Happy New Year 2018!

We will return to our regular posts very soon! But first, let’s welcome the new year by looking back at the previous year.

The 2017 Numbers

The Burnsland website had a big year in 2017 with visitors from 130 countries from Algeria to Zambia and lots in between! Of course, there were also visitors from all 50 of the United States of America, and the District of Columbia, too. Hello to all you people from all over the world! Glad you found your way here, however you may have found us.

Also, it was interesting to note that the number of visitors on desktop computers was eclipsed by the number of visitors on tablets and mobile phones. I don’t believe we had any visitors on landline phones, however. How would that work, anyway? Would someone call me and have me read the site to them and describe the photos? That would be a little awkward. Which probably explains why it did not happen.

Several behind-the-scenes changes occurred here at Burnsland during 2017 as well. The site was secured with HTTPS, if you are concerned about such things. And image formats were changed to load faster, too. Plus, viewers from mobile phones (but not landline phones) now see AMP, or Accelerated Mobile Pages, which load much faster, although they lack the cool backgrounds and such that the desktop site has. It is all about compromise, I suppose.

What changes will 2018 bring? Who knows! But we will do our best to keep up with the modern technology as best as we can around here. Don’t want to leave anyone behind, after all. Except maybe for those landline phone folks.

Christmas Gathering Photos

Over the Christmas holidays, we had several fun family gatherings, so here are a few photos from those.

My sister and her family came to town for a few days before Christmas, so we had a slightly early family gathering with them, my parents, and my grandmother. Nice to have all of the family together this year!

On Christmas Eve, we had our traditional small family gathering with my parents. One of the highlights was when Laura tried on the new pajamas that my parents gave us. Jaylin’s and mine had Mickey on them instead of Minnie, but we did not try them on that day. We enjoyed the contrast of Laura in her pajamas while my Dad was still in his suit from our Sunday morning church service that day.

A few days after Christmas, we had our annual gettogether with the Riedels, as we do each year. That is what “annual” means, you know. Of course, we had to also take our annual group photo, which this time included a new member, the Riedels’ dog Zoey. She really did not want to look at the camera, however. Remember when we used to take these and all the kids were much shorter than all of the adults?

Zoey did make up for it later by posing for the camera with Mickey and Minnie. And this time, she was the one looking at the camera, while the mice would not cooperate. You never can get everyone looking at the camera at one time, can you?

Thank You!

As the new year begins, here’s a big thank you to all of you who dropped by in 2017. Be sure to check back to see what all excitement we have to offer in the coming year! After all, blog posts are much better when people actually read them!