December Update

Welcome to December with this update from western New York State where there’s about a foot of snow on the ground.  It’s never snowed a whole lot at one time, but we’ve had measurable snow every day for the past two weeks plus.  We’re getting our exercise shoveling snow!  One example:  on 12/12, Zach and I were on our way to our Civil Air Patrol meeting in Batavia (about 20 miles away), but the snow was falling pretty steadily, and after going less than 5 miles, I decided it wasn’t worth it, and we turned around and went back home.  When we got back, I texted our Commander and told her we weren’t coming.  Which was a good thing because we’d missed the announcement that they’d canceled the meeting because of the snow!  All this technology, and we still can’t communicate.  I did get an email from her that the meeting was canceled, but not until 30 minutes after it was supposed to start.

Anyway, now back to my regular update of events that have happened to us since my last update.

11/23 – a full day!  In the afternoon, Cai, Amelia, and I helped our Awana Journey team bake cheesecakes (Abigail and Krista had to work).  Every year we sell plain and chocolate chip cheesecakes to our church family to raise money for our Journey team’s trip to Summit in the Chicago area in March.  We spent about 3 hours at church baking about 25-30 cheesecakes.  It’s amazing how much fun you can have doing something like that if you’re with the right people, and we were.  The cheesecakes turned out delicious (we bought some ourselves and have enjoyed them)!  Later that day we celebrated Zach’s 14th birthday with French Toast Strata for supper (if I’m remembering correctly, which is a big “if”—I mean, I know I have the birthday part right, but I’m not so sure about the supper—yes, I still remember my kids birthdays, so there).

 

[Hmm, Zach's birthday pictures must be on a different camera.  Sorry, Zach.]

11/27-12/1 – What a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend we had!  This was our first year to not have Thanksgiving at our house.  Carissa and Caitlin bravely invited the whole family to their house in Philadelphia.  We left Wednesday 11/27 late in the afternoon.  There had been some winter storms in the area that day, but by the time we left, everything was pretty good.  We hit a little snow, but it wasn’t bad.  Ella’s fiancé, Cody, came with us too, so their house was really full.  The boys (Cody, Cai, and Zach) slept over at Carissa’s boyfriend, Matt’s, house, but during the day, everyone was at Carissa and Caitlin’s, including Matt most days.  Everyone did an amazing job with the food, and we had tons of fun there.  So, a big congratulations and thank you to Carissa and Caitlin for hosting a wonderful Thanksgiving!

 

That's a big (and delicious) turkey!

Rolls and pies.  Mmmm

Part of the gang

 

12/3 – We celebrated Amelia’s 16th birthday with salads topped with crispy chicken.  Mmm Mmm!  She now has continued the family tradition of working at the local Burger King and seems to be doing well there.

12/15 – I’m glad the Seahawks played the Giants because our local Fox affiliate decided that was a local interest game and aired it.  I don’t get to watch them often unless they’re on a national broadcast, so I enjoyed it, especially as they crushed, embarrassed, and totally dominated the Giants.  The Bills won too that weekend, which doesn’t happen nearly often enough, so, at least as far as football goes, it was a good weekend.

That’s all for this installment.  Until next year!