Winding Down

Remember all that snow we had?

It's rapidly melting away now. I'm not aware of any flooding issues, at least in our neck of the woods. Sure feels good to get back to what's normal for this area. Even though that means gray skies and rain. We never lost power during the bad or really cold weather. On Christmas morning, however, we were without power for four hours. A transformer blew just before we got up that morning. So we opened our gifts under an unlit tree. Fortunately our house seems to be very well insulated as we didn't start to feel chilled until right before the electricity was restored. Hurray!

I didn't think to get pictures of my more favorite gifts yet, but I intend to. The best, biggest, surprise was a brand new computer just for me! It has to off-gas in the garage before I can use it of course, but it's not 10 years old or one I have to share with another family member. Woohoo!

It was just us three grown-ups for Christmas Day (DH, DS#2, and me) so it was a rather quiet and peaceful day. Which is appropriate I suppose. But the roads were clear enough the next day that DD and family were able to come over for a few hours. What fun to have the two little girls here to play with!

This is Susan modeling a felted hat my sister sent me for Christmas.

I have a small head but I think I'm going to have to wet it down and

stretch it out a bit for it to fit my head better!

Our tree has already been stripped and removed so that DH can turn the livingroom inside out and make it into a home theater for his week of vacation. This is the earliest we've ever taken our tree down; it feels a little strange. Still, it's helping me to look ahead to the new year sooner than I normally would and that's a good thing. I may actually have goals and plans in place before the new year officially begins for a change!