December

I made a quick trip home in early December to go to Mom's office holiday party with her. That same day, Mom had a brunch for some other ladies in the area and the brother workers. It was a really nice time. Below from left are Mom, Laura, Karleen and James.

Craig, Julia, Jari and Mom.

James made this beautiful (and delicious!) friendship ring.

Also in early December, Linda B. and Tessa were at the coast for a couple nights and we had some time together. Linda was making cards. This chair and dresser were FULL of the results of one day of her efforts!! I think there were more on the card table too. : )

We were staying right near the beach, so had some lovely walks. Barb found this sting ray that Tessa and I were investigating.

That is Proposal Rock on the right. It was absolutely beautiful, but we were a little sober as we looked at it remembering that just the week before a young Filipino woman had been swept off of this rock and out to sea.

Love this slightly blurry picture of Tessa. We had such great walks and talks.

Warna took Barb and I to a new tea house in Lincoln City, and we had to try out the hats and gloves. Barb was the only photogenic one that day! : ) Very cute!

We were with Pierens the weekend of our last Gospel meeting, and we had some snowy weather, had to cancel our last meeting. It looks quite spring-like outside, but school was canceled that day, so we made taffy together. Here Barb and the girls are pulling (and pulling and pulling!) the taffy.

Ice on the beach!!

This was part-way into the nine hour trip to Portland that I made with Ken and Peggy. We had to go through Newport since 6 and 26 were closed. We were chaining up just north of Albany. This was my first time to ride in a chained up vehicle, so Ken gave me a lesson in putting the chains on. I'm not sure that they saved us time, since we had to stop every few minutes to adjust them! But we arrived safely, and had a great time together. Ken's patience is incredible!

We wondered, "What is that on the back of that pickup??" Ken got close enough for us to see: TIRE CHAINS!! That really cracked us up, they were in high demand those days!

I made it home that night and was delighted to see that the snow still looked fresh since the temps had stayed so low. There was about 2' of snow, with a layer of ice in the middle. My rubber boots were not quite tall enough to keep the snow out!

How do you like my new safety vest? Seeking visibility so that I won't make people nervous when I go for pre-dawn or late evening walks.

These trees are just south of the campground west of Mom's.

Michelle and I got to help Dennis feed the cows one day. I'm sure he would have happily given us a place on the feeding schedule, but I wasn't ready to commit to that. I did enjoy visiting them in their new covered area that Dennis built last summer.

Jari got the whole walkway cleared to their front door!!

Jari and I spent an afternoon playing in the snow, and had so much fun!! We worked on making a sledding trail in the back pasture, and after much work, were still not getting very far. Dennis came along then with the Cat and cleared a path for us! That was great, but we were worn out by then. We had used the four wheeler quite a bit, trying to blaze a trail, and only got ourselves stuck once--but we also managed to dig ourselves out! After all that we were about whooped, but decided to build snowmen outside of their window, where Carl could see. We had so much fun. : )

This picture isn't very good, but this is Carl watching our snowmen come together from inside.

Shauna and I got to ring in the New Year together, and we had our own mini-party, got dressed up and went out to Johnny Carino's for dessert. They were just about to close and the waitress asked us if we were headed to a party, Shauna teases me about my exuberant response, "This IS our party!!" : )

HAPPY NEW YEAR!