Before and After in Our New House

I thought I'd post some pictures of our new home. I have these pine trees in the backyard and had to take a picture of them with the snow. They had all this snow when we first arrived...it has since all melted and I can now see the grass. But that will only be for another day or so since we have snow predicted in the weather forecast.

This is the front of the house. SM and I love renting a house and not being in an apartment. We feel so blessed to be here in Ohio. SM is enjoying his job and his co-workers, the ward has been so welcoming and we have this great house to stay in. Life is good.

This is actually my favorite room...the sun room. When we unloaded the semi, this room was the room for all the book boxes. The room has three walls of windows and I can't wait for the spring time sunshine.

This is the sun room today. I get to exercise in this room, read books in that cool chair and have my plants in there also. As I said before, I love this room.

Before...

After!

This is the kitchen full of boxes. This room was a major job and I'm glad I tackled it first.

And here the kitchen stuff is all put away. LOVELY!

Here's the living room before...

and AFTER! Doesn't that look comfy?!

The red bathroom before....

The red bathroom after...didn't change very much but that's okay.

The dining room before...

And AFTER...this is such a wonderful house. Again, we have been blessed.

Our bedroom before...note, we were sleeping on the air-mattress with our sleeping bags.

And this is our new bed. For the first five years of our marriage we slept on a full size bed. SM's feet always hung over the edge and we were very careful when we moved in bed so as to not knock out our spouse. This bed feels like we are on our own island and I have to make an effort to find SM in the bed.

Cookie Making at Grandma's

Cookie making at Grandma's is also a Christmas tradition. I can't wait until my children can enjoy all these fun traditions in their lives. Anyway, this year the tradition also included lots of adults "helping." I think adults enjoy being creative just like the kids...and if you have colored cookie dough, the creativity just oozes out.

My mother-in-law works at a public school and one of the fundraisers they have is selling cookie dough. This year she decided to buy "play-dough cookie dough" and look at all the cool ideas!

Even SM got involved. He made a snow man that you will see in a later picture.

I wish I could have recorded the laughter and noise. There were so many kids talking at once. It was a great event.

A little help from Grandma never hurts...especially when using a cookie cutter.

And while the cookies were baking, the nieces and nephews played chess. Yes, chess, a game I have yet to really learn. They all love it and play it often. Hopefully when they are adults they will be into playing all the games that "we" adults play when we get together. I think at one time, all of these kids play or played on their school chess team. I think it starts in second grade.

See that middle snowman cookie? That's the one that SM made. It's just lovely and cooked up beautifully.

We had a great time and are grateful to Grandma for all her traditions!!

Christmas Lights at Thanksgiving Point

The Monday after Christmas SM's side of the family decided to change their tradition of seeing lights at Temple Square, to seeing lights at Thanksgiving Point. The main reason for the location change wasn't about the lights but the way they are viewed. They wanted to see lights from the comfort of their vehicles. No more kids whining about how much further they have to walk or how cold they were.

And it worked! No more whining kids and a great way to see lights. We were in four separate vehicles...and I believe we were all in vans...and we paid our eight dollars and drove threw the lights. There was music playing outside and the lights were delightful.

We led the pack and stopped often to take pictures of the lights. Some pictures turned out great and others were full of streaks of color. Both represent the beauty of Christmas lights.

And after the lights had ended, there was beautiful murals representing Jesus's birth which led the way up to the main building at Thanksgiving Point.

We all got out of our vehicles at the main building. We were told they had live reindeer which we all wanted to see. What we didn't realize is really how cold it was outside. SO COLD!

When I told SM and his Mom to smile, they both tried and failed. It was simply too cold for smiles.

But the little ones were bundled and smiling. They loved visiting the reindeer. A few of them even had a chance to feed the reindeer a few reindeer pellets. I was amazed at how the older nieces and nephews were afraid of getting bitten while a few of the youngest kiddos had no fear.

This reindeer was so gentle and sweet. Along the bars of the enclosure for the reindeer were plaques telling facts about reindeer. They are really resilient animals and can live in all sorts of difficult climates and land. I guess that's why they are in the tundra, they can live there without any problems.

We gathered around a small flame trying to warm ourselves but found that we were still very cold. Eventually everyone gathered into one of the shops at Thanksgiving Point, where we were able to warm up and get ready to leave into the night.

We gathered for hot chocolate and donuts at Grandma and Grandpa's house after the light viewing. As you can see from the smiles above, we had a wonderful time! I love family traditions, even the new ones.

Christmas Eve 2009

For Christmas Eve, SM's family always has a wonderful get-together. This year we decided to hold it at the church. It starts with the early arrivers playing games until everyone has arrived for Christmas dinner.

And then we eat a delicious Christmas dinner. The adults eat too much and the kiddos don't hardly eat. Since we have a few teenagers in the family, I looked at their proportion sizes and it looks like the teenagers in my family eat enough to feed a small rodent.

But over all, the dinner is a success, the cousins are so excited to be together and to talk about tomorrow being Christmas. One of my nephews asked me if Santa ever brought me anything "expensive" for Christmas. I had to tell him that "no" I don't think Santa ever did. He was very sad at the response but still held out hope for himself and what the next day would bring.

Doesn't this smile just tell all? I think she's very excited to be there and to have all her family around her. (all but one family and one missionary).

We also had the sister missionaries come to dinner. One of the sisters had only been in Utah for a couple of weeks. She was from Tonga and was freezing! She was also trying to get used to American food. I noticed she ate very little but was still very gracious.

After dinner and after the clean-up, we went to hold our annual Christmas program. We always have stories and hymns but this year added a family talent portion. Each family sang a song. (Well, each family with kiddos...SM and I got out of the performance portion of the program.

SM's older brother's family sang "Little Drummer Boy." The kids were so nervous that they giggled half of the time rather than sing, but it was wonderful.

SM's older sister's family also sang, but they were feeling very comfortable. They have such sweet voices.SM's younger brother's family all sang. I can't wait to hear from them year after year. I also loved that the two oldest children held each others' hands during the whole song.

And finally the night ended with the story of Christ's birth being read from the Bible. What a wonderful Christmas Eve.

I'm back

I am grateful to family and friends who follow my blog. I'm sorry it's been over a month since I've posted. This last month has been full of lots of "stuff" and plenty of it great and wonderful "stuff."

I will be posting some of the Christmas fun in future posts with pictures. I had a great holiday and mixed it up with packing up our belongings that were at the house. Luckily, 75 percent of our stuff was already packed and sitting in our storage unit. I had stress filled moments but survived.

We've made the move to Ohio! We drove in separate cars...and I was entertained by listening to a couple books on CD while SM listened to talk radio and some Pod Casts from a group of economists from George Mason. I found I like to drive in the daylight hours but as soon as it got dark, my driving confidence left. The roads were okay...and most of the time dry. I led the traveling wagons using the GPS and found that you can't always follow where the GPS leads. Needless to say, SM would have liked it better if I used my own logic a few times instead of making our trip go a little longer because we had to turn around few times.

Now I sit in a wonderful rented home. It is actually bigger than we were led to believe. We have four rooms and three and a half baths. That is so huge to me and I'm so excited to live here. I will later post pictures when everything is organized and unpacked.

The ward is great and really have welcomed us with open arms. We have had dinner at the Bishop's house and the Relief Society President and her secretary came by for a visit this morning. The future is looking hopeful and bright.