Christmas Season 2018

Merry Christmas, Yo!

I hope you all had a great Christmas!

Our Christmas was GREEN.

But we did have a brief visit from a lovely red cardinal who came to remind us that it was indeed Christmas Day, despite the lack of white stuff.

I hate that I have to include the neighbor's house in these bird photos, but what can I do?

I'm just grateful they're not standing out on their deck in their underwear or something weird like that.

No, they're not like that; they're actually nice decent people (ex-cop, you know....!)

Before I spill the beans and tell you what my exciting Christmas present was, I first would like to bore you with our pre-Christmas activities.
The suspense is killing you, ain't it?

So we took a weekend trip to WI to finally visit my mom.  Since we moved, this was my third attempt to visit with her and finally succeeded.  I regret that we didn't have time to see anyone else.  I thought it would be an advantage living closer to her, and it is!, but the downfall is that these weekend trips, although more frequent, don't allow us much time to visit with everyone.  I'm thinking it was better when we flew down once a year and stayed for a week and a half.

One thing that we did there was go to the Wildwood Park Zoo at night.  Every year they put together a huge light display all over the zoo.  They decorate all the fences and trees - it's really very cool!
You can walk around and/or take a drive through it.
It would be pretty cool if they went through all this trouble for Halloween!

Another place we went to was Jurrustic Park.  It's been 20 years since I was there last and wanted to see it again.  The guy who makes all this stuff came out and gave us his "tour".  He told a lot of jokes explaining his creations (some of them inappropriate and not appreciated by me).

I think this is the same spider that Justin posed under when he was a kid.

Other than visiting our church family on Sunday, that was pretty much our weekend.

It went really fast.

One evening at home, the weather was pretty nice so I went for a walk in our neighborhood to look at the Christmas decorations.

Some of them were pretty impressive.  This one here even had Christmas music playing outside.

And then there's my tree on my front porch.

Not very impressive, but I should get an "E" for Effort.

Peeka really had fun climbing around in my Christmas tree like a monkey.

This picture is blurry cuz she wouldn't stay still.

She was having too much fun.

CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Justin and PW dug through their stockings.  I know it's almost pathetic that we still do that.....

but they like it.

PW flew down from Wasilla to spend Christmas with us, so we've enjoyed having her here this week.

Tomorrow she goes home already.  Time sure flies.

Peeka really enjoyed her new scratching board.

As for me, I got some new stamps to play with and the new catalog to peruse through, thanks to Tammie!

And this is the part that I'm super super super excited about!

Me and PW both got an ancestry DNA kit!!!!!

I am so stoked about this!

I've been wanting to do this for a very long time, and Chuck would never get this for me, so this time I basically told him he was gonna get it for me.

I have been following a paper trail of my ancestry, but so far all I know is that I should be 1/2 Czechoslovakian, 1/4 Dutch, and 1/4 German.  I have not yet been able to go back far enough to get out of those three specific countries,.  So, for all I know, I am expecting to be 100% European.  Anything beyond that would be a surprise to me.

As for PW, she will have some of Chuck's DNA in her, so I am curious to find out how much British she has in her, and how much of me is in her.

For some reason, she has high hopes of having some Scandinavian in her.

 This is so exciting!!

I'm sure all my siblings are gonna wanna know my results if they knew I was doing this!

6-8 weeks is gonna seem like forever.

So, that's it for this time!

Have to go play with my new stamps now.

Happy New Year!

"ZZZZZzzzzzzzZzzzzzzzzzzZzzz......."

Chaos

I guess it's been awhile since I've posted.  I didn't realize a whole month went by, but we've been preoccupied with all sorts of things.  Plus, I don't live in Alaska anymore, so I sorta feel like I don't have anything worth writing about anymore.

However, here is my update.

Halloween came and went without my permission.  Since I didn't have my stuff in time, I had no choice but to let it slip by me without much recognition.  The best I could do was enjoy looking at all the decor in the stores and on the houses when we went driving through various neighborhoods.

But then!  Lo, and behold!  Our household goods arrived on Saturday, October 27, just 4 days before Halloween!!!  This meant I was too busy unpacking boxes to think about Halloween.

But then, I saw it!!  My pet skeleton was carried into the house, still stuffed in his box.  I was so glad to see him!  I put him in the car so he could hang out with me whenever I had to go somewhere.

At first I had him in the front passenger seat, but I eventually had to move him to the back seat.  I don't know if he was noticed by anyone, but he really enjoyed waving at everyone we passed.

So anyhoo, as I mentioned, the movers came, which meant we got really really busy.  It meant several days of cutting boxes open, unwrapping everything, and I do mean everything was wrapped in paper. Chuck said he even unwrapped a half-empty Kleenex box.  Ya.

And then folding all the paper that seemed in good condition.  I didn't want to see all that paper go to waste, so I gave a big pile of it to my friend for her grandkids to scribble and draw on.  Some of it I saved for scrap booking on (to protect my table).  Most of it, Chuck ended up hauling to the dump for recycling.  

I had a LOT of boxes with the letters "SB" written on them.

You can probably guess what "SB" stands for.

"Scrap Booking" of course!

The movers carried all those boxes downstairs and I had to unpack them all, and then figure out where in the world I was gonna put everything!

What a mess!  Did you notice what I did with my punches and ribbons?

Those long thin shelves that used to hold model trains is absolutely PERFECT for holding my punches!  It's as if they were built just for me!

Anyhoo, now two and half weeks later, I've got it "mostly" organized and I am already working on my Christmas cards.  :-D

I also had a table, plus the box on the floor, stacked with lots of stamp sets.  It took me awhile to organize those cuz I wanted to go through each of them and create an inventory list of all the sets that I own.  And then I organized them into different categories (Christmas, Halloween, Nature (plants), Animals, and everything else that just went together for lack of a specific category.  It's still not exactly how I want it, but it's good enough for now.  I'm sure I'll be doing more organizing as I figure out what's most efficient for me.

I've got over 250 stamp sets, not counting the wheels and background stamps.

Sheesh!  That's a bit excessive.

So last week our daughter Steph drove up from Louisiana to visit us, and she brought her "baby" Lula.

The kitties were not happy.

We had Peeka set up to live in our bedroom for a sanctuary, but every now and then she would get brave enough to come out.  Lula would growl and bark at her, but it turns out Lula was actually afraid of Peeka and would "run to Mama" whenever she needed to be reassured that everything was okay.  

Of course, the fear was mutual between them.  By the end of the week, they managed to just sit and look at each other without growling, but they never became close friends.

Weeners lived with Justin downstairs the whole time so we hardly saw her at all.

Lula is a very sweet dog.  She's MOSTLY well-behaved, and she can do a few basic tricks.

"Sit" and "lay down"

"Shake"

"High five"

I think her best trick of all is looking at you with "that face" when you're eating something.

She's got that one down pretty good.

While they were here, we took a little day trip up north to Holland, Michigan, about a two-hour drive from here.  It's a quaint little town with some Dutch heritage attached to it.

We ate at this "Windmill Restaurant" for lunch.

And then just walked around town and acquainted ourselves with their numerous vintage shops. 

They had a lot of nice shops there, but after awhile, they all started looking the same and blurring together.  So we stopped for pie and coffee and then went on our way to the shore of Lake Michigan where this lighthouse sits.  They say it's the most photographed lighthouse in the state, but I don't really understand why.

It was cold and windy that day, but we were there, so we made the best of it

I was thinking it would be a nice place to go in the summertime.

Also, while Steph was here, we got our FIRST SNOW, and Lula thoroughly enjoyed it!

It wasn't a whole lot, but it was enough to get her excited, roll around in it, and then come back inside the house all wet!  

 Last night and this morning, we got more snow.  When there's snow on the ground, there seems to be more bird activity around the bird feeders, which in turn brings sightseers of the feline kind to the window.

We have a male and female cardinal that comes around regularly, which is kinda neat to see.

Hmmm, this almost gives me inspiration for next year's Christmas cards.

Anyhoo, one day last week, also while Steph was here, more neighbors came to our door to introduce themselves and they brought us a box of "Amish crack".  Everyone here knows what "Amish crack" is and we hear people talking about it all the time, but we've never had it until now.  

They are donut holes rolled in caramel sauce and then sprinkled with cinnamon, made in an Amish bakery called "Rise'n Roll".

Once you've had them, you're hooked.

Thus, the term "Amish crack".

And after the box was empty, Chuck wanted me to go buy another box.

Yup.  It's "Amish crack", and we found a dealer.

They are SO GOOD, especially paired with a cuppa joe.

Here's the downside:  Most of the ingredients on the list aren't that bad, except for ONE thing.  They use hydrogenated oil in their caramel sauce, which is a HUGE no-no. So, we're gonna have to sever this tie before it gets to the point where we'll need rehab to let go.

So next week is Thanksgiving already.  It looks like we're gonna be all by our lonesomes this year.  We're so used to having our potluck feast with the Valley congregation in Wasilla.

It's a bummer, but I will just have to make myself be thankful for all my blessings, which are many.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Nature Walk

I love nature walks, don't you?  Especially in the Fall when the weather is cool but the sun still feels warm, and the smell of dead leaves permeates the air.

Sniiiiiiffffffffffff!   Ahhhhh.........!

That is what we did last Saturday evening.   The weather was perfect so we couldn't resist going for a walk.

I know there's still more green than red, yellow, and orange, but we're getting there.

This is the St. Joseph River.

We came across this "tepee" in the woods.  I'm sure it's luring for little kids to go in there, but you ain't gonna see me going in there!

I like roads that have big trees forming a canopy from both sides:

Also in this park sits (supposedly) the largest barn in the state.  I didn't get a picture of it, but it was pretty big and it's a historical marker.  The funny thing was that while me and Chuck were walking around I told him, "this looks like a good place to have a wedding."  When we got to the barn area, there happened to be a wedding going on.

Anyhoo ----- good news!  We got word that our stuff is supposed to be here next week!  Yee-HAW!

My scrap booking area is READY!

Since we got rid of some of my old stuff, I knew I would need some new tables, so we went to Rural King and found these.  

Rural King is a store that we just happened upon by chance when we were driving through Niles, MI.  We never heard of Rural King before, but we were interested in it cuz on the outside it kinda looked like a Fleet Farm.  So we went in there to look around and they are kinda like a Fleet Farm, only bigger.  They have SO MUCH stuff in there!  I think we are probably gonna be going there a lot.  They even sell baby chicks in there.  You can hear them peeping when you get in that area of the store.  They are so cute and fluffy!

Those three long shelves on the wall is where the previous owner used to keep his model trains.  They will work perfectly for storing my punches!  

But unfortunately, I need to clean them off.

I don't know what that guy was using to anchor down his trains, but when he removed them, they left this sticky black stuff.  I need to try and get all that off.  That will be my next house project, aside from painting.  We are currently working on painting the guest bedrooms.  We had to prime them first, but we couldn't finish priming cuz the step stool that we have needs to be just 3" higher (we have really high ceilings in this house).  So we either wait for our taller step stool to come next week, or we borrow one from the neighbor lady.  I think we will probably borrow one from her cuz this weekend would be a good time to get those rooms painted.

So this morning I saw my first spider in this house.  I knew it was only a matter of time.

I wanna go back to Alaska.

The battery in my camera went dead, so I probably won't post now again until after our stuff comes.  I thought I brought the charger with me on the road, but since I can't find it anywhere, I can only hope the movers are bringing it.

Toodle-loo!