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's a SNOW day!

From other blogs I could see that many others around the country got dumped on last week. We didn't get any here, but today it finally started snowing again, and this morning after the first school call that told us it was a 2 hr late start, an hour later we got a call that they cancelled for the day. Of course my 6 yr old was QUITE dismayed! She HATES missing school, and sees no reason for not being able to go! The 16 & 14 year olds didn't have that problem, when they were told, they just grunted & pulled the covers over their heads~
Looks to me like it's a good day for the fire place & bread baking!

Update on our day... How some of us are spending it!
I'm not sure whether it's a kid or a blob-
The wind's came up & the snow's a blowin', but that doesn't stop the kids from wanting to be out in it!
Me however, I'll stay inside, do my baking & enjoy the results with my coffee!

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.