The story behind the Christmas Card

I love sending out Christmas cards. There is something about stuffing the envelopes and sticking on the stamps that really gets me into the Christmas spirit. In the past we have had photos of Aaron and I and our dogs, Hayduke and Rissa (who has passed on), and most recently Willow, our spunky Brittney puppy. Well this year we skipped the photo with the dogs and went with the newest addition to our family...baby Miles. As I mailed the last of our Christmas cards to our family and friends, I realized that some explanation about the photo may have been needed that I didn't include in the letter.

Our Billboard right by the Dairy Queen

You see, we are somewhat of celebrities in our little town. Miles was the last baby born at the old hospital in Jamestown. I'll post the birth story at a later date, because it was quite an experience. They moved us over to the new hospital the following day and we were the first family in the new birth center. So because of this momentous event the hospital's marketing team wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to publicize the new Family Birth Center. They took tons of pictures. It was a good thing that I had some makeup with me and a fun custom hospital gown I got on Etsy. Reporters from the Jamestown Sun came by to interview us and the hospital took a video of the interview. We were on the front page of the newspaper with a feature article along with another Mom who had the first baby in the new hospital. Aaron did get recognized by a stranger in Hugo's after the article ran.

Anyway...a couple of weeks after we got home Aaron and I got an email from the Marketing Manager at the hospital saying that they were going to use our photo in some advertisements including newspaper ads and on a billboard! I had to blush and smile widely. I've never been on a billboard before, how many people have? So once it went up we knew we had to get our picture taken in front of it. The picture was taken in August, so we are in shorts and short sleeves. See...it does get warm in North Dakota.

The billboard was right by the Dairy Queen in town and everyone who went through the drive-through saw our (well Aaron's mostly) smiling faces. The billboard was up for about a month. We got lots of messages and comments from our friends. It was pretty fun for me, I must say. I'm not sure Aaron enjoyed the celebrity as much as I did.

Thanks to our friend Lori for being the photographer for our photo shoot.

All fun things must come to an end. Our billboard was removed to make room for an ad for the Hairball show that came to town. It was fun while it lasted and we knew that we needed to share the photo with all our family and friends on our Christmas card. We hope you all have a wonderful Holiday and enjoy the card.