Merry Christmas!

Well here it is, Christmas Eve. I am just getting over a bad head cold and still feel pretty weak, but I have baking to do and tonight it will be just the four of us so we are going to decorate cookies, play games and watch the Muppet Christmas Carol. This last week has been a lot of weather firsts for us! We got into the negative numbers, -3 was as low as it got but the wind chill factor was -28! Very cold. I am so happy for 30 degrees now!

With the temps that low we had an ice storm and accumlated about 1/4 inch of ice! It was so beautiful, all these stark, dark trees turned white because of the ice and there was a fog that was from the ice melting. When I woke up I went outside to take some pictures and I heard rain. Tim had just come home from work and said that it wasn't raining. I walked out the sliding glass door, listening to the steady beat of a light rain and felt.....nothing! The sound was from the ice melting off the trees. It sounded like we had a rainforest out back.






I thought the ash tray best showed just how thick the ice was!

Dylan school ended up being closed because of the ice storm. It was his last day before winter break and so they missed out on the PJ party and watching Polar express. I felt so bad that we went to K-mart and picked up Clue Jr. On our way back to our place we saw my dad was at home picking up tree branches from his yard that had fallen with the weight of the ice, so we stopped in and hung out for awhile. We finally got home around noon and watched Polar Express, had sandwhichs and popcorn and then we played Clue Jr.! It is a very fun game!

We got the tree finished and I must say it looks great! I was very proud of myself, as much as I wanted to I didn't make the kids move the ornaments, even when they had 5 all grouped together. I just made sure that they weren't hung to close to the tip of the branch and over the week the boys have moved ornaments as they look at it and have evened some of it out rather nicely!







And with all the gifts from friends and family our tree looks complete!




It got really cold again this last Monday and I had to run out to get some evaporated milk for my fudge and check the post office. I decided to stop at Miami Fort , the parking lot and grass were all ice! I slipped and slid my way across, they had at least cleared off the walking path, and took some pictures of the river. It took about 5 minutes and me ears started to hurt so I figured that was my clue to head back to the van! Thankfully I did not fall!!!!






And last but not least, last year I started a cross stitch project for my Grandma Bev, for christmas, I had it half done by Christmas so I showed it to her and was going to get it done by her birthday in February, when that didn't happen I tried to get it done before we moved but at the end I was so anxious that I messed up and pulled more stitches out then I put in! Finally though I got it done and here it is!