According to the weatherman, in the month of December, we have had 29 inches of snow. That's not even close to breaking the record setting 42 inches a few years back. Holy cow! That's still a bunch of snow. In our area, we're not used to even seeing measurable snowfall until January. The snow has sure been gorgeous...especially Friday afternoon...after a 7 inch snowfall.


Our weekend was plenty full..basketball practice, grocery shopping, laundry, friends over to play. We (hubby and I) celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary on Saturday. It's so close to Christmas that many times I forget about it. Anyway, we had a nice dinner out that night. But, my largest accomplishment by far this weekend was this...

Yes, our walk-in closet needed an overhaul. Let's just say our local Goodwill store "scored". I even took every piece of clothing out, vacuumed the floor, and even used the little crevice tool to get the dust bunnies that had taken up residence in the corners. Doesn't it look nice??? I'm so proud!!
At this time of year, I like to say "Out with the old, and in with the new." Now let's go shopping!!! Jill

Doggone Cute

Now that the Grandparents are back at their respective homes, we can get back to our regular business...


Now bring on the snow....we're expecting lots today!!! TGIF!! Jill

Christmas Day

For those of you who have young children, you know that Christmas starts early in the morning. We have a rule that present opening does NOT happen until 7am, so things don't start too early. Kids were up by 6 (I've heard)...doing their normal Christmas ritual....go out to the family room to inspect the gifts under the tree, then back to their rooms and at 6:50 they start doing push ups as a count down to 7:00. (this is a much different routine than mine)

The kids must have been very good this year. They were very happy with their new "stuff". Andrew, though, was more interested in MY present. It's a good thing, because he was the one who set it all up for me....


Ben especially liked the karaoke machine that Santa left. He REALLY loved it when he figured out that it had a camera on it so he could watch himself sing on the television...


Luke liked his new Packer sweatshirt...


Anna liked this gift too...


Don't worry about us on Christmas day...we won't go hungry. I... well, the honey baked ham company made the ham and the smoked turkey breast. I made the mashed potatoes, asparagus and Gramma Sue made the home made noodles and rolls....yum!!


Gramma Sue always brings up her bingo game and we play until we run out of prizes--we love it!!!


Hope you had a great Christmas too!! Jill

Christmas Eve Celebration

Well,as you can see, the Grandparents made it, safe and sound.


They made it just in time to go to Christmas Eve service at our church to see this wise guy, I mean, WISEMAN sing and read a little scripture. (That's why he wasn't around much last weekend--he was gone, practicing for the big event.)Look, he's even on the big screen...



After the service, we all came back to the house and Gramma Ellie fixed a yummy Swedish dinner...no, the dinner did NOT include lutefisk. We had swedish meatballs, potato sausage, carrot casserole and baked potatoes. Yes, the Swedish meal has been adapted over the years to be more "child friendly"-- no goose-eye either. EEEEEEWW!


A little later, Gramma Ellie presented her Swedish "S" cookies to us in a very creative way...as St. Lucia. Very nice costume! She made it herself!


We opened a few gifts... check out these Peterson University shirts!!


To end the night, we walked up the street to enjoy a little more Christmas spirit at a neighbor's house....check it out...Isn't it amazing??? I couldn't even capture the whole display on my camera. Music is included in the display so it's really something fun! It attracts people to our subdivision like nothing other....



Now that was a fun night! Stay tuned tomorrow for Christmas Day photos!! Jill

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Waiting

We are excitedly awaiting the arrival of both sets of grandparents today. The winter storm in the midwest has caused a little glitch in our Christmas plans, but that has given us an extra day to prepare for the "special" guests. Here is a sampling of our weekend...
Our Little Miss Naughty Dog wanted to protect us from this terrible threat at the bird feeder.... a squirrel.


Anna and I stayed in our jammies for awhile on Saturday morning and made an apple pie!


Anna's friend came over and played "beauty parlor".


Andrew was a sweetheart and cooked dinner for us last night....mmmm, spaghetti.


We had a fire in the fireplace and watched Christmas movies....our favorites..
Christmas Vacation
Elf (my new favorite)
A Christmas Story
It's a wonderful life (John's all time favorite)

and John finally got a puzzle out to work on... with Luke's help.


We'll see what Ben was doing this weekend, tomorrow...
Don't forget to leave cookies out tonight for Santa.... Jill

The Concert

You would have thought that Hannah Montana was coming to our school by the way parents were acting yesterday. Parents were bold enough to try to get into the school the night before the concert to "reserve" their seats. Some rushed to the school in the early morning to get the best seat to get the right camera angle. Holy Cow! I joined in the madness by reserving my seat at 8:20 am...and I was already into the 3rd row...Unbelievable!! Why are we reserving seats, you might ask???

To see this girl sing, of course.


OK, OK, it wasn't just our child singing, it was the All School Christmas Program.(grades 4K- grade 2).

It's encouraging to see all of the parents and grammas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, etc. that come to this precious show. The gym is packed full, with many people standing. The program always includes a few kids that cry because they don't want to be on the risers and of course it's also fun to see the kid who "shouts" the words instead of singing. We always leave the program with just a little more Christmas spirit.

While the program was going on, someone kept getting emails...apparently the office can't survive without him for one afternoon. (The white thing was a piece of paper...sorry)


and that same someone kept making faces at this baby during the program and although it was in good fun, it made her cry. Naughty John. I guess he was a little scary to her.


Have a great weekend. Here's one more shot from the concert... The sweet music teacher decided to conduct the song in front of my camera....aaaawwww.
TGIF! Jill

And an angel appeared before my eyes...

See this lady?? She's looks human but she's really an angel. Can't you see the halo and the golden wings???

My southern friend, Ann, came over to my house the other day and helped me wrap every single one of my gifts..can you believe it?? She arrived at my door with her own tape, gift wrap cutter, 2 Christmas CD's, 2 mugs, a box of tea and plenty of Christmas spirit. WOW.

Now this lady can wrap...she taught me a few things about arranging gift wrap as not to waste a single bit of paper. We started our adventure at nearly 9:00 in the morning and took a short break so she could have this for lunch...


Oh my goodness, did she really ask for a miracle whip and banana sandwich??? I've never heard of such a thing. Maybe she meant peanut butter and banana...

I heard her right- miracle whip and banana. EEEEEW! I stuck with a turkey sandwich, thank you very much!!!

As you can imagine, it was a super fun day with a bunch a laughs. We finally finished wrapping and getting things cleaned up and re-hidden at about 2:30 pm. Just in time to go pick up Anna from school. What a great friend and a great day!!!
Jill

Wordless Wednesday...(does it get any girlier than this?)

A Bloggy Christmas Tour

With only a few days left until Christmas, I thought I would give you a little tour of our home at Christmas...

In an earlier post, you saw the tree in our front window....a more formal tree with lots of breakables on it...



Here's the tree in the family room, the one the kids love to reminisce over. They rediscover their ornaments from past years and laugh and giggle and then laugh some more.


See, I told you this tree has the wonderful craft made in Sunday School from a paper plate. Isn't she cute???


Here's our mantle....I'm not very happy with it...it needs more height on the ends. But I found those beautiful red candles at Kohl's yesterday....50% off amd they just jumped into my cart...you understand, don't you???


Now here's the reason my kid's literally jump out of bed in the morning... They fight over who gets to put the next day's piece on...


This guy stays back in the boys room....he's much too loud. I caught him in our kitchen yesterday...naughty Santa..


Here's where I put the pictures you send me...it looks pretty bare people...get those cards in the mail!


There's even Christmas spirit in our main bathroom. This guy says Hello, Merry Christmas everyone!! What I really want him to say is ..."Don't forget to flush and wash your hands!!" hee hee.


Thanks for coming over to hang out and tour my home...I loved having ya! Jill

OH my goodness, we are definitely walking in a winter wonderland!! We received another 6 inches of snow this weekend. That brings the grand total to somewhere around 18 inches! Yikes. It's not a normal thing for it to snow so much before January. Looks like it's the perfect time to stay inside and do some baking with my friend, Julie.


(she wanted you to know that she did NOT do her hair that day because she was going to get her hair cut right after we were done baking....so don't look at her hair...OK?)

We "dog-sat" this weekend... I thought this was a cute picture of them all...
Chocolate, Vanilla and Caramel!!! The yellow dog is our Bella. Oh how she loved visiting her boyfriends, Webster and Bentley. They played in the snow and it got them ALL worn out!



Someone helped me with the Christmas cards this weekend...she put on all of the stamps. What a big helper....but she needs to get some long sleeves on, she's freezing me to death!!!



Those Christmas cards will be mailed today or tomorrow..Hooray! Jill

Look!!

Yea, it's Friday!!! Just thought I would give you a few things to look at that happened yesterday...

Look what Luke made in Art class at school! A giraffe and a basket...



Look who has a new sweater...it's Preppy Dog! Her first sweater in almost 15 years...


and look who wants a sweater...


Have a great weekend! Jill

My new best friend

Hey, I wanted to show you my new best friend.


My need for this new friend came a few months ago when I took Bella to the park to meet a friend and her dog. Our dogs got so carried away playing with each other that Bella wasn't listening when I would call her and she actually took off into a nearby subdivision. Not a good thing.

I went to our local Cabela's and described the problem that I was having and they fixed me up with this "miracle". It's called an "E-collar." That's a politically correct name for a "remote-controlled shock collar."

We trained her and made sure that she new the command "Come" and put the e-collar on her and have had no problems with her running away. If she runs too far away and I want her to come back, I just yell "Bella, Come." If she doesn't respond, I hit the button that says "page" which means it will vibrate her collar to get her attention. She has been very receptive to the vibration and she has come back each and every time. We haven't even needed to use the "nick" or the "continuous" shock feature. This collar has given us the freedom to take her places that we wouldn't normally go, or wouldn't normally do in fear of her running away. It makes us all happy campers!
Jill

Wordless Wednesday- Snow Day

I'm a cheap date

Yes, it's a snow day here and as usual my oldest was up at 5:30am and then went back to bed only to find that he couldn't sleep...I really have to realize that he's a morning person. By 6:10, the neighbor had already called and they had made plans to sled and snow board this morning. I quickly told him "You might want to wait until the sun comes up in an HOUR!!" I just love being sarcastic like that!!! Anyhoo, it will definitely be an interesting day.

Because Hubby works for the local electric company, he found out about an unusual open house that was taking place last Saturday from 12-4. He thought it would be really fun to drive an hour to take a tour of a WIND FARM. Hmmmmm. Because I clearly have all of my Christmas shopping done, gifts wrapped, Christmas cards out and have a perfectly clean house...(NOT) we need to take off and see this wind farm. I decided that the above could wait and it might be fun to trap, I mean talk, to my hubby in the car, uninterrupted for at least an hour.

Oh my goodness, out in the middle of nowhere, we pulled up to the open house and we saw this.....


It was a blade from one of these....it was 34 feet long!! WOW!


How impressive!! We walked into a garage type building to see the rest of the displays....just info about how the actual wind turbines are constructed...and just how quiet they are... My hubby was in his element. He just chatted about the fact that his company just paid out big bucks to buy more parts for these wind turbines and that it was a great and very interesting project. I just smiled, held his hand and drank the free hot chocolate that they had provided. At the end of the open house, we had a chance to sign one of the rotors that would be going up in the area. Hubby signed it too. How cool was that??


All in all, it was an interesting thing to do....much better than vacuuming and dusting!! I guess I am a cheap date!! Jill