After Christmas

We spent the latter part of Christmas day at Ammon's house (sorry, I didn't get any pictures) then, after sleeping there, drove on down to Mary's sister Carol's in Alabama to spend the night. It has been wonderful to have the chance to see my older sister more than I have in many years. The following morning we drove down to Lisa's in Florida. Just before leaving there, I finally managed to get a couple of pictures taken at a mall where we went for dinner and the play area for Aaron to get some "large motor activity" when it was cold, wet, and foggy outside.

Some of our Christmas events

I'm sorry to say that I have gotten really negligent about taking pictures. It seems I am always too involved in living the moment to remember to take a picture of it. These first two pictures are at Ammon's apartment when we had our family party. James was our surprise guest and we gave gifts mostly to families rather than individuals. A good time was had by all!
Here we are having a family cookie bake. We did allright but nothing compared to the last cookie bake we did in NY for the Christmas of 1995 when we made 100 dozen cookies! Still, it was fun.
Christmas Eve Angela made a wonderful roast beef with trimmings and we enjoyed a pleasant evening with her family. Even the dog was relaxed.

What a Christmas present!

Russ and I are at a point in our lives when we are constantly trying to weed out excess "stuff". This year we are giving each other the obligatory socks, spatulas, and candy as stocking stuffers but there will be no presents under the tree. All of our money needs to go for 2x4's, spackle, wire, and sheetrock. But we got a wonderful gift when James contacted us with the news that he needed to be in Washington, DC for a week just before Christmas and was willing to find a flight here to spend a weekend with us. It happened to be the same weekend we had planned our family Christmas party down in Cincinnati at Ammon and Victoria's so he was a pleasant and very welcomed addition to the group!

Yes sir, yes sir, 43 bags full!

The last big, messy job for awhile has been finished! Despite a hurried trip back to Home Depot for more insulation, we managed to put 43 bags of cellulose in our attic in one afternoon. This first picture is of our set-up. The instructions mention "positioning the machine somewhere outside your home". Although the hoses are long, we didn't figure they would make it up to the third floor as well as going along the ceiling from one end of the house to the other. So we had to have the whole mess inside the house. It's difficult to get the full effect of the incredible dust all over everything. Russ and I both wore masks which started white and ended up totally grey,along with our hair and skin. The air was a veritable grey fog as well!
But we are happy and relieved to have the job finished. Russ was a little concerned about the weight of the insulation in the ceiling since it hasn't ever had anything more than animal bedding and feces up there! But we got it cleaned out and re-filled and it didn't collapse and it smells much better up there now.

A Victorian Christmas

I'm not going to manage a Christmas newsletter this year. So if you're looking at this, you're one of the lucky ones to get a Christmas greeting from the Fellows as they continue to work on their Dayton 1920 home. It is getting better every month. I thought I had a "before" picture of the living room but I can't seem to find it. This is the "after" picture. We patched and painted the walls and ceiling and sanded and varnished the floor. The fan/light fixture was installed by Russ a couple of months ago.

November images

I finally got our camera back. These pictures are several weeks old but I wanted to post them to show some happenings in the fall here. This first one is our oldest grandson, Tanis, in a pile of leaves. I never did get a picture I could use of the tons of leaves we collected but this is just one small part of the ultimate collection of leaves. This next picture is the day after Thanksgiving when we got Ammon and Victoria's stuff all loaded up and headed to Cincinnati. The move went very smoothly, thanks especially to their new church ward in Cincinnati who had lots of representatives at the new apartment to unload all the stuff. Along with the family who were all so helpful, Ammon and Victoria were moved in in record time!
This third picture is the next day, again in Cincinnati, at the baptism for Janna terHorst. Russ and I are really enjoying being near so much of our family. There are still too many who are still too far away but it looks like it's going to continue to be that way. We'll enjoy whatever time we can have whenever we can have it!

Sorry- still no pictures

I haven't gotten my camera back yet so I still can't post any pictures. I had wanted to post a picture of the leaves we collected. Here on our 1/2 acre lot we have many trees so in the fall we have many leaves. We collected leaves a couple of times and spread them in our future garden area as mulch, hoping for a good vegetable crop next year. But we would have had leaves as tall as us if we had put all of the leaves there. So we spent a day raking and hauling on a tarp the remainder of the leaves to the curb to be sucked up by the city truck. We had a "leaf bank" (rather than a snowbank) that ran the extent of our front footage, about 100 feet, from the curb to the sidewalk, about 4 feet, and piled about 3 feet deep in places. It was quite impressive. Despite the work necessary to clean up the leaves, we love our trees. They provide shade in the heat of the summer, shelter from wind, clean up our air and provide oxygen, and look nice. They're worth it!
I have been thinking a lot about Paul's writings in the New Testament and his phrase "a more excellent way". I see littered yards, filthy homes, broken windows, boarded up buldings and hear about drug addictions and the desperate crimes committed to support the addiction. I hear the obnoxious booming beat coming from the stereos in way too many vehicles, sometimes the value of the stereo is greater than that of the automobile in which it has been installed! I know Dayton is not the only city with these problems. But I wish I could convince so many people of a more excellent way to live. I would show them peace rather than desperation. I would have them clean and well-ordered rather than slovenly and unattractive. I would have them desire success and inner satisfaction rather than the unending lust for more things that will just deteriorate and need to be replaced on and on and on..... We don't have to be perfect, indeed we can't be perfect in this life. But we can strive to be better.