2006 Christmas Cards

Presenting the Kern Family’s 2006 Christmas cards…

This year we decided that we’d let Hope’s creativity be the source of inspiration for our Christmas cards to help give that extra special personal touch to this year’s cards. They ended up being a lot more work than we realized, but the end result turned out rather cute. We spent a few weeks since mid-November working with Hope so that she could draw things that relate to Christmas. We tried everything from Santa to snowmen and even Christmas trees. She insisted on drawing Santa Claus with what I call “bear claws”. We tried teaching her to draw fingers or mittens but one of the best ones ended up being a Santa Claus that looks like a close relative of Edward Scissorhands. Now we realize many of you are fans of Hope’s artwork and in case you wished you had received a different illustration, we decided to create the back so that it has Hope’s signature and all three illustrations were printed on the back. So regardless of which card you might receive you won’t miss out on seeing these cute little creations.

Once we realized we were running out of time before Christmas I took the illustrations and went ahead and printed 50 cards and to add to the personal touch I let Hope sign all of the cards with all of our names. At first it was fun, she had fun drawing hearts or smiley faces along with everyone’s names. And then she got goofy and figured people might enjoy her vampire illustrations on the inside. After a few days I realized she was probably burnt out but with a little incentive to open a Christmas present early she finished them last night. Now I must tell you that if you receive one of the cards she finished last night she got really silly. She started playing tic tac toe and drawing santa on the inside. Every five minutes she was calling me over to take a look at the progress she had made – and a few times she just was in fits laughing saying “look Momma, this one’s hilarious”. So through all the torture of doing all fifty cards she managed to have a little fun.

And if for some reason you received a card where Hope was writing fast – you should be able to tell it’s from us. As usual I’ve included a letter from the family updating you on what we’ve been up to this past year.

Now if for some reason you didn’t receive a Christmas card then perhaps we don’t have your address. We did our best to get one out to everyone. But then again, I don’t think I could have managed to get Hope to create many more – I’m absolutely impressed that she could finish all 50! If we happened to miss you then you can check out the photos we took in flickr tagged under 2006 Christmas cards.