Christmas Cards
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Our Christmas Cards Over the Years
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One of the all time “best” was published in 2008, combining our long-running joke about the “Good Intentions Paving Company” with a spoof about the perennial Christmas spoof-target: fruit cakes. Merrill’s old yellow truck was the back drop, all in front of our O'Fallon office. Left to right; Merrill, Chris, Nancy Jo, Denise, John, Mary and Paul |
| One we consider the all-time favorite of most of us attempted to show us singing carols. After taking a couple serious shots, somebody got the idea to suggest one of us, (Nickie Stowers) be the target. Exhuberantly, she gave the impression she was really into the singing at the expense, evidently, of every one else. Note the expressions on each. We used this version that Christmas….and got many, many comments, most found it fun. Back: Susanne McKean, Paul, Nickie, Merrill, Mary, Karen Marshall, and in front, Laurel McKean, Rose Fletcher |
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Here's the more serious, traditional pose that we passed up. Later in this series, we have an instrumental version of this choral interpretation |
 This is a more conservative approach, used in 2010. But it does contain a joke, that quite a few serious viewers did find. The firecracker had a bit fuse, burning in fact, that’s a bit hard to see. The joke, Merrill is in the picture twice. Below is a scene from the photo session....a really big sparkler was used for the "fuse". |
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Here’s a card from 2002. We borrowed a store sleigh and simply gathered around it. The twist of course is that Paul is in an “Elf costume.” That was funny to a lot of his clients, especially, but we believe he was dead serious when he said he would never do it again! |
| In the early years, we used pretty ones. Here is a picture that Merrill took of the lane to the horse barn and pasture behind his then home, after a big beautiful snow. |  |
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And this is another in the serious series, of our early Edwardsville office. It was in a delightful old farmhouse, built by a pioneering Edwardsville family, in the midst of a gorgeous group of antique red barns. Kriege Lane, (the name of that wonderful family,) led to it, a short entry lined by beautiful hard maples. Most of this scene disappeared under the Wal Mart complex. The lane exists, to a couple of offices on the right. |
| This is the "nice" instrumental version of a Christmas musical group that was promised earlier. This was used a couple of years after we used the choral version. What follows below is Nickie again creating the sour notes... |  |
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....and the rest of us reacting appropriately. |
| We can’t remember when this one was used, but we thought it kind of cute. It was pretty traditional, except that Paul was dressed as a chimney sweep, which most people “got”. Mary Ades, Denise Carter, Merrill, Paul, Nancy Jo and Audrey Kramer |
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| Whoops...can't find the picture for the moment, but it's here somewhere... |
And that one was followed by this one, where Paul is again the “heavy”, regretting the fact that his stocking held only coal, the traditional sign of Santa’s disapproval of his general behavior for the year. |
And this one isn’t really a Christmas Card, but we had a very good time with it. You can imagine how it developed…how each of us chose our costume separately….and how it came together for the final scene. It was on the cover of a calendar that we published in 2009. The costumes attempted to portray the characters with the Southwestern Illinois history features with the calendar.
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