Catching Up

Hello -- did you think I had disappeared into a dark, black hole??? Me too! (just kidding)

I'm so sorry to have lapsed on our updates. I am one of those people who have several blogs I check a couple of times a week. I am always frustrated when my friends/family don't update their blogs and then I have let mine go for almost a month! My bad!!! I will try to do better.

Okay, let's see....... I last wrote when we were in the beginning of our cold snap. It was quite cold for about two weeks, warmed up some but was still cold for another week, and has now started warming up and melting things. This is my least favorite time of the year. The mud is so frustrating. The ground is still frozen. The snow melts but has no where to go, we get ice on the ground and then MUD. Blech. The roads are very clear though, that's nice.

The boys got their frost points easily and are working on a super award they get for something ridiculous like 1000 points. I think they are up to something like 180 points. I still think they are nuts!!!

Christmas at our house was so marvelous!!! Quiet and lovely. We celebrated Christ's birth with our normal traditions -- one of my favorites is very first thing before breakfast, before a single gift, we read together the story of the birth of Christ from Luke. It is good to remember why we really celebrate.

We did have a first of sorts -- the kids had worked for a neighbor mucking barns the first part of December. They pooled their money and plotted together to choose the perfect presents for everyone. They even schemed with a local tanner (out of Great Falls) and had their Dad's Whitetail Deer Hide tanned. We picked it up for him Christmas Eve -- he had NO clue which made the kids extremely pleased. It was such a blessing to see them so thoroughly enjoying the giving of Christmas and to see them so readily share the money they worked so hard to earn. I was greatly touched.

My cousin's family came over for Christmas dinner -- another 32 pound turkey from the yard was served which Elijah butchered, plucked, etc. It is fabulous having him so handy! We have a lot of traditional dishes/treats that are part of our Christmas. There is always a ton of food. We watched a couple of movies as our stomach's settled. Tim got Expelled for Christmas. FABULOUS documentary. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Oh -- another little diddy. Christmas Eve my washer quite literally exploded flooding our laundry room and den with an inch or better of dirty water. I was in town with Josiah meeting the tanner. The kids handled it to the best of their ability. Elijah turned off all the water valves, etc. Unfortunately it was coming directly from the washer tub and the water would not be stopped. When I got home I helped bucket the water out of the washer -- we pulled over 15 gallons from the washer tub, not to mention the gallons of water all over the floor!!!! We ended up with little in the way of clean laundry for a few days. This wouldn't have been the day I chose for such an event, but life goes on. The repairman was able to fix it the day after Christmas and we got things back in order. I did find it interesting however that last year on Christmas Eve my dishwasher quit working and this year it was my washer. Hmmmmm.....

The 27th was Josiah's 12th birthday. He is growing too fast. He celebrated a few days later. He had a couple of friends over and he, his friends, and his brother's slept outside in a tent -- again at 20 below zero. It was a first for one of his friends -- they all seemed to have a great time.

New Years Eve we spent a wonderful evening with some friends in Boulder. We had crab rangoons and other fabulous treats. The company was absolutely marvelous --- so refreshing and encouraging!! We were blessed for them to invite us. They have six girls, one of whom is Gabrielle's best friend.

New Year's was simple and restful. I was not feeling in the mood to make another big dinner, mostly because I stayed up to see in the New Year (which I don't normally do) and secondly because it seemed like we had just eaten a huge dinner. So we postponed and had New Year's the next day. That was great -- prolonged the fun (at least that's what I told everybody) My cousin's family joined us again.

With the New Year we go back in to the swing of regular activities. The kids are excitedly anticipating the first ski date of the season for them (next Friday). We are keeping busy with school, PEARLS, ConfiDance and our other activities. Not too much to report there.

I did spend several days last week training to be a volunteer at the local Pregnancy Resource Center. The training was intense for me but I think their ministry is so tremendous. Lots to say there but I will not go on about it here. If you are interested in more details about that, I can answer questions in email. They have only been open about six months but they are meeting a need in our community. They hope to have an ultrasound machine in the clinic by June. It is exciting to be a part of something that is such a real ministry.

I think that is the last month in summary. I will do my level best to try and get some pictures posted this week. Keep checking back.

Have a MARVELOUS day!