December 26th

The day after Christmas we had a wonderful surprise...My sister Teri and her family(Jason, Hallie, and Libby) came for a Holiday visit! Mom was so excited! A little while after they got here, we went to a small restaurant here in town and had lunch. My Uncle Danny met us there too.Later on that day everyone came over to my house and I made scalloped potatos and ham, french bread, Italian pasta salad. sliced ham and for desert we had cherry pie, peach pie, oreo desert, and butterscotch delight. Yum-O . Jim came over and ate with us and then Teri played the piano and Jim got the guitar and we sang for almost 2 hours! it was a great time....here are some more pictures...

Johns Birthday...

With this being the busy time of the year, I'm getting a little behind on my blog. So today I'm going to try and catch up....

Monday the 22nd was Johns 34th birthday. For his birthday supper he wanted Fried chicken, potato salad and corn..

Then he opened his gifts.....

here are some more pics from his birthday...

Happy birthday John we all hope you had a great day!

Later that day, Derek and Emily and I put a few puzzles together. They wanted me to take pictures of them and put them on my blog so here they are....

We had fun doing them. Derek and emily are great at doing puzzles.

Merry Christmas 2008

We had a wonderful day on Christmas.....First of all we opened presents...Here is Mom opening her new computer desk that John made her...

and here is the thankyou hug!

Emily passing out presents...

Debbie and Willie opening presents........

Sharayah and Andy got alot of nice gifts.....Ieshia is still trying to wake up.....

and yes even my sweet dog Mocha got a nice stocking. Here I am helping her get her presents..A Little later on, Grandma Tinkham came over....We had to use 3 tables this year. I set them all with snowman dishes and snowman centerpieces. I also used name cards so everyone would know where they were to sit. The kids loved the name cards. Here is what the place setting looked like.and here is a picture of all three tables.....

Grandma was determined to help in the kitchen and we are all glad she was able to...

John and I were working hard to get the dinner done....

Here are a few more pictures from Christmas day.....Christmas 2008 will be unforgetable!

First Day of Winter.......

The first day of winter came in with a roar.....It is -2 degrees today with windchill around -24. All the trees are still convered with ice from the ice storm we had a few days ago. After the ice storm we had a couple of inches of snow and now the winds are blowing around 50 miles an hour making white out conditions! WOW Winter is really here to stay. Here are a few pictures of trees outside....

This next picture I took looking out my door..On a brighter note, I am done with Christmas shopping and have all the presents under the tree. My Mom brought hers over too. Look how beautiful it looks....

I don't know if I can get any more gifts around this tree!! We are all excited about Christmas. It was so cold out today that I was in the kitchen most of the day. It was a perfect day for baking and having the oven on. I made chocolate chip cookies, some with pecans, and I made cheddar potato and ham soup and my special biscuits that are so yummy! I also made some homemade chesecake muffins. Here is a picture of my muffins..Don't they look yummy??

Christmas Baking......

Today Mom and I baked Christmas goodies for family and friends. We had a great time. We started around 9:30 am and was finally done around 4:00. We made banana bread, peanut butter blossom cookies, almond bark pretzels, peanut butter buckeyes, and sugar cookies. Mom made peanut clusters, apple cinnamon bars, peanut brittle, turtle bites, and oatmeal raisin pecan cookies. Here are a few pictures of our hard work......
Doesn't everything look yummy?