Happy New Year 2010

Happy New Year to each one of you. May it prove to be a productive start to a new decade.

The last day of 2009 saw us having our windows replaced. The weather held up fairly well. Now we just have to repaint the shutters and re-stain the front door :)

Christmas greetings

From our house to yours. May you enjoy the peace of Christmas and the love of family and friends.

Nativity

We have a version of this beautiful picture displayed in our living room year round. One of my favorites.

How much longer?

Waiting for family to come home or eyeballing squirrels?

Christmas tree toppers

Here's a look at what is on the top of two of our trees :) A twiggy wreath on our main tree in the family room and a poinsettia on the little tree in our front living room.
One of these years I might talk John into buying a white Christmas tree for a our family room because the strong pink walls (a surprise from him and the kids) can be a bit of a challenge to decorate against.

Mammograms and Christmas trees

Mammograms are a necessary inconvenience in my opinion. Had mine this morning at our local imaging center. New technology to boot which may result in another visit just because the new style images often come back looking different to the older ones.
Decorating the Christmas trees are underway. The big one is in our family room and the small ones are in various parts of the house. I love twinkly lights and am making some garlands to go on shelves:)

Brrrr.

The beginning of December has arrived and I guess winter is definitely here. We woke up to a hard frost this morning. The water in our outdoor dog bowl is frozen solid !!!!!! Looks like it is also cold enough in the sunroom for me to be moving the plants into the warmth of the house.

Windows and Thanksgiving

Yesterday we signed on the dotted line after making a few revisions. Now we wait for a few weeks and hopefully some still nice weather.
It is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA, a holiday that I love. We've celebrated in an assortment of ways over the years, mainly with extended family, but today we opted to stay home, just the four of us. Juliet and Elisabeth are celebrating together with friends. I feel greatly blessed in my life and grateful to those who paved the way for the freedoms we enjoy.

Moving along

We are making progress with our quotes. We had an energy audit done yesterday. All the quotes are in for the windows and the foundation work. All very different in what needs doing and prices. Now we have to make some decisions.

Changes are afoot.

We've decided to do some more renovations to the house.

We are going to get an energy assessment done by TVA to the house and are looking at replacing most of our windows.

We have foundation people coming to check the sunroom, front porch and a couple other areas. (Nothing major, just a precaution).

We are pricing out remodeling both bathrooms and looking into creating a new access area to the attic. Most of that we can do ourselves.

Maybe we should get a quote for the roof while we are in research mode :0

We are also contemplating getting the yard landscaped properly. We've been talking about terracing our slope on and of since we moved in.

So we have a number of appointments set up for the next couple of weeks. Good thing we don't party much :)

This and that

John called me a few nights ago on his way home from work and said "Go look at the sky and take a photo." So I did :) A lot of it was partially hidden by trees from my vantage point but it still looked pretty.
We received the proof copies of edition 2 of John's book. Looks good. Now we have to find something else for him to do to keep him out of mischief. I saw an interesting magazine about wood carving which I may plonk down on his lap :)
I am now officially the treasurer for the high school PTSO and I made sure we did not leave our school meeting without the rest of the officers in place.
Juliet and Elisabeth are settled into school. Juliet now has an internship which she is pleased about. She had to add another class to her workload which puts her up to 17 hours. Elisabeth is still trying to find a job. Her scholarship issues were resolved thank goodness.
Kris and Nik are enjoying high school and their progress reports are looking good thus far. Nik is now learning bowling with the school group. We still have to find out about a club for Kris. They have to participate in at least one every year. It's the high school's 50th birthday this year so plans are underway far a black tie gala in April.

An interesting encounter or two

The weather is starting to cool down so our mornings are getting damp and brisk. The afternoons are still warm which is almost tempting me to take up the gentle art of sunbathing :) The evenings have been cloudy. It has been nice watching the moon play hide and seek with the ever moving clouds.

We had a fabulous storm roll through early Thursday morning. The lightning lit up the sky and I had to take care not to drive off the road as I marveled at the spectacle and power.

John is busy at work and while at home is creating programs in MAC for some of his designs.

I am on the planning committee for a genealogy conference that is scheduled for November. We had our first meeting this week and it's going to be great.

Kris and Nik both had a good week at school. They seem to be settling in well. Much Spanish vocabulary being done.

Kris had to create a blog for her photography class. She is so excited about that. They are doing wide and narrow fields of focus as their current project.

Nik had an interesting encounter on Thursday afternoon.

He came up the back steps wanting to show me something. He opened up his hands and inside was ......... a Praying Mantis. Fabulous. Fairly young and oh so green. Very handsome to boot.

Then the fun began.

Mantis sensed freedom and took a giant leap. Landing on the back of Nik's neck it sent him into a leaping frenzy as he felt the insect start to crawl down his neck and under his shirt.

Kris and I tried not to laugh at the antics but to no avail.

Fortunately the Mantis took another leap and landed on Nik's back. At this point he was trying to pull his shirt off so I stepped in and told him everything was fine. Mantis disappeared before I had a chance to grab my camera. Darn.

Did you know that in some cultures it is extremely good luck to have a Praying Mantis in your garden? They started appearing in our garden a few years ago and I always love seeing them.

We now have a long weekend ahead of us with Monday being Labor Day. Today we decide if we want to stay home, visit family, visit friends or just head off somewhere. We have Mammoth Caves and the Natchez Trace on our list of options.