying in Utah worth it. It's great to be so close to family.

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

On the weekend before Christmas, Doug and I got to attend what I believe is one of the best birthday parties I've ever been to. My Grandpa Stacey turned 90 this month and literally hundreds of his family members (nieces, nephews, grand kids, even a great great grandchild) came to celebrate. There was beautiful music and a great slide show of his life. My personal favorite was the cake. I mean, how many times do you get to see a birthday cake with 90 candles on it? I also love how, in a very typical act of Grandpa's constant thoughtfulness, he let the kids enjoy the honor of blowing out all his candles.

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