A Snapshot for the Christmas Card

Richard is the highest in the air, with John in the pale hooded jacket below him. 

Susan is holding baby Marjory Ann at the right, and I am the big girl to the left of John.. 

I think that is David at the far left, So the dark lump below the tree must be Robert 

and ??a dog? Susan needs to help me out here.

This is one of a group of pictures taken at The Farm for use as a Christmas Greeting. Probably Christmas 1952, because I left for the university of Arizona in August of 1953. This picture shows one of the elms we felled (Dutch Elm Disease) and the addition we put on the house after moving there. In the previous summer, I had painted the addition's clapboards (one coat of linseed oil on the bare wood and then two coats of white paint.) I got paid $1.00 per hour -- so I had some cash to take to college. This year we made our own Christmas cards, about 5x8, which we developed ourselves and dried by the radiator (they curled up and had to be flattened under weight) and some copies of which we dyed partly pale green or pale pinky red.

As I remember it, the verse went like this, because of course
we didn't get all this done in time to send out to arrive before Christmas:

This greeting's overdue, we know
You see, we waited for the snow
Still we would like to let you know
That we would like to say HELLO!

I am not sure about the third line, but I am confident about the rest.

So I guess that is poetry, and this is truly a memory thread!
Three more days of Christmas memories on this blog.

ADDENDUM: Hoe COULD I have forgotten to mention that the verse was printed on the master copy in my father's masterful all-caps engineer's printing.  When John was in grade school and asked Dad why he printed like that, he told him it was Engineer's Printing. John immediately gave up cursive and all forms of grade-school printing and began to write like that. We all felt like that about our Dad!