Catching up on our reading

The pictures I find on my camera.....

Vacation time at our house

Gma J & Jana making music at Gma's house.

Playing in the snow.....



Isn't that the coolest snowman? Unfortunately it accidentally got knocked down, so we didn't get to enjoy it too long. Yea! for pictures!!



Family time, food & games

Sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace

"Gingerbread" houses

Or castles....or maybe just creations? They worked for 2 days on these, and managed to use up most of 6 boxes of crackers & I don't think I want to remember how many sacks of candy!










The little one in the front? well, if you know my children very well, you could guess who made that one. Pretty much goes along with the size of her suitcase, wardrobe, & possessions!!
One of the kids said it maybe could be the "dog-house" and compared to the size & elaboration of the others, It could be that or maybe the garden shed?

What we've been busy doing

I volunteered to make holiday cards for Nebraska Friends of Midwives group to send to the Nebraska Senators. A fun project, but time consuming since there was 50 to make, plus addressing the envelopes. I'm glad those are finished.





I've been looking forward to having a good excuse to spend some time baking, and today I baked 8 loaves of bread, (we ate one for lunch) two loaves of cinnamon bread (we ate one for snack) and 3 pans of cinnamon rolls with carmel goo on top. I've also got a batch of granola in the oven baking. Anyone want to come over?
Last year when Jana was home on break, she decided the bathroom needed an overhall. She got the walls painted, but we never got some of the finishing touches that we'd planned to do. So, yesterday she said "How about if I finish the bathroom!) I found it interesting when I went back & looked HERE that it was exactly 1 year to the day! I never posted any pictures because the project wasn't finished, but maybe this year you'll get to see the finished project. The little girls were great helpers & found the right letters, painted them & handed them to her.

Entertaining themselves

While Kara prefers to stay inside by the fireplace where it's warm, reading,


Kaela takes her dog outside to play,




And Meshayla takes my camera to take pictures of them.
One of our friends is home from school for vacation, and so this morning we got to have her and her guide dog in meeting with us. Eldora had her winter boots on, so Kaela had to find some doll boots for her dog.....

It might be -6 outside....

But you'd never know it by walking into my dining room!
This fall my friend Cyndie gave me these plants since they wouldn't live thru the winter outside, and she didn't have room for them inside. I had thought I'd put them in my basement family room, but there wasn't enough light, so they live quite happily in my dining room in front of my south patio windows. They do take up quite a bit of room, but I'm loving them!

Tuesday's turn-a-round

Well, it took longer than it should have, but you all are probably familiar with the book "if you give a mouse a cookie". That's what happened here. I emptied the closet onto the table, started sorting, had to come upstairs to get the other tubs that I was sorting sewing stuff into, took them downstairs, that meant re-arranging tubs which meant I had to go back up to find some empty ones I had in one of the bedrooms, when I did that I found the box of winter decorations which I needed since I took all my fall stuff down & filled one of the tubs with that......
Well anyway of all the stuff that I pulled out of the closet, not one thing went back in. Garbage, goodwill, scrap pile & give-away. I have a few tubs of sewing stuff that will go in a different place.
The closet is now filled with my seasonal decorations, home decorations that I'm not currently using & baby/little kid toys that I've saved for grandkids & visitors. (And yes, I know I still have too much stuff I've saved!)

While I was in the middle of trying to finish all this, I also was in the middle of doing a quick pick-up to my living room, pulling the chairs out to vacuum & the thought hit me that I sure wished I could change things around a bit..... So when my sister dropped by for a bit, I said hey, what do you think it would look like if I moved the couch..... so another delay while we re-arranged the living room furniture, then I had to do vacuuming where it had been, then I had to get rid of a few more things & clean up a bit more, and whoo whee! Not only did I get my closet finished, I got my living room all vaccumed, re-arranged & cleaned up too!
I realize that you don't know what it looked like before (thank goodness!! LOL!!) but here's what it looks like now.

From the front door entry way-

From the other end looking towards the front door

I have always loved re-arranging my furniture, but never tried the couch in the middle of the floor thing before. Everyone loved it because they could all sit closer to the fireplace!

It's snow fun

Morgen talked dad into using the snowblower to blow the snow onto his igloo so he could make it bigger! What were those rings that "appeared" in peoples fields some years back?? makes our back yard look kinda funny now, but he's sure had fun with it. Now he's managed to tunnel thru

to meet his top opening. I asked him if he was going to have door's all around it, but he said that the others were just "false" doors!

Cold, Windy...

The "igloo" and a plastic tub lid makes a good snowboard & ramp for lack of anything better!

Wed. night was Special meeting in Grand Island, and Jana came home with us until New Years.
After helping me with some cookies for gift plates on Thurs a.m. she spent most the rest of the day just napping & resting. Thursday eve we went to the younger kids program at their school which is always a treat. Hopefully I'll get some pictures posted from it. My camera is acting up the last couple days, and is CRACKLING.... sounds like wires popping... NO! I need my camera, and can't afford a new one!! Leon took some pictures on his phone for me, likely their not great quality, but at least they'll be something, that is if I can figure out how to get them off his phone!!
Yesterday Jana decided the downstairs bathroom needed an updated look, so went to work on that. She started pulling the wallpaper off the wall, and I went and bought paint. We'll see how far we get on that project. We've not re-done that room since we did it 15 yrs ago. Since it's the kids bathroom it gets lots of use.... (picture Sunday mornings or special occasions with 6 kids or more.. combination of boys and girls, combing hair, shaving & primping.) Yes, it's a big room, counter with 2 sinks all along one wall & huge mirror above.
This afternoon we're suppose to have a sledding party with several families, then they're coming to our house for a soup supper.

Let it snow...

Today finally we get some sunshine after 3 days of cloudy and snow and a bit of ice. Nothing drastic with ice this time thank goodness, looks like OK city and some other places got plenty this time. For lack of a hill to slide down, Morgen figured he could use the back steps. A little bumpy, and they made plenty of noise. He and Kara are working on scooping all the snow in the back yard into a fort now. I had to call them in 3 times last night, they kept sneaking out to work on it. It's always fun to see how high the snow will pile up on our back deck table too... looks like we got alot more snow than we really did. It drifts pretty good there in the shelter of the house coming off the roof. Derek's busy cutting firewood, today, seems like our big pile of logs never got split, and we're all quite anxious to enjoy our fireplace again. It really keeps our heat bill down when we keep it going.... all I have to put up with is the snow tracks thru my house bringing in wood. (UGG!) I need to figure out where to put a wood box inside somewhere.

It's December!
It looks like it, it feels like it. Unfortunately today's weather also brought us a grim reminder of what we went thru last year. We woke up to mist putting a fine coat of ice on everything. At 7 a.m. I had to feel the deck railing to see if it was icy or not, by 9 a.m. you could look out the window and see the ice coating. There were tiny little icicles hanging off everything. I didn't have my camera at home, so missed pictures. We had a scrap weekend scheduled, and had been there Friday night, but most had cancelled due to the forecast, so about noon today we went and loaded everything up and had our day free after all, which since it is the day before Special meeting here, was very nice. (back in May when we scheduled our weekends for the rest of the year, we had no idea that we'd hit on special meeting weekend!)
I went to the store about 4 this afternoon, and although underfoot was still kind of slick, the streets weren't too bad. It had warmed up enough to keep it from freezing more, but by the time I got home it was getting dark already and fairly chilly again. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little warmer, and we'll lose the ice.