More cancer and a major change in lifestyle. It's now been almost 5 years since Tom passed away. This coming July 27, would have been our 40th anniversary.
This has not been a very good year.
Almost two years without Tom now. Didn't do much this year except attend some rodeos.
The sadest year of my life. I lost my beloved Tom last January
Not as extensive a card this year. The last half of the year Frank had to deal with anal cancer.
We bought a new RV this year but didn't do as much traveling as last year. We did mostly 2 to 3 day short trips within Colorado but we did go for a 6 week trip later in the year. Not as many photos but more rodeo videos.
In 2015, after being together for 32 years, we were finally able to be legally married. We had another fine year of travel, with 7 rodeos and 2 trailer trips. A car trip to Phoenix and a flight to Tampa for IGRA Convention.
After 17 years, we have decided to drop the mailed CD in our Christmas cards. The computer version will only be available on our website. We took the trailer out 3 times and saw 6 rodeos.
Smaller card this year because we only took one big trip lasting a bit over 6 weeks.
A very full year with a 3 month trailer tip and lots of things done to the house.
We moved to Colorado at the end of 2010 which ended up taking all our time, so there was no CD mailed out in 2010. This is our catch up card with 2 years combined.
Many miles on the road and 6 rodeos, and broken ribs for Tom.
We went to 7 rodeos this year and began traveling again in our trailer. Frank also had a heart attack in October.
Lots of rodeos this year. A new trailer, which didn't get used much. Most of our trips were by flying. We hope this coming year is full of trailer travel.
Smaller production but higher quality images from better cameras.
Computer screens continue to grow so this year we increased the size of the images.
Some people said they liked the photos from last year but complained about too much to read, so this year we did a simpler card with less text. The background was a bit too strong last year so this year with the help of graphics software it was lightened up.
A few interesting vacations this year.
This year we began using 3 inch CDs which had just begun to show up in the stores. Less junk on the CD but now it fit in the envelope with the Christmas card. In addition Frank had begun using Cascading Style Sheets this year for more control on formatting.
It snuck up on us this year.
A simpler card this year. A new digital camera (Kodak DCS-315), trips to Williamsburg, Maine, a new water pump, spring and driveway paving. Lots of flowers and a trip to Colorado. Maine in the fall and a few camping trips.
Technology advances and this year we did a CD-Rom version. We crammed way more into this CD than we needed to. It included audio, and video presentations. With 292 megs, this one was much more difficult to produce.
Again, created on a floppy. We got a lot of positive response on the first one, but people wanted larger photos. So the thumbnails were out and larger pictures were in.
Our first web based Christmas card. It was mailed on a floppy disk. The thumbnail pages were generated as a last minute idea using a program called ThumbNailer. Most photos shot with a Kodak DC-50, produced huge images 756x504 pixels, at least huge compared to the camera it replaced.
This was the last year before we began our web based cards. Color printers were still fairly new and not very good. We had just gotten a photo printer (first HP photo printer, $1200) and printed small pictures to tape inside the home made cards.