What Would I Like for Christmas?

Well, now that Thanksgiving is over . . . the Christmas fun begins! I spent all afternoon yesterday "locked" upstairs and working on a secret for Elizabeth. I'd love to post a picture of it so far, but she also looks at my blog, so you'll have to wait until after Christmas. :)

As long as we're on the subject of Christmas: here is what I would like to see under the tree! Uh . . . just kidding. Though this is my dream car! We saw tons of Mini Coopers in Florida (this being one). There were as many Minis down there as there are pick-ups around here.

Dad is spending the day out in the garage working on his secret stuff. Maybe I should go out and visit him . . .

We had our first real snowflakes yesterday morning (and a few the night before), and the ground actually looked white for a couple hours in the morning. On Thanksgiving night we were at our friends' house and celebrated with a display of fireworks! We don't get to see those often around here, so that was really fun! The pink ones were my favorite. That was definitely a "first" for us. We were out watching fireworks as snow was falling! More later.

We're Back from FLA!

I haven't mentioned this before, but Dad and the two of us went to Florida last week! We left on Thursday and came home on Tuesday, which gave us four days and five nights to spend with Dad's family. We stayed at our grandparents' house the whole time (they live in Miami). I have put up a photo album with about 80 pictures in it, all of them with captions. I'll also write more later about the trip itself.

View the Photo Album here.

Here is a picture of Elizabeth and me on the airplane coming home. The weather was actually really nice in Florida while we were there. The only hot day was our last one, so the timing was perfect!

We had a really nice time with our Gramma and Grampa and had time to here all kinds of stories about their life in Cuba. I'll be posting some of that cool stuff soon! Here are pictures of us with our wonderful Gramma and Grampa! That is me with Gramma and Elizabeth with Grampa.



This week promises to be busy, but fun. We're spending Thanksgiving with some friends which will be great. I can't wait for the pumpkin pie and sweet potato casserole! Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, just in case I don't write more before then.

Fall and a FULL Woodshed!

Well, this is a sure sign of Fall --- the woodshed is finally full to the "gills". Dad and I stacked the last of the cherry logs on Monday (Those are the side that Dad is not standing in front of.). We've had the stove on for a month already, but not all the time. It's finally starting to cool off though.

Here is a picture of the garden as it looks now. Quite a difference from all the Summer pics, isn't it?! We've actually still had a few stray flowers since the weather has been so funny lately, but I think that things are really starting to die back for the Winter.

Well, more later. It's off the the auction house for the evening. That's always fun!

First Snow of the Year on Wednesday!

It's here! We had our first snow on Wednesday! They were actually picture perfect snowflakes, but the camera had trouble picking them up. It snowed all morning until about 10:00a.m. but ofcourse nothing stuck to the ground.

As the songwriter wrote: "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas . . ."

This has been a busy week. I've been working on getting Christmas decorations organized and packed into bins (as opposed to boxes) and I think that I'm finally caught up with everything back in the attic. Mom keeps laughing at me because we'll be pulling them back down in about three weeks, but I figure it will be lots nicer to unpack the stuff when it's all neatly put in bins.

Tomorrow we have our Bible Fellowship with friends, so that means a nice day out with a potluck meal. I've been making a chocolate peppermint cake with cream cheese frosting (flavored with mint extract and crushed candy canes). I'm sitting here waiting for the cakes to cool so that we can frost them . . .

Here is a clip from the Danny Kaye show that we found this morning. This is Danny Kaye & Louis Armstrong singing their version of "When the Saints Go Marching In"! We saw D.K.'s movie On the Riviera last night and it was hilarious! The last two and a half minutes was worth the whole film! More later . . .

My Picture of the Day!

I just had to post this one. I was playing around with Sammy (and the camera) this morning and I couldn't believe Sammy stayed in this position long enough to snap it! Isn't he the cutest cat in the world!?