December 7, 2014 – Suddenly they all died. The end.

I’m continuing the Christmas theme today with pictures from the annual Kauffman Christmas. Seymour’s family gets together every year to celebrate with all the aunts, uncles, and cousins, and it’s always a lot of fun. There’s enough food to feed a small army, great conversations on every topic under the sun, and even a visit from Santa Claus. It’s one of the highlights of the year for me because there’s nothing better than spending the holidays with the ones you love. 🙂

“Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane…”

Cricket talked Santa’s ear off.

Thumper was much more excited about seeing Santa today than he was three weeks ago.

Baby Frank spent the afternoon snuggled up in his stocking.

How does your family do Christmas?

Jenny at readsbyredriverbanks asked me to take part in the Writer’s Blog Tour last weekend, and I’ve finally taken a few minutes to sit down and type up a post. I did a post on the same topic back in May, when the ever-lovely Tricia Drammeh asked me to take part. That time I answered the questions with more of a focus on my fiction writing, but this time I decided to focus a bit more on my poetry.

Why do I write what I do?
I write poetry because it’s something I’ve always enjoyed reading. I remember as a kid I spent a whole afternoon in one of the trees out at my grandparents’ place writing poems about my summer vacation as a school project. I used to really like free verse, and sometimes I still write a bit of it, but I’ve found haiku to be an interesting challenge, and it’s really quite satisfying to be able to cram a world of emotion into 17 syllables.