Happy 80th Birthday!

Happy 80th Birthday, Dad and Grandpa!
Wishing you a very happy year!
Love, Us

Happy Birthday, Jeanne!

Wishing you a great day and year!

Loving Winter!

I don't know why, but I have just loved this winter! It finally acts like a real winter. We are double our usual snowfall for this time of year--actually we are at what we usually have for the whole winter--and it has stayed cold enough so most of it hasn't melted. Except for our drive to MN and back and frozen water lines it has been pretty enjoyable. Today we are having our fourth snow day. They did increase the amount of snow days since the road commission is cutting back on clearing roads--I don't think we have had a plow down this road yet this winter. Our road is between two school district's so we have twice the bus traffic down it. Anyway, maybe I'll go put another log on the fire!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, LEON & MAXINE!

Wish I was there to have dessert with you again!

More Catching Up!

Above--getting to spend the day with the Steufen cousins
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Nothing like a good pile of snow to dig through!
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The other morning the trees were covered in frost! I didn't get
a good picture of it when the sun was shining on them, but
they were beautiful!

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This is what water lines look like in a crawl space that
reaches 0 degrees!

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A fun game of Fill Or Bust with the Radbourne clan!
Good Hot Chocolate, too!

Family, Food, & Fun

Donna loves going to the house in town! (above)
Domino creations. (Sorry Brooke, but I love the pj's!)

Exciting life!

Finally Catching Up!

Looks like they worked!

Here--I'll hold the wire for you

No comment!

Okay, so it's nine days into the new year and I'm finally getting something posted!! I am absolutely loving getting home in decent time this afternoon and I can actually sit down for a while and catch up on this! Yes, I know I should be doing laundry, cleaning, etc...but that will come...later!

We made it to MN and back over Christmas Break. Warren's (sorry, your sis says this works!) were there also, so the guys got lots done on the house in town. (It will be a Group home someday) They pulled some good ones while they were working. It was super icy in the driveway where they were working. One night Wayne comes running up the driveway to come into the garage. As he is watching the ice where he is running, Warren decided to shut the garage door. Of course, Wayne doesn't see it coming down and doesn't duck--just smacks into it--and Warren about falls over in laughter!!! Wayne ended up with a scrape across the top of his head. Payback time came for Warren a couple days later when his knife slips while he was cutting vinyl tile! He ended up with five stitches though! Lucky their work did turn out pretty good there!

We were staying on the farm, so each day we would load up all the things we needed in town and headed in. We would haul all the meals in, etc... The kids were good sports about going to town everyday, but they did enjoy spending all day with their cousins. They spent many hours playing Monopoly!

While we were gone our neighbors called to let us know our water lines broke under the house. Thank goodness they heard it and shut our water off for us! They called a few days later to tell us we had no power. That was out for 36 hours. At least we didn't have to worry about our food thawing--it was too cold!

We got to make our trip to MN in the van. Around Thanksgiving time Wayne took the truck in to have a noise checked out. In the process of checking it, our 4-wheel drive was lost. They still haven't figured that one out yet?! Poor Wayne has to rely on my taxi service each day!
The weather for traveling was pretty yucky! Our normal 12 hour trip took 15 each way. Warren's trip out took them 18 hours. We had planned on stopping just this side of Chicago on the way home, but decided we might as well head on home since it had already taken so long going through WI. We arrived home at 4 a.m. New Year's Eve (day). Our house was a nice (frigid) 42 degrees--no heat and no water! The boiler had lost enough water that it was no longer running--and then the pump burned out. Thankfully the boiler didn't go too! After a couple hours sleep Wayne got to work on it and had it running by afternoon. Trying to get a new pump on New Year's Eve was interesting, but he found one that day. Needless to say, he has made several changes in the crawl space and this shouldn't happen again--hopefully!

You know what I'm thinking though! Next year at Christmas it would be really fun to go somewhere WARM!
(I guess I'll post pictures later--they are taking too long!)

Happy New Year's!
2009
Wishing you all the best!