Dan put up some Christmas lights yesterday. Clark Griswald would be proud. He was up in the air 25 feet in spots; made me a little nervous. Who knew he was so handy! They are the only lights in our area and look so pretty driving by. It's darker than dark here. I took a picture of the river from our porch. As you can see its trying to freeze over! Our high was 20 today. When we woke up this morning it was 0 degrees and we had no water. Dan spent the better part of the day thawing out pipes in the well house. The fun has begun! I have sent out most of our Christmas cards and seem to be gaining on the house stuff. A place for everything and everything in its place!

Happy Sunday everyone! Today we went to our new branch here in Garden Valley and while it will take some getting used to- going from a gigantic ward to a small branch we were pleasantly delighted and surprised to find everyone so nice and NORMAL! Everyone that we met is just so nice and down to earth and made us feel very welcomed. They were a little disappointed to learn that we did not sing and could not help in the choir. After the meetings were over the Relief Society served everyone leftovers from the Branch Christmas Party on Friday night. Now this is Dan's kind of Sunday. Good meetings that end with prime rib and turkey! They had so many leftovers and everything was delicious! We got to sit and visit for awhile. We learned that they have Empty Nester's once a month - FHE for the empty nesters (which mostly makes up our branch). A great idea. We'll have to find out more about that. I'll have to post a picture of our church. Its very nice! You do have to watch where you step to avoid deer & elk droppings. The member count is 180 but there were probably about 90 people there today.

Happenings...

I am posting some pictures from the last few days. We've had a lot going on. We have been making a new road and thankfully the weather has cooperated. No new snow. The new road looks awesome and will be a lot better for snow removal. We have yet to find a solution for the snow removal. We are also working in the unfinished part of the house/shop (note the huge pile of lumber); not quite sure what we're doing but I'll post pictures when I know! Dan has been busy burning slash and installing new lights (both inside and out - yeah!). He is still sick and it looks like it has turned into pneumonia. He is coughing now and has all but lost his voice. I have been decorating the tree, putting away mountains of stuff, hanging pictures and trying to cook meals & keep up the laundry. I did paint one room- a dingy ugly blue-gray one once used for an office with steel cabinets. It is now a cheerful yellow & white bedroom. We get visited by our "friends" the deer every afternoon; come rain or shine or in this case snow and loud heavy equipment - here they come. Dan has been teaching them to come when he whistles. This could be good or it could be bad - we tried this once before with ducks...

Curtis came up and trimmed up some tree branches for us. He's a pro with his saw :)

I know I know. It's shameful I already switched my header from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I just couldn't wait! We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with Tyler & Jayna. Their friends Tiffany & Zaylen were there and Kallie came over (poor Curtis was sick, Dan was sick and Gabe, Christy & Brigitte were gone to see Gabe's family). We celebrated Kallie's & Zaylen's birthday and ate til we were sick. All through preparing the Thanksgiving feast Jayna kept saying everything was a "hot mess" but EVERYTHING tasted great! We are greateful for our many blessings!!! I'll post some pictures later.

One things for sure-

It's going to be a white Christmas!!!

Our plan was to go to Boise for a week to clean our house there and have Thanksgiving with Jayna's family but... we woke up to 6 inches of snow! And its still snowing and supposed to snow all day and night so I think we'll be staying inside where its warm and toasty. Hopefully by Wed. we can get to Boise.

Home is where the porch is.

We are mostly moved in and will finish the final big truck move on Wednesday (thank you Metro Movers - we would have literally died without you). I had forgotten how much work there is in moving, how much junk, how much cleaning, packing, unpacking, painting, vacuuming, washing, etc there is. I'm sooooo tired. Last night after painting for hours we finally collapsed in the family room and looked at each other and said "whats for dinner?" After scrounging around the kitchen we found some frozen potato casserole that Chrisy had brought up the week before and left here. I almost cried tears of joy! We threw it on a plate added some corn and microwaved it. We added some cannery pears and who-la..dinner! It was delicious! We moved 13 times in our first 10 years of marriage and we moved everything ourselves! I remembering moving, cleaning, setting up beds all in ONE day as well as nursing babies and having to entertain young children and feed them. Looking back I have no idea how I did that. Those days have gone. Maybe we had less junk back then? Maybe 1000 sq ft instead of 4000 sq ft. That must be it... I just had to take some pictures. It's so peaceful and beautiful here. We had just a skiff of snow on Friday night. I'm sure we're in for much more :)

Our Front Yard

The Welcoming Committee

Twins resting in the back yard

I had an epithomy yesterday as I was packing up things. These things are things I thought I couldn't live without; things I might need someday; things I love; etc. I've realized I don't need to be the keeper of all things! I can give them to the kids and then when we visit them I can enjoy them. Simple! Let them store everything. Now that I've said it lets see how well I do...

Home Sweet Home

We are officially moving to the mountains! Garden Valley will shortly be our new home.
I (Sherry) couldn't commit to Lowman so we decided Garden Valley was a good compromise.
We are actually going to move before the snow flies. We first thought we would move next summer but we will move now. Dan is too excited to wait! We went up a few times (4 to be exact) last week and it is so pretty this time of year. There are deer, wild turkeys and various other wildlife just hanging around. I guess we'll need an 8' fence around the garden. The river is right there. Not too close to the house that we would be afraid of someone drowning but a half acre away. We'll fence it too... I bet the grand kids will have hours of great summer fun playing there. In the winter we can swim at Terrace Lakes Golf Course - it's open year round. Behind the house we have acres and acres of national forest to play in. I think we'll be getting some 4 wheelers. We're going to miss the kids & grand kids terribly but at least we're only an hour away. I will be coming to Boise for Groceries & shopping at least once a week and maybe spend the winters in town....

Oh, Little Blog

How I've neglected you. I have been so busy posting on my new Cool Pet Picks blog I have weeks to catch up on. This will be a quick rambling catch up post. Let's see... in the last month we have spent some time in Coeur D'Alene. We went on business but it was a much needed vacation too. The weather was rainy and freezing cold but had a large roomy shuite and mostly stayed in and watched TV, read & ate. The hotel had a really nice exercise room with a steamroom & sauna which nobody was using (the hotel was vacant - think The Shining) but sadly I hadn't brought us any workout clothes; swimsuits etc. so we decided to go to the nearby K-Mart and get some really cheap disposable clothes. $15 and an hour later we were on our way to work out. Dan was sporting a pair of kaki shorts (think 1970 BB shorts) and a white wife-beater T-shirt. I wore a hideous pair of lime green shorts and a stretchy gray t-shirt which I realized on the way that it was a materinity shirt! I'm sad to say there are no pictures of this outing. It's just as well. I did get in some good reads. I was so engrossed in Hunger Games the time just flew by. I have to say that I really enjoyed the book and the sequel Catching Fire as well although I did have a wierd dream that Dan & I were at the Hunger Games and Dan killed a little old sweet lady in our ward. Not so good. I guess it got to me more than I thought, although the same night I dreamed I was chatting away with Oprah while giving her a perm. It could have been the late night leftovers from Olive Garden I guess. I must add that my favorite book I read this year is The House At Riverton by Kate Morton. I absolutely loved it! We returned home to just in time for Lila to get out of the hospital. She had been in with a terrible virus (not the Nih1 flu). Poor little thing! We are so thankful she's better!

Cool Pet Picks!

I'm introducing a fabulous new pet blog called Cool Pet Picks! I wanted to do a blog for animal lovers where we can share stories, photos, ideas & more! We love to tell about our pets, read about other peoples pets and hear the latest news, see the latest gadgets & toys etc. I'm excited about this - it could be a lot of fun - so if you have a pet - check it out here~ Cool Pet Picks! If you want to be a contributor let me know!