Smiles for the New Year!

Lake Jennie Church at Christmastime--our little country church

(There were a few tears before Christmas, I'm sad to say)  All my busy times just got pushed together and if I was better at organizing my time, they might not have been there at all, but golly, I hate to organize my time!

We had Christmas Eve at our house this year for my family--no big deal really-everything as basically clean and it was just my parents and one of my brothers with his wife and son.  The food was easy enough and I enjoy making food and making treats, but when you combine that with editing down school Christmas Programs (also a fun time), finishing off your own gifts to give (fun, too), and finishing off other people's gifts to give (fun as well, I like my job) it gets to be a lot of stuff to get done.  Dan ended up doing all of the wrapping of presents which was very nice!

While my brother was at my place we went sledding out in the South yard (cow yard? former goat pasture?) with him and my nephew.  With all the new snow we had gotten it was so much fun.  Even the cows wanted in on the party (wish I had some pictures--I'm waiting on getting them from my brother as we had his camera out there with us).

Christmas was at Dan's parent's place and was really fun as well!  Just a nice relaxing day with his family.

Dan had the whole week from Christmas through New Year's off, so he did all sorts of things around the house.  Most not very visible (like leveling the stove and refrigerator, plugging up mouse holes, and helping sort through all the cupboards and the big walk-in closet)  We threw away so much stuff and have things a lot more organized once again.

Now just a couple of fun photos of the critters I've taken the last couple weeks!

Dakota rolling in the driveway on a cold winter's day--

it was well below zero at this point, but she'd been cooped up inside all night!

Forgive the bit of blurriness and shadow in this picture, I've been trying to get a good picture of Bernie as he sucks on one of our blankets for a while and this is the best one so far (what with poor lighting and the flash blowing out the picture).  Bernie just loves to nurse on blankets--a comforting thing I suppose since his mother left him alone in our chicken coop at such a young age.  Norman used to do this, too with one of our extremely soft blankets, but Bernie really seems to like these striped wool Southwestern style blankets.  Never knew bright blue stripes looked so much like a mother cat!  (Of course, Norman has also stepped in as a surrogate mother at times--who knew a big 6 year-old neutered male cat could be such a loving mother!)

Hope the new year will bring you smiles and fun moments now and again, too!