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.




e

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!