Our Christmas....

...in pictures...on Sunday.

I think she likes it.

Katie and her wallhanging. I think son Allen likes his book & money.

Tyler and Scott.

Oldest grand-daughter Ashley.

Hailey, grand-daughter #2.



He was so eager to open his gifts, but somebody decided he should be
last in every round. He took it pretty well.

Grandpa puzzles over the electronic picture frame.



And the Best Grandma, moi. That's all you'll see of me. LOL

The money was popular with all of them.

Could be...............

Had to share this. After the past few days I'd be willing to believe it's true.



Our street didn't get cleared until about 4:30 today so I took a Snow Day, authorized or not. Oh, that's right, I'm the Library Director and I authorized me a Snow Day. LOLOL Actually I was just waiting for somebody to call and ask, "Aren't you opening the library today?" And I was going to answer, "Bring your shovel & start scooping my street out. When you're finished I'll think about it." Darn, nobody called. Guess I wasn't missed at all. Or everybody's buried under snow. DH went downtown to see what he could see and told me there's still only one lane of traffic east of town and the big, state snowblower got stuck west of town, so it's possible. LOL The wind came up again too so I suppose the street will be blocked again in the morning, only deeper than before.

Santa's sleigh would come in handy today

These pictures are out my back window. They don't do a very good job of showing the snow coming down horizontally. The wind gusts shake the house when they're at their worst. The pictures don't show it but there is a three-ft. drift right behind the house and around the south side. Since the storm made us postpone our family Christmas it might as well keep it up.........maybe I could get a snow day from work tomorrow.

Our son called as we were eating our substitute Christmas dinner..roast chicken..and said his father-in-law was coming from Battle Creek to Pierce to get them & take them back to Battle Creek for their family Christmas. Pure insanity if you ask me. I just hope he made it to their place and isn't sitting in a ditch somewhere....I doubt if there's much traffic out there today so he could sit there without help for quite a while. Why can't people just stay inside when the weather is dangerous out?

Merry Christmas!!

Hope everyone is somewhere warm, cozy & safe. Every weather report on this crazy storm sounds worse. Now we've been upgraded from Winter Storm Warning to Blizzard Warning until Sat. morning. Our family Christmas dinner has been postponed to Sunday. I'm beginning to wonder if we will all be dug out by then if we get a foot of snow and high winds. Oh well, the turkey is defrosted & will have to be cooked...........do you think the two of us could put much of a dent in an 18lb. bird???

Stay warm.

As Promised.....

.......here is the picture of the table runner I made for my daughter.



The gifts are all finished now. I just need to download my DH's 2010 hunting/fishing license and pop everything into gift bags. I'm ready, but I think the weather might not be. Here's a picture of what my world outside looks like this morning:



If you look closely you can see the shine of the ice on the street. This is just the beginning of the predicted Christmas Storm 2009 here in the Midwest. According to the maps on Accu-Weather.com Nebraska is right in the middle of the worst of it. They predict anywhere from 15-30 inches of snow by Friday night with wind gusts from 50-60mph. Looks like Christmas dinner will be postponed till Sunday at least. Please, everyone in the storm area, please stay off the roads. With the ice and predicted snow & wind it's just too dangerous to be out there. Stay safe now & celebrate Christmas later.

Still working towards Christmas

After sleeping in this morning I spent the day working on more Christmas stuff. I just about got the table runner for my daughter done. Still have to sew the turning opening shut and do a little machine quilting on it. I'll post a picture when it's finished. I think it's cute and I hope she likes the finished product.....the pattern was her choice.

I also got my Christmas cards/letters ready to mail...finally. I'm only mailing a dozen. The folks who have e-mail addresses are getting electronic cards this year. Really, I'm being "green" not cheap....though it does save quite a bit on postage, paper, ink and envelopes. Don't you think the Post Office shoots itself in the foot with the constant postage increases? The higher the prices go the less people use the mail.

Last night we had DH's work Christmas party. Supper at the steakhouse in Neligh...prime rib, baked potato, green beans, roll, salad and my annual Strawberry Daiquiri...Yum. This year they didn't have any games so I couldn't win anything...bummer. No door prizes for the employees either. Maybe it's their way of cutting back or maybe it's because the company secretary just had a baby & didn't have time to do all the work of shopping for gifts and getting games & prizes ready. It was still nice and I enjoyed it.

I guess if I just keep plugging along I'll get it all done by Friday. Our kids and grandkids will be here for dinner and gifts and then it'll all be over for another year.

Plodding on

Here's a quick picture of the little wallhanging I finished for my daughter-in-law for Christmas.

I hope she likes it. I made one like it, but with a blue plaid border, for the person who's name I drew for the FCE Club Christmas party.

This year family is getting some little thing and cash. That way they'll be able to buy what they want, in the right color and the right size. Grandma usually gets it wrong, or I get them something from their list and by the time they get here (last Christmas on the list) they've already gotten it. Viva la CASH!!! LOL

Cold....Lucky....Lighting Up My Life

Against my better judgment we participated in the "Blizzard of '09" and now it's cold, cold, cold. I DO NOT LIKE COLD.

Believe it or not, I won the grocery store drawing for $50 worth of groceries AGAIN.

That makes three times in the past year. Maybe I should start buying Powerball tickets.

As for lighting up my life, here's the lovely little Ott light my good friend Flicsha sent me for Christmas all the way from Florida.



Thanks so much, Flicsha. I have just the spot for it.

So....What Have I Been Doing???

Because we all know I haven't been blogging don't we? And I haven't been taking pictures because this is a photo-free post. (Photos added 12-09-09)

Let's see, since the last post we had Thanksgiving at our daughter's. Our son-in-law was (and still is) in the hospital so we brought our 6 yr. old grandson home with us for the weekend. He likes hanging out with Grandpa so they went turkey hunting one whole afternoon, put every puzzle in the house together and spent lots of time with the race car set. Oh yes, his dog came to stay too, they're kind of a matched set.



Look at that face...maybe he didn't want his picture taken!!! :)




Dec. 1st we went to the Christmas concert at school for grandson and granddaughter #2.

Tonight was my FCE (Extension Club) Christmas party. I made a little snowman wallhanging for the name I drew but forgot to take a picture of it and I'm too lazy now after the big meal to take a picture of the gifts I got. Also finally got the tree put up and decorated today. It will be my black kitty's favorite place to sleep now. She was under it within 5 min. of me getting it decorated. It's been snowing out so it's really starting to feel like Christmas. It's really cold out too and that doesn't add to anything. Brrrr.

And last, but not least, I changed my blog background to a Christmas theme. There are starting to be so many websites offering backgrounds that it can be hard to choose.