Happy New Year!

The new year has arrived and as promised, I am sincerely going to try to blog more often. Obviously, it's not going to be daily, but maybe I could manage weekly... or at least, more often than quarterly. How 'bout that? Reckon that will keep my Fan Club* happy?

While I didn't maintain my blog as well as I would have liked in 2014, there are enough posts to give you a good idea of our Year in Review, so I'm not going to do that. However, we weren't able to be together with any of our extended family during the Christmas season, so I thought I'd share some of our recent activities.

We kicked off the festivities early in December with an interchurch Christmas brunch at Country Buffet. The highlight of the morning was the white elephant gift exchange.

The next week we were invited to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Rather than going out and buying ugly sweaters, we got creative and decorated some old sweaters we already had. Our family spent one whole evening working on our sweaters. I said, "After all this work, I hope somebody in our family will win one of the prizes!" And turns out... they did!

 Laura's "sweater" featured a stocking with a teddy bear tucked in it, a letter to Santa, sparkly pom-poms and jingle bells... and the pièce de résistance.. an obnoxious violin that played Christmas songs. She won the Ugly ribbon (3rd place.)

And then Lyle won the Ugliest ribbon (1st place) with his tableau of Frosty getting run over by an SUV! He and I had worked on his sweater design together. I thought he could have a scene of a car hauling a Christmas tree with a snowman as part of the scenery, but he decided that it needed a little more drama than that. I guess it paid off because everyone seemed to love the snowman parts flying everywhere!

The actual week of Christmas was pretty rough at our house, as both girls had a nasty round of the flu... Laura early in the week, and Rebecca on Christmas Day. Lyle and I were grateful to not catch it this time around!

 We had a nice day at home on Christmas Day. The day started off sunny and mild. Lyle built a fire in our backyard fireplace and smoked a turkey breast on the grill for dinner. He enjoyed watching the fire while he visited on the phone with his mother.

We didn't know how smoking the turkey on the grill would turn out. My dad has been smoking turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas for probably 30 years, so it's kind of a tradition in our family. This year between work, church, and friends, I ended up having three different Thanksgiving dinners... and not one of them served smoked turkey. We haven't been with my folks for the holidays for several years, and I just missed Dad's tasty smoked turkey! So I asked Lyle if he thought it would work to smoke a turkey breast on the grill (since we don't own a smoker). He did some research and said he thought it wouldn't be too hard. He has a little metal box in which to smolder wood chips for the smoke flavor. I soaked the turkey breast in my Dad's recipe for brine for 24 hours, and then added a pan of water for moisture. It worked perfectly! So now we know--a smoker is not necessary! I expect we'll be enjoying smoked turkey more in the future.

And then the snow arrived! The clouds rolled in and the wind kicked up on Christmas afternoon, and the snow started falling. It has been cold and snowed more several times since. But still, we have seen some sunshine in between. After all, this is Colorado!

Thus concludes the synopsis of our Christmas celebration. Looking forward to seeing what 2015 has in store!

*Charter members of my Fan Club include my parents, my husband, and my children... and a few others who have let me know that you miss my blog. I do appreciate your encouragement. It means a lot!

A Pre-Christmas Memory

I'm thinkin' it must have been about 40 Christmases ago... (Which is completely impossible, of course, because there's no way 1974 was actually 40 years ago. My math must be off somewhere.) Anyway, somewhere along in through there...

My mother, an accomplished and professional seamstress, sewed many of our Christmas gifts when we were growing up. Her project that year was to make five large rag dolls... one for each of us, boy dolls for my brothers, and girl dolls for my sisters and me. This was the pattern:

These were very large floppy dolls... about 2 feet long... so you can see it was quite an undertaking too make five of them, including the clothes. It seems Mother was sequestered in her bedroom with the door closed for days. We children had strict instructions not to go in there because she was working on "Christmas presents." Once our Christmas break from school started it was so hard to obey and not bother her.

One morning, shortly before Christmas, a friend of my mother's stopped by our house. Janie brought with her five large, flat wrapped gifts... and five much smaller ones. Even though it wasn't yet Christmas we were allowed to open them! Each of us received an over-sized Christmas coloring book and a box of crayons! We didn't even have to share our crayons with our brothers and sisters because we each had our own!

Probably a little birdy had told Janie that the preacher's kids needed something to do while their mother sewed. In any case, we happily gathered around the dining room table and spread open our new coloring books. I don't know how many days or hours that kept us occupied, but my mother still gratefully remembers the thoughtfulness of her friend that year.

I'm pretty sure I still have my doll from that Christmas packed away somewhere, along with other cherished rag dolls my mother made over the years. I would have liked to find her and take a picture to show you... but "ain't nobody got time for that" today. (I just Googled the pattern picture above.) But here's a snapshot from that era that I already had scanned. Obviously, it wasn't taken at Christmas time... but oh-so-definitely mid-1970s!

And yes, dear friends and readers, I do have good intentions of getting back to blogging! Maybe that will be a good New Year's resolution!

Merry Christmas to all!

Talkin' to the Squirrels

 All of us... especially Cookie... have enjoyed our shady backyard this summer. Cookie likes to chase rabbits and talk to squirrels, both of whom are frequent visitors.

The three snakes who have shown up at different times, however, are not welcome. I guess I ought to put up a sign:

NO SNAKES ALLOWED

They'd probably pay about as much attention to that as the door-to-door salesman pay to this one:

(Photo courtesy of Laura.)

But I digress. 

Our backyard is fenced all around and lined with trees and shrubbery, so though we have close neighbors we also enjoy a sense of privacy. It's lovely.

 As the leaves fall, it won't be quite so private, but I have to say, fall is just gorgeous in Colorado. Not just the aspens in the mountains, but also the city streets and brilliant blue skies.

The kids raked the leaves into a big pile. Doesn't it make you want to just go jump in it?

Maybe we'll build a fire in our little patio fireplace this evening and toast marshmallows.

Autumn in the Rockies

 Last Sunday afternoon was overcast and gray, but we decided to take a short drive up in the mountains to see the aspens anyway.

 The brilliant gold is a sharp contrast to the dark green of the evergreens. Just breathtaking.

 I especially enjoyed this scene with the farm pond and the barbed-wire fence... and the little bit of blue sky peeking through the clouds.

 And, of course, we had to pose in front of the leaves!

 This one is just to embarrass the kids. Because that's what we do.

 What a privilege to live so near such beauty. It's almost worth putting up with city life. Almost.

Wonder if I can talk the man into going again this Sunday. Maybe the skies will be clear? You never can tell about Colorado weather.

Rainbow Over the Mountains

Just a glimpse of the gorgeous, full-arched rainbow that spanned over the Rockies early this morning. I snapped these quick pictures on my phone on my way to work.

My co-worker, Chris, took this one from his house.