Another Year of Blogging Winds Down

	Here we are at the end of 2011 already. It went by quickly! I hope 2012 is a great year for you. We are spending a quiet evening at home except for the last half-hour of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve. Marie was tired from traveling over numerous time zones (and crossing the date line several times) to get here from Tahiti, and I was tired from being on the road most of today to visit Lynn.
Lights in Timberville

My blog stopped showing the "Older Posts" links in the archives but I found a work-around on Blogger Help so I inserted a new gadget tonight. However, if you're looking for a particular post, the quickest way may be to use the Search box on the upper left.

Earlier this month, I posted a number of pictures of the children's holiday program at Bryce Resort. You can click that link to see all posts tagged Bryce Resort, or search the blog for "holiday program."

My favorite topics this month included Family, Living History, and Christmas. If you click on those tags, you'll see some overlap because some posts have two of those labels.

Marie is Back!

My younger daughter is back from a 10-month world tour. She blogged about it on Marie's World Tour.

She also did a world tour in 2001.

I picked her up on the 29th in Northern Virginia where she was enjoying a brief visit with her friend Marie Alice.

See also Marie and Marie, in 2008.

Marie Ellen & Marie Alice

A Very Young Reenactor

This cute little girl participated in "Christmas on the Farm" at the New Market Battlefield earlier in December.

I love seeing the children dressed up in old-fashioned outfits. They were representing the children who lived on Bushong Farm during the Civil War.

In the News at Bushong Farm

Bushong Farm, New Market, VA

After I wandered through "Christmas on the Farm" at Bushong Farm, I spotted a young man who looked familiar. I've seen him on TV news out of Harrisonburg. A volunteer suggested that he use me as an interviewee for a segment he was doing on the event. So I answered a few questions on camera, feeling a bit awkward but glad to share my interest in the event. I did not see the newscast, but you can read the print version on the WHSV website.

Children Playing 1864-Style, Bushong Farm

These children seem to be enjoying their roles as living history participants. In most cases they come with their parents who are  reenactors or museum volunteers. In this case, they are performing in Christmas on the Farm, New Market, Virginia.

Women at Bushong Farm

New Market, VA 12/3/2011

Christmas on the Farm 1864
Living History Event

Bushong Farm has been preserved on the New Market Battlefield. Although it is within sight of Interstate 81, it is a fine place to imagine what life was like during the Civil War.

The woman in the first photo sits next to a "Soldiers Christmas Box." It would have been packed with small gifts, including highly practical items like a sewing kit.

Related Posts:

• Bushong Farm, New Market
• Photos at Bushong Farm
• Relaxing at Bushong Farm

Musicians at New Market Battlefield

Earlier this month I saw these musicians at the winter encampment at New Market Battlefield here in the Shenandoah Valley. They are from the Valley Pike Fife and Drum Corps.

The battlefield park is home to the Virginia Museum of the Civil War.

Christmas 2011

Dave and Allison visited us last night and this morning. Lynn showed up this afternoon and stayed for dinner.

Marie could not be with us because she was still in the South Pacific. I miss her but she'll be arriving late in a few days.

Hope you had a nice Christmas!

Christmas 1998

Suiters, Fallons, Javinses, Statlers

This is from a JPEG scanned at the time of processing back when digital images were nowhere near as fine as they are now. It's on my oldest Year in Photos CD. I have some older digital files but they are on floppy disks, and I don't even have the drive to read them anymore.

Suncatchers

Seen in the Skyland Gift Shop

Carriage Rides at Bryce Resort

The carriage rides on Saturday were a highlight of the children's holiday program. Even Santa took a ride!

Below we have a short video to share a ride with you. The ride starts at the Old Pro Shop, passes part of the resort's golf course and goes along Stony Creek. Across the bridge is the community library and the little airport.

Contact Info for Horse-Drawn Carriages (from their truck)

More photos of the holiday program are below or (if you arrived here through a link to this post) see:

• Photos of the carriage and horses here
• A Series of Pictures of the Holiday Program
• Sing Along with Santa

Photos from Saturday's Holiday Program

Entering the Old Pro Shop (at the foot of Straton Way, Basye)

Mona Wolf organized a holiday program for children at Bryce Resort. Mona is a library volunteer and the event was sponsored by our library with support from the resort.

Mona's programs feature story time, crafts, refreshments, and some special attraction. This time she not only arranged for a visit from Santa, she also scheduled rides in a horse-drawn carriage. Parents rode with their children — see my other posts for more photos.

Click on a photo to see a larger version. And parents, if your child is in a picture, feel free to download a copy for personal use.

You might also like: K-9 Program at the Library and Llama at the Library

Sing Along With Santa

More Photos from the Holiday Program

Santa and Miss Mona led the singing.

Miss Maggie helped out.

The children enjoyed singing about Frosty and Rudolph to the accompaniment of their tambourines.

Copies of songs were provided by the Basye - Orkney Springs Community Library.

Horse-drawn Carriage

The carriage rides were a big hit on Saturday! The fine horses were from Breckenridge Farm in Orange, VA.

The children and parents enjoyed their rides.

Sculpture at Library, Harrisonburg

This figure of two readers stands outside the Massanutten Regional Library in downtown Harrisonburg, VA.

A Park in Edinburg, VA

I took these pictures at Edinburg's Madison District Park. It's on Town Hall Avenue in Edinburg behind the old middle school.

The mountain is part of the Massanutten Range.

See all my Edinburg posts.

Great-Grandfather's Christmas, 1863

James P. Suiter

Yesterday's Illinois Times featured an article on A Soldier's Christmas in the Civil War. It quotes my great-grandfather James P. Suiter who wrote in his diary on Christmas 1863 that they "Dined on bean soup, pork and ‘Hard Crackers’ at noon." This was not a cheerful Christmas for him, for it followed a difficult campaign in Tennessee, with Union losses at Chickamauga and Lookout Mountain.

My aunt Clarice told me that she had donated  his Civil War diaries to a library. They now reside in the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois. I've seen the diaries quoted before by searching books.google.com (a wonderful resource, by the way).  Suiter was quoted several times in Illinois in the Civil War by Victor Hicken (link goes to Amazon listing).

In The Union Soldier in Battle, my great-grandfather says of the horrors of Chickamauga, "I shall not attempt to describe what I saw, of dead wounded and suffering."

I see that in 1960, the Journal of Illinois State Historical Society acknowledged the gift of the diaries: "Among other out-of-state donors are the grandchildren of James P. Suiter of the Eighty-fourth Illinois Infantry. They have given Suiter's letters and diaries to the Library. These papers include descriptions of the Siege of Atlanta..." That snippet is from Google books, and it indicates that the writings were donated jointly by his grandchildren, that is, my aunt and my dad. As noted in my post on Lawrence County Suiters,  James only had one son, my grandfather.

A Rose is a Rose

...but this one is silk.

I was experimenting with my camera when I took this and it came out overexposed. I did some correcting in Photoshop and then played with "filters."

Gent's Barber Shop

Strasburg, VA

Winter Encampment

Reenactors, Hupp's Hill

Several Civil War sites here in Virginia featured "Civil War Christmas" events such as this one on Hupp's Hill near Strasburg. It was modest as reenactments go but the site has only existed for a short time in it's current form as part of Cedar Creek Battlefield.

The inclusion of women in camp life is realistic because wives often visited when an army stayed in one place for a while.

Link: Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation