Mild and Balmy Winter

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere on the Farmers Almanac that our area was supposed to have a mild and balmy winter. 

That hasn't been the case. It has snowed so much I can't keep track of which storm these pictures were from.

I do remember it was already -11° when I took these pictures though, so we knew it was going to be a cold night. It was so pretty so I kept running outside to take pictures.

That night Cary couldn't sleep because of how cold it was and he was worried about pipes bursting, it ended up being -28° that morning. We had to really bundle the kids up to walk to the bus that morning and then grandpa Greg walked with them to make sure they didn't dawdle in the cold. 😁

The kitties are managing to stay warm.

The crazy thing is that 3 days later or so, we had a warm wind come through and melt all the snow. It was nice.

It snowed again at some point and we actually had to call a half day of school and go pick up our kids. (Again, we've had to pick them up twice). Clara and the kitty were waiting for dad to finish scraping off the truck.

Break 2016-2017

Cary has some time off at the end of the year, so that is nice that it coincides with the kids time off of school.

One of the mornings during our break, we drove to Petra for waffles at Ben and Chandra's, and then they let us leave our kids there. Winning! 😁

It's inevitable, and you always hope it won't be the case, but 

during the break it seems like everyone is sick. Clara was running a fever and keeping me up at nights for almost a week, the other kids just seemed to have a cough/cold but it didn't turn into anything major like it usually does. We've been really healthy this year and no major illnesses or anything occurred until December! I think that is some sort of record for us. 

 I gave these mugs to Cary, a few quotes from a favorite tv show of ours. 😄

(Kenneth did the drawing on the mugs for me)

Our new project! We took our bedroom closet, and the hall closet.

What the rest of the house looked like when we took out all the stuff out of the closets.Yikes!

One morning I drove Aidan over to the Border to meet up with Nomi and Charlie. On the way back I took advantage and stopped to take photos of the foggy morning we were having.

This photo was overlooking the reservoir. 

Looking towards EskDale

Britton working on his reading.

Hanukkah, New Year!

Hanukkah started on Christmas Eve this year, and the last night of Hanukkah was on New Years Eve. It was actually kind of convenient. 😁

We lit the hanukkiah for the first night during the Christmas Eve service, and then we just ended up combining the Hanukkah party with our New Years party. 

A few photos from Hanukkah, but most are from the last night, our Hanukkah party/ New Years Eve party.

Tabitha and Cheri helped me out by making the donuts and apple fritters! 

Clara loves this game! 

This was the first year she's stayed up all night. She's usually a 7:30 and she's done kind of girl, but she's been doing a little better with late nights.

We had snow on the ground, and when I walked across the community around 9:00 that night, the fog was settling in, so when it was time for the fireworks, there was fog and hoar frost on the trees and the effect was incredible. It was SO pretty! I only had my phone with me so I took this picture and then my phone died! Ugh.

I noticed Cary wasn't using his, so I grabbed his phone and took a few more pictures, but I was really wishing I had my big camera with me!