Birthday Bash

Well, we did a little catering for our friends in Shen last night. It's been interesting juggling this into our week. You can only prepare food so far ahead! We were having a Christmas dinner here on Thursday for my brother who was up from Missouri, but with some pending Friday weather, Michael had to do his shopping that night. He was here for a few minutes between work and grocery shopping, so it is a little strange that the family pictures will show his presence even though it was momentary. Since he prepared for this pending storm, it decided not to show, but he was still pleased that he had all the food so he could be busy on it Friday while I was at work. It was pretty late when I got home and found out Matthew hadn't fed the outside cat, so I sent him out to do so immediately (yes, with stories of old where my barn was several yards away, with coyotes howling and my dad never gave me a flashlight...). He spent quite a while in the mud room arguing his point that he could be eaten alive and we had various arguments involving yardsticks and door locks. The next day, we found that one of his arguments involved smashing down several of Michael's tiny twice-baked potatoes with his finger. We could only smile. He tried to look like he didn't know what we were talking about, but he was too proud of himself. Michael rebagged his potatoes and gave them some more topper dots. At the party, Michael figured out that he had not grabbed his Gorgonzola potatoes (not sure... some kind of bleu cheese stuff that invokes the gag reflex), but rather Grandma Rose's really fantastic buttery mashed potatoes that she brought for Troy's party on Thursday. He figured it out because the first bite was really surprisingly good, before you got to the really nasty bleu cheese stuff. Oh, well. Kudos to Grandma Rose who makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. I suppose, unless you like bleu cheese...

Happy Birthday Jesus

Thought I'd come back long enough to say Merry Christmas to my friends and hope you all have had extra special family time. These last few days have been really great for our family, spending so much time together. Have lots to say, but just never enough time to say it! Will try to get back here tomorrow, but if not, have a very merry Christmas and remember that we can have Christmas every day if we just remember what it really is!

Scary events...

I guess everyone always said they never thought something like this would happen in our town, but it did. Our families around the country have been calling to check on us and as far as I know, we and all of our family are safe. Our friends who are expecting in late February were corralled into a store without knowing what was going on and got out safely, but by the time they got to the car they decided to get to a hospital. It was decided that she wasn't actually in real labor, but they wanted to get it to stop, whatever it was! We also found out this morning that a friend lost her cousin, so our prayers go out to Pam and her family. Wow, one more day and he could have been snowed in. It's impossible to understand this stuff, but easier to cope when you trust that God is in control. He sure didn't want this to happen, but He's there for those who turn to Him.

Matthew had a pretty bad crash on his snowboard this morning. We didn't realize how bad it was until he settled down this evening and the pain set in! It's swollen really bad and it sounds like he's in quite a bit of pain! Looks a lot like my knee when I hurt it in college. Not quite as bad and hopefully he's young enough to recover better than I did!! Knowing him, he'll be back on that same hill tomorrow. Lessons aren't the same to all.