I'm Back!

Good afternoon,

It seems like forever since I did a blog post. I guess it has been quite a while. (grin) So many things have happened, that I don't know where to begin. We had Noah's birthday party, Thanksgiving, my mom's Christmas party, working on lots of gifts, and 2 blizzards. Hmmm, I guess I will just jump around some. It will probably take several posts to catch up, but that is ok. I am several behind. LOL

I guess I will start with the blizzards. We have not had a blizzard here in northwest Missouri in many, many years. Then we have 2 in about 2 weeks. It has been rough. About 3 weeks ago we had a blizzard move in. My dh was at work and I was here at home. We received about 11 inches from this storm. He was snowed out and I was snowed in. He stayed at work from Tuesday morning till Thursday night. Even then, he had to walk in the last mile. He decided steel-toed shoes are not for walking in snow. LOL I sure was glad to see him. Then, there is the Christmas blizzard. That was a bummer. We still have not had our family celebration. We plan to get  together on New Year's. Even though I was sad to not see our kids and grandkids, it wasn't so bad. We had been having rain for a couple of days and they predicted it would start freezing about noon on Christmas Eve day. So we got up early and headed to town to get a few treats for ourselves. We got home at 8:45 a.m. and by 9 a.m. it was freezing all over the sidewalk. We hurried up and got all our chores done. Then prayed that we wouldn't lose electricity. We didn't but we did lose internet service for a while. This was some storm! We had rain, thunder and lightning, freezing rain, sleet, lots of snow, and strong winds. The actual winter storm was from Christmas Eve morning till Christmas night. The drifts were bad. Most of the roads around us were closed. It even snowed most of Saturday and some of Sunday. This was a monster storm.  As I said, we cancelled our celebration, but I was so relieved to know that none of our kids were out on those roads. Kevin and I ate pizza, cookies, ham, chips and dip, and any other junk we thought to pick up. (Eye roll here! Not looking forward to getting on the scales after the first of the year!) We also watched Christmas movies all day Christmas and talked to all the kids on the phone. So it wasn't so bad. Our house was cold like it always is in the winter with the wind blowing, but we bundled up. Kevin bought me a pair of deer skin slippers with wool lining so my feet have been staying warm. They think we may have gotten about 14 inches of snow from this storm, but it was hard to measure because the fierce wind was blowing it around so bad. We finally had the grader go through on Sunday afternoon, so Kevin got out and scooped our driveway. It was over his knees, so lots of scooping. 

This is our road after the grader went through. It doesn't look too bad right now, but two tractors tried to get through it with blades on and couldn't. This isn't the worse part of our road. We have 3 sections much worse than this to go through.

We had a drift past Kevin's waist in front of our door. He was glad we put the scoop inside the porch door. He had to scoop in order to even get out. Here is the pile just outside our door.

Well enough about our winter storms. We have been spoiled with mild winters the past few years, but this year we are just getting a regular winter. I don't like it! I am so ready for spring.

I got a couple of nice gifts in the mail from friends in the past couple of weeks. Here is a wall quilt that Bren made for me. Isn't it beatiful? She knows what kind of colors I love.

Look at these tiny quilting stitches. I hope I can quilt that tiny some day. I love hand quilting, but I think I am actually better at sewing on my machine. But then again, I have had over 30 years of doing that, and just really started quilting about 3 years ago. (grin) The first picture shows the colors better. The flash washed out the color on the second picture. Thank you, Bren. I love it!

My friend Ann sent this candle holder to me. I was amazed. She said her husband made it. I believe he is a blacksmith. I love it. She also knitted and felted the two hotpads shown here.

Please excuse the mess behind this and to the side. I have been busy sewing and always make a mess when I sew. I need to take a day after the holidays and just clean up. LOL

Now I am going to wrap this post up, but I will be back, hopefully tomorrow. But before I do, I want to introduce you to our newest granddaughter, Madison Nicole. She is 5 months old today, but I have never posted a picture of her. For shame on me! She is our son, Isaiah's and Lori's daughter. Look at those round cheeks. She has the bluest eyes and dimples in her cheeks just like our boy. She is so loveable.

Here she is with her proud daddy holding her. I was holding her in the above picture. I wish she would grin so you could see those adorable dimples. So now we have 3 granddaughters and 2 grandsons. (grin)

Well, that is enough for now. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I am sure ours will be once we get to have it. LOL It is good to be back among my friends. I have missed you all. November and December are always very busy times for me, so I don't usually have much computer time. I am going to try to change the look of my blog again. I have tried several times on Firefox, but it didn't work, so now I am going to try changing it on IE7. Everyone have a wonderful day. Thank you for visiting. Hopefully, I'll see you tomorrow.