New Year's Eve

It's the last day of 2009, this year has flown by so fast. Every year seems a bit shorter to me as we whiz down life's road! We had more snow on the ground this morning when we got up, burr, it looks cold out. Here's a shot of Big Jim with a light covering of snow.


We didn't do much to celebrate the New Year, John had to leave for work at 5 am the next morning, so we ate some chili, watched TV and went to bed early. I didn't hear any fireworks or guns at midnight, maybe I just slept right through it.

The Birds!

John and I took the new pickup (Big Jim) out to check the speedometer and on the way back into town, we stopped to watch some birds. We saw probably at least 50 ravens and a few eagles, flying and landing. We watched an eagle chasing after a raven with food in it's beak, he dropped it and all the birds tried to catch it in mid-air, but they didn't get it and it fell to the ground, pretty cool!

The weather continues to be COLD, this is the coldest December I can remember in a long time. We still have snow on the ground from before Christmas and our ETS heater is having a hard time keeping the house warm. We've had to turn the furnace up to get it warm for the first time since we put in the ETS heater. This is one of the chairs at our sidewalk cafe, burrr!

Finishing the Quilt

Andy and Jessie came over today, Andy helped John put another panel on the camper he is remodeling into an art hauler and Jessie helped me finish up Mom's quilt. We think it turned out pretty fantastic looking! I think Mom is going to love it!

Jessie wore her new pink leather coat over to show us. She looks so cute in it!

Family Dinner and Bowling

Mom invited us down for a last dinner before Trish and Sam go home in the morning. We all had a great time, good food and a fun evening. We played with Sam and Trish's new Wii and had a family bowling tournament. I was surprised that I did well. John even joined in and he and Sam had the highest scores! Here's our WiiMii's, can you guess who is who?

Leaving Day

Charles and Nikki left this morning about 8, photo was taken just before they left. Miss you guys already!

Snow

Dec 26, 2009

The snow is sticking around, it's been so cold it's not melting.

It's Christmas!

We waited until John got home from work, then opened our gifts. We all got some cool stuff! Nikki was our little elf handing out the gifts for us.







Charles and Nikki gave us this cool basket loaded with goodies to eat, yumm, we tried out one of the pancake mixes for breakfast, they were so good!



Nikki made this mug for her Dad, how sweet!




We spent the morning visiting with John until he went to nap, then we went to St. Johns to visit. Wii's were the popular gift and everyone had fun playing! Here's Nikki up to bat.




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Christmas Eve Day

Wheeee!
Nikki and Jessie out skating on the road in front of our house. What a slippery world we woke up to this morning!

Andy and the rest of his family came over after the roads cleared up and we all worked on Grandma's quilt. Everyone worked on it and we got it almost finished! Because it's so small we had to take turns.

Then we took everyone out to lunch at the new resturant in the old Casa Malpais musuem building. I can't remember the name, but it has good food and the prices are great!

We opened our gifts from Andy's family and they opened theirs from us, Mom and Carleen came up to visit and we had a great time!

Nikki opening her Christmas Eve gift. She got the most adorable slippers!

Oh How Many Feet We Meet!

Don't you love Jessie's socks, LOL!




Pa, Nikki and Jessie's feet.



A while back Andy called me with an idea, he wanted to make a quilt for Grandma, she has gifted us all with so many beautiful quilts over the years and he wanted to do one for her. We kicked around several ideas and threw some out due to our limited experience with quilt making and he went shopping and brought the fabric over here because I have the quilting frames. I put the quilt on today and Nikki and Jessie learned the technique so fast! Here they are working on it.

Looks like it's going to be a white Christmas!

We got snow tonight! It had been spitting snow at us off and on all day, then it got serious about 7 pm and really started coming down. The girls bundled up and went out to play. What fun! Charles and Nikki got here just in time, Andy reported it started snowing in ShowLow soon after they would have passed through! Glad they are safely here!

Christmas Lights

We delivered gifts to our Mom's in St. Johns today, then picked up Jessie. She's going to stay for a few days so she can visit with Nikki. The girls always have a good time together. Reminds me of when I was a girl and loved spending time with my cousin.
We drove around town looking at lights this evening. Having Jessie along made it so much fun! She oo'd and aa'd over the lights. Living where she does, she says she doesn't get to see many houses all lit up. One house was playing music and the lights flashed on and off in time. That was our favorite.

Time Flies!

Wow, time has a way of flying by way too fast for me and I haven't posted here in way too long! So finally, here is a new post. Here's a cute photo of Jessie giving Santa a hug. Andy and Jessie were over visiting today and Santa was at the drug! How lucky! I took her down to see him and she loved him. The store photographer got a photo of her with Santa and later when we went back in the cabin while he was outside, he let her hold his reindeer and sit in his chair so I could take her photo and she gave him a hug to thank him. Western Drug has built a one room log cabin inside their store, it's so cute I want to move in!

New Ride

We got a call from Nelson this week saying he'd spotted a pickup like we're looking for at an auction and did we want him to bid on it. We did and this time he won and we got our pickup. We went down to pick it up today. It's a 2007 GMC Sierra 4 x 4, 1 ton, crew cab, long bed and wow, it's huge! We decided not to wait to get the plates to name him, we're going to call him Big Jim. He should pull our rig all loaded up with ease!

More snow

April 12. We watched as the sun tried to shine through a cloudy dawn and then little snow balls started falling. Burr, it's cold outside!

Gardening Workshops

What a weird day! It started out with snow, then the sun came out, then more clouds and snow.




This was the day of the Gardening Workshops and Mom and Carleen came up to go to them with me. We got some good information about seed starting and growing different kinds of gardens. Usually, most of the workshops are outside, but a few of them moved inside and we were so glad of that, it was a cold miserable day. We froze out at our last stop and left early, we were just too cold! Here's a picture of the cool light stand Patty made for her seed starts.

Spring blooms

John mentioned to me yesterday that there was a little tulip blooming out by the road. It's left over from long ago when the yard was arranged differently. The poor little thing never gets watered, but it keeps on blooming away. One day I'll remember to dig it up in the fall and replant it in a better place.

And more snow

It was quiet when we woke up this morning, so we knew it must be snowing and we were right, more snow. The good thing about snow this time of the year is that it doesn't stay around long. By midday, it had all melted away.

Wind and more wind!

We've gotten lots of wind and snow lately. The wind will howl for a day or two, then we hear the silence and we know it's going to be snowing when we look outside. Today was a day of wind, I caught this shot of the plastic covering my garden trying to blow away. Spring where are you? It's been such a cold spring so far.

Las Tusas

April 7. John worked a short day today and since it was a gorgeous day, we drove down to check up on the Las Tusas Cemetery after he got home. We got permission and materials from the State a couple years ago and fenced it and changed the drainage that was going to wash away graves and we wanted to check and see if water had inflicted any more damage. We found the wattles we'd placed in the drainage still there and the dirt was piling up against them and the diversion to the drainage up above the cemetery was still in place and there was no damage to the fence. All is well at Las Tusas tonight!

We went to St. Johns today so John could make some repairs on Mom's roof. We visited the courthouse while there so we could look at the historical photos on display. I copied a few of them, thought they were going to make me leave with my camera, but when John told them we just wanted to take pictures of pictures, he let us in with it. Boy have things changed, we had to go through a metal detector to get in and John had to leave his leatherman with the guard!


This is one of the photos we saw, St. Johns in 1911.

John's grasshopper

John is building a grasshopper! No, not the insect kind, this is a tool to help move big heavy pieces of steel.

Josh turns 12

Josh turned 12 day before yesterday and had a birthday party today. We were there along with other family and friends. Wow, how time has flown, Josh is growing up so fast!

Kerry Summers and a Blizzard!

Wow, what an adventure we had tonight! We've been hearing Mom talk about Kerry Summers for a year and a half now, she saw him on her New England cruise and became one of his biggest fans. Mom's wish came true tonight when Kerry performed in St. Johns. We braved the horrid wind and drove down to see the show and I'm so glad we went! We went early and got to meet and visit with Kerry before the show, he is such a nice person! The show was two parts, first he did magic tricks, he's a great magician and the kids totally loved this part! He invited several of the kids to come up and help him with tricks. He had us all laughing as his magic was inter-spiced with jokes. He also sang a couple of songs in the magic part, a Roy Orbison song and he played the trumpet and sang a Louie Armstrong song, that was so funny, he put a mask of Louie in front of his face while he sang. He also had puppets and is a good ventriloquist, he had a rabbit puppet and then a sock puppet that was so funny, he had a little girl in the audience come up and kiss the puppet and then said, did you realize you just kissed a sock? Too funny, then he had a guy in the audience come up, he said he couldn't get his big puppets on an airplane to bring with him, so he came up with a puppet face he put on people. It was so funny, the face was only the lower part, mouth and jaws and he had a string tied on and Kerry would pull the string to make him talk and sing. He did several songs, he was Roy Rogers and Willie Nelson and at times he'd ask the puppet if he wanted to sing another song and Larry would shake his head no while Kerry was saying yes I would for him. He had us all cracked up, it was so funny!

After the magic show we had a short intermission and then Kerry came back on as Elvis and sang several Elvis songs. He picked a person out of the audience to help with one song, said he could hear him singing along with him and wanted him to come up. He put an Elvis mask on him and told him to sing a part of the song, Kerry would sing, then stop for him to say "I'm all shook up" It was so funny, he got so into the part and was really hamming it up.

Like Elvis, Kerry had scarves he'd put around his neck and give out while he sang. And like on the cruise, he sang to Mom and gave her one and I got a pix of him kissing her on the cheek!


He acknowledged that she was instrumental in getting him to come to St. Johns. He made her feel like a queen and I could see why she likes him so much. We stayed after the concert and got autographs, I got one of his Elvis CD's and we visited again with Kerry and got a photo of all of us girls and Mom with him.

Then we had our second big adventure of the night. We left the auditorium and found a blizzard blowing! We dropped Mom and Carleen off and headed out for home. It was a white world and we could see only about 5 feet in front of us! Thankfully, the road was still clear and we navigated by the yellow and white lines on the road! Then as we got to Lyman, the road was white too and we had to feel our way by traveling along the rumble strip! Luckily, visibility got a bit better after that and the road went back to black. What is normally a 30 to 40 minute trip took us over an hour at about 35 mph!

John's horse

One of John's favorite things to sculpt are horses. They are also one of his most popular. This one has spent the winter in our yard and now his time with us is limited. One of the guys at work wants to buy him, so I went out and took a few pictures to remember him by. I love this guys face.

John's boat shelves

John loves sailing vessels and people have given him several models of boats. I put them on shelves for him after we remodeled and here they are.

Snow again

We got snow again! The wind blows and howls, then we get a snow storm. John and I rode up Water Canyon road to look at the snow and I took a few pictures. It was beautiful, but didn't last long, by afternoon the sun was shining.

Blooming

I have a couple plants that friends from the Barn gave me last fall. Both are blooming right now and here's a flower from the one Gracie gave me.




This one is a geranium that Monna gave me, it's filled with red flowers right now and looks so beautiful.

Seedlings

My little tomato seedlings are coming along and I transplanted them to larger pots today. It's been a long time since I started my own plants, it's fun to watch them grow!

A Cold Snowy Dawn

We didn't get any new snow during the night and some melting had already started when I got up. Here's a picture of our cold snowy dawn.





And the yard early this morning after the sun came up.

So this is Spring?

Wow, what a day! It started out windy and just got worse and worse! We stopped in at Andy's to help install a part John made for his tractor, and the guys about got blown away and ended up with dirt in their ears and eyes! Then we rode over to WalMart to shop. The Suburban, heavy as it is, was feeling the strong gusts of wind and on our way home we noticed the sky was dark and blue towards Andy's and Mom's houses. We checked for Norman on our way past his birth spot, but all the cows were gone, so hopefully they found him and took him to a warmer place! Shortly after we got home Andy called to tell us it was snowing a blizzard at his house. Then it hit us, and by nightfall we had 4 inches on snow on the ground. Wow!



Ever wonder what horses do when it snows? I heard the pounding of hooves and went out to see what was going on. The 3 horses across the street were racing back and forth in their field. I wonder if they were just warming up or if they were playing and having fun? You can see how hard it was snowing, I could hardly see the horses and when they were at the back of the field, I could only hear them, not see them!

Our ponderosa tree all covered in white.