Blessings!

   Well, after nearly 5 months of trying to settle into our new home and so many things happening in between...it's time to get back to my blog! I am going to make a concerted effort to get back to regular blogging now that life is slowing down. I have truly missed it and I've missed visiting with all of you. How thoughtless of me to ignore my blogging friendships and slip away without a word. Sooo, I ask forgiveness from all of you and I hope to be more diligent and consistent in the future:)

   Having said that...I want to share some wonderful and exciting news for us:)

   As you all know, we moved to Wisconsin back in October. You also know that in that move we had to leave behind our son and his little family:( It was one of the hardest things we have ever had to do but decisions like these are something that must be prayed about and sometimes the end result is to do things that are difficult and not what you want.

   Well...here's the new news...Matthew and his beautiful family ARE HERE!! Yep! They moved here near us. In fact, they have moved into an uncles house who is a long haul trucker. He offered his home to them not only to insure his home and cats are safe while he is on the road, but to help Matthew to get back on his feet again:)

   Matthew lost his job back in January and after really trying hard to find a new situation, things just weren't working. There were no jobs and no prospects. Even Kristina's parents were having trouble after her father also lost HIS job.

   It was a terribly difficult decision to make but after prayer and lots of discussion, they decided to give it a whirl! Matthew drove their things out (with a few little mishaps) and arrived here on the 9th. Then Kristina and Little Miss Shea arrived on an airplane the next afternoon to join him.

   We are busy this week helping them to get settled into their new home, which is just in the village where we live! They are less than 1/2 a mile away:)

   And did I mention that Kristina is expecting in May? Yep...Little Miss Shea is going to be a big sister! Little Miss Shelby!! We are all so excited:) God is good.

   I know this was terribly difficult for Kristina, leaving her parents to make this move. I know it was terribly difficult for them to step back and let them do what they felt was best for their growing family. It's always difficult for us mom's to let go and just be there for them as they make their own decisions and feel so very blessed as we watch them grow and learn. Oh if only we could just give them a manual to follow to avoid all the pitfalls we experienced before them. But, just like stereo instructions...they wouldn't read it because they already know how it works :P

   So that's our news :) I'll be back! I have some pictures to share and want to just keep up with my dear friends here at the blogger:)

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

Why BAKE and COOK of course!

Blessings All!

   We are adjusting rather well to our new surroundings. Although it tends to be a bit colder than Oregon had been, it's really not that bad :) We've heard stories but so far nothing close has happened yet. I am hoping that one day we will have stories of our own to tell :P

   In the meantime we have done some experimenting with some new cookware that Brother Craig purchased before we moved here to Wisconsin. He wanted to save it until we moved so we could get rid of all the old stuff, except for my beloved cast iron, and have pots and pans that matched and had lids that fit and didn't look like we raided the second chance shoppe...of course that IS where we got all that old stuff :P

   Well, the cooking part of it went well...then there was the promise of the included cookbook for this wonderware that we could bake in it as well! So, why not? Seems easy enough. We can watch a timer, turn a dial, lift a lid...so lets give it a shot...um...maybe pineapple upsidedown cake should have been tried after simpler things were perfected...I think Miss Sarah wanted to cry. :P She might not be able to do the cookware thing but she sure can bake pies with the flakiest, most delicious crusts! And Voila!!!

Then there is the PotPies she creates:Then there is the Anything Goes Casserole...YUM!

There is more but this will have to do for now. I will be posting progress on the house here as time permits! It's exciting!

Have a very blessed day in the Lord!

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

Blessings!

   As with all things, whether it be fast or slow, it's coming right along:)

   We did manage to finally have our gathering with brother, wife and niece. It was such a wonderful time and some pretty tastey food I might add:P We exchanged gifts and just spent time talking and enjoying each others company:) It's been a very long time since we've been together for any holidays and this was such a blessing:)

   Things are getting put away slowly and just as soon as I think I've organized something to my liking, I go and change it again! Do I keep doing this because like the work involved? or maybe it's a control issue:P Controlling my environment seems to be the only thing I do have some say in these days:) God has control of the rest and one day I might just give this over to Him too:P

   Our sewing projects that we have had on the ready for the last several weeks are...finally...STILL IN THE READY POSITION! Hehe! I found so many other things that needed doing instead and so, as usual, it all got put aside. Ugh! Perhaps this week I'll get around to more of that and less of the distractions:)

   The girls started new jobs today so I'm all alone! It's odd to be alone. I am not sure I'm enjoying it so much as enduring it. Well, it's only until 3 so it isn't so bad I guess:P I sure do miss them though. They can fight like cats and dogs and sometimes make me feel like pulling my hair out but you know, I just don't know what I"ll do with myself when they one day leave my nest:s

   Miss Sarah's room is coming right along (hehe). For all of our hopes and wishes, time is what we have and slowly but surely is far more productive than quick and messy:) My brother comes over nearly every weekend to work on the room (and some other to do's) and it is slowly coming around to looking like a real room again! Yay!

   I have pictures of it but I want to wait until we have it completed and then I can show you from start to finish what it looks like! It's so exciting and Miss Sarah is thrilled! She has been working side by side with the men up there from the start and she feels like she's contributed in a big way (which she has) to helping get things done and settled here:)

   The girls went skating on the lake yesterday and last night were feeling it:P With the pending job this morning they weren't looking forward to having to be on their feet all day. But with a little slow achy push this morning they were off and running:)

   We woke up to the most beautiful display of Gods artistic work that I've ever seen. The frost on the treest was crystalized and has everything looking like a frozen wonderland! It's so amazing! Those beautiful branches just sprouting with the most intricate designs of crystalized ice! Absolutely stunning! Thank you God!

   Well, it's just after noon and I need to get some more things done before those two get home. I have to "stage" some things so they can help me with the heavy parts since I can't do that part myself:P Oh and I am redoing the kitchen...again! Always reorganzing that place. One day I think I'll be done with that just in time to move again! hehe!

   The kitchen is just wonderful and big and I am trying to make the most out of my workspace. I still have some things that need unpacked in there but I ran out of steam a few weeks ago and of course the boxes just sat on the floor in the kitchen (out of the way) while we began to live life around them. I can't stand it anymore! I need organization...it makes me crazy! :P

   Okay, I'm done ranting...off to make use of my time:)

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

Blessings!

It is a brisk -11* this morning! So indoor day it is!

Yesterday we got all the Christmas decorations down and put away except for one lone wreath that needs a home:( I was hoping to find another wreath box this year but after searching yesterday at two differen WalMarts I'm pretty sure those are all sold out! They were going for such great prices that I knew I should have purchased one more but thought I had enough:( Oh well...we'll figure it out:)

It's nice to reclaim the house though! This means that now after all the holiday stuffs is over for another year I get to turn my efforts back to the house:) Thank you Jesus!! Our goal is to be completely finished with unpacking (with the except of Miss Sarah's things) by the end of this week! Of course we are also praying that Miss Sarah's room can be finished up this weekend, in which case her thing will be unpacked too:)

I have several sewing projects that need doing and I am hoping to get back to those by next weekend:) I have a wool coat to make, three dresses, 3 flannel blushers, half dozen flannel undies and two flannel under slips to do. Doesn't take long (except the coat) and the girls have their own list of "to do's" that we will all work on together:) It makes my sewing time much more pleasant when I have someone to share it with:)

I'm not sure if we'll be seeing my brother and his family this weekend afterall. I'm sad about that but we have a "chill advisory" that came in last night until noon on Sunday. We decided that if we do go, we'll take a motel room near them so we don't have to try to drive this at night when the temps are expected to drop to -25*. Yikes! They do expect a high of 4* today though hehe!

We spent our New Years Eve, playing some games, eating lots of unecessary snacks and reading together:) We were going to watch a couple old movies but we ended up getting sidetracked with the games instead:) Always a welcome thing:) We much prefer just playing and being together anyway:)

Well, I suppose I should get breakfast up. I let Brother Craig sleep in a bit as he had a very late night last night (twice in a row makes for a grumpy hubby) A good breakfast after a nice sleep always seems to help:) I think the kitchen is warmed up enough now:) I turned the cannon on at 7 and then huddled under my blankie in my room on my lounge:)

Have a very blessed weekend!
God be with thee!
Sister Lori

  I am not giving up this blog, but I have started a new blog over at blogspot. If you are interested, here is the address:

http://myworldofwords208.blogspot.com/

Mary-Ann

We have ICE STORMS!

   Blessings!

   There is nothing more invigorating than a brisk walk in brisk weather:) However, there is something to be said for getting to the end of your drive and finding that you can no long feel your face! I say we get rid of all those needles and just send wrinkle faced people out into the ice storms (temps at 31 with a windchill of 2!!) and I guarantee they won't be able to move enough muscles in their faces to smile, scowl or blink! haha!

   Ever since the blizzard a few weeks ago, we've been walking into town (maybe 1/2 a mile away) and getting a little chilled. We would fog up our glasses as we walked because we were talking incessantly and seeing our breath before us. We had fun trying to make rings of steam from our mouths. We could warm up our hands by breathing on them. We would walk past the lake and see if it was frozen enough yet for skating (not yet:() and get to my husbands work to shake the snow off the boots, buy a drink, get a hug from him and then walk home:)

   All these things aren't even remotely possible when there is a windchill of 2*!!! You see, by the time you get 30 feet from your home, you cannot feel your ears anymore. They are covered by your headscarf but the wind is so fierce that it's blowing right through...you might as well not have anything on your head at all! Once you have realized you cannot feel your ears, you begin to feel a pinching at the ends of your gloved fingers. These gloves are rated for -30...but I don't think they meant WITH A WINDCHILL FACTOR! You make it out to the main road to cross it and walk over the bridge (which has no sidewalk or human lane), but are held up by fast moving big rigs that don't know there's an ice storm happening around them! They slip and slide across the bridge and, without slowing, rush past you spraying you with muddy snow and ice and MORE WINDCHILL!

   Now you are across the bridge, and can still see your house across the little river that runs between you and the main road. By this time you realize that your glasses have stopped fogging over! This seems great and when you open your mouth to comment you notice that not only is there no steam coming from your mouth but you are speaking in tongues...because your lips are frozen in place and your tongue can't get past your chattering teeth!

   Once in town you reach the market and open the door to greet your sweet husband and grab something warm to drink before heading back home again:) He takes one look at you and asks...what have you done to your face? hahahahahaha! Completely expressionless (your face is literally frozen in place ergo no wrinkles, no sags) you look at him and ask..."why whatever do you mean?". His boss comes around the corner, stops and looks you square in your frozen face and asks, "You didn't actually WALK here did you?" I try to nod but my neck seems slightly stiff. He says, "are you nuts? Who in their right mind would come out in an ice storm and walk across town?" I say through clenched teeth (remember my mouth is still frozen)..."An Oregonian?" hahahahaha!!!

   Having taken this short trek out I announce that I am NOT walking home I am stealing the car! I have no intentions of going back out in that to walk ANYwhere! What was I thinking? I run to the car (nearly breaking my neck which is too stiff to look down and see that there's ICE forming on the pavement) and get inside to find that the snow from my husbands shoes 4 hours earlier hasn't even melted yet! In fact, I could still make a snowman out of that! It's so close to home that bothering with the heater is completely ridiculous but I turn it on anyway...why? Because I MISSED THE WINDCHILL FACTOR!!! :D:D:D

   I finally get home, drag the girls and the dogs into the car and run a single errand. It was quick, it was much warmer doing it in the car and it was over! Home again, inside a warm house, trying to thaw out! In fact...my ears started hurting about a half hour later so I knew they were finally thawing and I can finally raise one eyebrow.

   If you don't have to be out in something like this...DON'T :P Botox...what a silly concept...just stick your head in a freezer and you can have it even on the hottest of days!

Have a very blessed and God filled Christmas!!

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

  Do you ever have a day when you are not able to find a pair of matching socks? You know you wash at least a half dozen pairs and have folded them, yet some how they disappeared somewhere between when you folded them and when you put them away?

  For me, today is one of those days. I washed and folded five baskets of laundry yesterday (I was a little behind on washing), and somehow not one pair of my socks went through. I am sure I folded some, but this morning they seem to have gone to that land where missing clothing goes.

  So this morning, since my feet are freezing and I am off Christmas shopping later today, I put on the closest match I have. Unfortunately, the closest match I have is a white sock with a tan toe and heel and a brown, blue and green plaid sock. At least they are both bobby socks and are the same brand of clothing.

Oh my, I guess it is a good thing I decided to wear snow boots today, at least no one will see.

In the words of Michel de Montainge, "Since we cannot match it let us take our revenge by abusing it."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

   It finally snowed about a week and a half ago! We got about 18 inches of beautiful white. It is snowing again to day, but I do not know how long it will last. I love the snow, so I enjoy getting to march to and from my uncle-in-law's house everyday to feed his cats and check on his house while he is away for the month at trucking school.

  It is tough walking in the snow, it was making my ankles so sore, that I couldn't wait to get home and take my clunky boots off. Now it barely hurts, or doesn't hurt at all now that I am used to it. Of course, it still gets to Sarah when she decides she want's to tag along, but she will get used to it just like I have done.

  On to other news. As some of you know, we moved into my Aunt and Uncle's not so finished farm house. My sister and all her stuff has moved into my room while her room is having it's walls put in, so my room has nothing but mountains of stuff and small narrow paths that lead to the closet and both of our beds (one of which cannot actually be called a bed, since it is simply two air-matresses, one placed atop the other with a sleeping bag and a stack of blankets). The dresser has had shelves set up against it, so no one can get to their clothes that are trapped inside, and the remaining clothes that are trapped on the outside with us, cannot go in the closet, because it is have a door put in. So they are not so carefully placed (thrown) on the top of mount junk-more.

  To add to this, the furnace doesn't work! That's right, the small controller, which powers everything died when the basement flooded last winter (and of course, we have no fire place). So this large, not-so-well-insulated farm house is being heated by a propane heater, a karo-sun heater, and several electric space heaters. My poor dog Tipper (my Whimeriner/Lab/Springer cross) who has very short hair and very little fat, has been subjected to the torture of the propane heater. She has been burned, lit the tip of her tail on fire, and gotten a sun burn from its aluminating heat. Even after all this, she cries when it is turned off, because she gets too cold. So she has learned the boundry of the heater, so we won't shut it off. Of course, the ocassional "got-to-close-to-the-heater" happens and she comes crying into the kitchen for protection.

  I know that everything with the house will work out, it just takes time.

  At least the cat doesn't mind what is wrong with the house, she would rather be in here then outside. She wanted out so bad this morning that I let her, she took about six steps out onto the porch turned around and looked at me as if it was my fault that the snow was everywhere, she then proceeded to sit on the porch and cry for me to come get her. Poor thing.

Well, that is all for now. In the words of Ogden Nash, "A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold."

Sincerely,

~Mary-Ann~

Blessings!

   Okay, I'm on to do much complaining but when it's THIS cold...who can help it? haha!

   Last night, Miss Mary-Ann took the dogs out the front door (bad idea) where there was a buildup of snow drifts against it. Thus the snow fell into the foyer on her way back in. No big deal...in fact I figured it would meld and I would just mop it up shortly. Well, we had decided to watch a movie, so after supper and all, we went into the frontroom and set up the projector and watched it. Several hours later all of us were tired and ready for bed so out of the nice warm frontroom we went and into the foyer to go upstairs...I looked down and sure enough...THE SNOW WAS STILL THERE! Yikes! I knew that room was cold but cold enough NOT to melt a little snow? And yes...it was still there UNmelted this morning:P

   Brother Craig was on his way to work early and I hadn't quite woken up just yet. I've been a little under the weather (no pun intended) and was still to my bed. Anyway, he came in and said he had to walk to work because the car wouldn't start...huh? Why not? He says the car sensor says it's -11 out there!!! Wow! Soooo, the car wont' start (which means our planned outing today won't happen) and if that wasn't enough he says he had the gas stove on with the vent heating out into the room because there was ice on the windows and counters in the kitchen! Wow again! It seems that when the kitchen freezes that the water spills from doing dishes the night before become skating rinks for the ants and mice! hehe:P

   Now I'm not really complaining here, but what about the basement? I have to go down there today to put up some more boxes of glassware from the move. With my legs not liking to do much moving around in the cold, the girls are going to have to go down to be sure there's no ice for me to slip on. Sounds mean, doesn't it? I send my children down to break their legs first? hehe! Not really, it's just that they are able to get down there and back up without having their legs seize up on them:P

   This is all new to us. We have lived in snow before, we have lived in cold before, we have had to deal with frozen pipes and icy windows before, but it never got down below 0 and only for a short time:P

   We experienced our first blizzard AND real snow here at the same time. By the way the blizzard was AMAZING! We watched it intently (from inside the house of course) and really enjoyed the power of it. The result was a stunning display of white covering even the most hideous of things turning them into a masterpiece! God is an awesome artist!

   Today? They are ice fishing! I didn't think it would be that quick before the lake was frozen over enough to do that! Ice skating is next! I can't wait to get into the city and visit the Mississippi. I cannot fathom the idea of that river actually freezing solid! To think, folks drove their covered wagons and did cattle drives across that frozen river! What a sight that must have been.

   Well, that's it for now. Just wanted to share my awe at this new experience in our lives:) God has surely brought us to where we are to be and to experience new and different things in His Name is more than I could have hope for:)

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

   After all this time waiting for a little snow, it appears we are expecting a blizzard instead! The blizzard alert was announced by the National Weather Service in La Crosse, WI.

   We already have about 6 inches of snow on the ground and they expect the blizzard to begin around midnight, accumulating another 12 - 16 inches by morning. This will continue until Thursday morning. Lord willing it won't be too bad for folks.

   If you think of us, please pray for safety, warmth and calm hearts:) It's my first time out here for a winter...and to think, I thought Oregon was snowy! hehe!

   We have plenty of food, plenty of lanterns, plenty of alternative heat sources and plenty of lapwork to keep us busy:)

   Today, the girls went to their uncles house to feed his cats and check on the corn furnace. On their way they got partway across the bridge at the end of our road when a semi hauling two trailers came across. It bounced it's cab a little against the guardrail and then the second trailer fishtailed and tapped the guardrail too. The girls were on the other side of the bridge and they said he never even slowed down. He just drove on! Yikes! They have been forbidden to cross that bridge unless it is completely clear in both directions with no cars or trucks in sight! Once the lake freezes, they can take that as a shortcut and avoid that bridge for the rest of winter.

   Praying that ya'll are safe, warm and out of harms way:)

God be with thee!
Sister Lori