A New Year...

It's 2014. This last year flew by fast. My oldest niece (middle brother's daughter) and niece and nephew (youngest brother's kids) were here the week of New Years. They had a good time.


I've been watching NYPD Blue on Amazon. Bobby Simone (Jimmy Smits) was my favorite character. I didn't really watch it after they killed him off.








I loved the Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) character also, but there was something special about Bobby.


It's not that Rick Schroder didn't do a good job with the Danny Sorenson character. I liked his character. It's just that Bobby Simone was a hard act to follow and things weren't the same without him.


It is normal to get attached to your favorite characters. I survived when George Clooney left ER even though I liked the Doug Ross character a lot. I couldn't keep watching it after they killed off Mark Greene (Tony Edwards).








It was the same when William Petersen left CSI and Vincent D'Onofrio left Law & Order Criminal Intent. The shows just weren't the same without them.








And when Chris Meloni left Law & Order SVU.






The only show I really paid attention to through the character changes was the original Law & Order. I loved the characters, especially Lennie Briscoe.





However, the storylines in Law & Order focused more on the cases the characters were working on rather than the characters. I think that's why it held my interest; I wanted to see whether they convicted the suspects.

Whatever the case, the characters on these shows have meant a lot to me and I missed them after they left.

The images are from Wikipedia.

The Day After Christmas

Christmas was nice; my brother and his family were over.


Went to see Frozen this morning and loved it.





It's a sweet story about two sisters and has a good message about love and helping each other out.


I somehow overlooked mentioning a couple of other favorite holiday movies in an earlier post.





Polar Express is a wonderful, imaginative movie.


And of course there's this guy.





It's cool how The Grinch ends up understanding what Christmas is about in the end.

Christmas Joy pictures

Here is a picture from CJ on 12/15/13. The set is beautiful.





And here is a picture of the decorated lobby of the church from 2011.

Christmas Joy

Curtain falls on a holiday tradition | year, wells, people - News - The Orange County Register


My church has had a Christmas play set during different time periods every year for the last 40 years.  It started out small but grew into a full production with a set and costumes.  I've been going to it every year since about 2003.  I went twice this year, on December 7 with my mom and again on December 15 with a friend.  This is the last year for Christmas Joy; I'm going to miss it.  It's been a real source of encouragement to me over the years.  They will be moving onto something else for Christmas but aren't sure what exactly.  I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.


I will post more pictures as I have them, but in the meantime here's a link to a story in the Orange County Register.

More holiday specials.

Here are some other favorites...Movies this time.





A Christmas Carol makes a great statement about what Christmas should be about.






It's a Wonderful Life has a good message about not being defined by your circumstances and that things do happen for a reason.






And there's A Christmas Story which always makes me laugh.






And Home Alone, which has a good message about families sticking together but is funny also. The kid sure is resourceful. Good stuff.

I got the images from Wikipedia.

Christmas specials.

This is a good time to talk about some of my favorite Christmas specials.






"A Charlie Brown Christmas" is a must.



Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Rudolph.










Or Frosty.


Santa Claus is Coming to Town--What's not to love?





And the Little Drummer Boy.





I watch these shows every year and never get tired of them.


I got the images from Wikipedia.

Christmas is coming.

It's always fun to walk around the neighborhood and look at Christmas lights this time of year. Some of the decorations are pretty elaborate, but some are simple and still very nice. The house across the street has four stars across the eaves of the front porch and it looks good.






Most of the lights aren't quite as over-the-top as the house in Christmas Vacation but some come pretty close.


I love that movie by the way.