I admire people who send cards annually. They seem to live impossibly ordered lives.

What slows us down is that one or the other of us is determined to make our cards and it takes awhile to get it together. Last year everything went wrong. Chris printed the cards on paper and it didn't look right so he tried paper towel, and liked it better, but the black tree branch didn't register the way he wanted.

Then our printer broke down so he couldn't make extra copies in case there were not enough hand-printed ones. The copy shop's copy machine broke so we couldn't print the message. And the photo shop closed permanently so I had to figure out how to get copies of the family photo to insert into the envelopes (which had yet to be purchased).

No matter, we got these little guys out eventually, and we've got something brewing for this year, too.