Happy New Year

A couple nights before New Years, while sitting in the hot tub one evening all nice and warn, we had the bight idea camping and riding for New Years. It hadn't snowed in a while and the weather HAD been pretty mild.

We made it till midnight, which is about when it started to rain!

It's been many years since I/we have made it until midnight for New Years.

We had a lot of fun, as witnessed by all the selfies,

 but it sure was painful the next morning.

Oh Jaxon w Dawson - messing w him whenever possible

 

Jaxon and I got a little riding in, interesting how the snow was all on the trails! 

 

Always trying to keep up with that kid

Christmas 2019

Merry Christmas!

All the kids were here for Christmas Morning!

Getting excited for snowboarding

Grandma Jo made everyone custom dish towels

Game time

Ethan and Kylee were in the middle of packing and moving into a new home, so one afternoon Kylee and Morgan were packing things up and came up w an alternative Christmas tree made entirely from Ethan's shoes and shoe boxes

 

Ugh the lights, if only I could get them evenly spaced the first time

Jaxon and Dawson working together ?

Morgan and Dawson added their ornaments to the tree.

Each year, as the kids were growing up, I let them pick an ornament for themselves, when they moved out they got to take them w them and have a nice start to their own Christmas tree. It was really nice to see Morgan's ornaments on the tree again! She's started the same tradition w Dawson, as well.



Building and decorating the Gingerbread House.



We miss our Idaho Families terribly, but sure enjoy getting updates!

Benham Falls

One of my favorite and first places in Bend that I enjoy.

It's an easy beautiful hike, perfect first outing after being down w a tib stress fracture.

 

 

Getting into the holiday craftng

It was so fun having a crafting buddy living with us. Morgan and I made these cute little porch gnomes out of the trimmed off  branches from our Christmas tree we harvested.

This is the cute one Morgan made.

 

And the one I crafted.

They blew over a couple times so we had to anchor them down w rocks.

They decorated our porch for about a week until one night I was backing out of the garage to go to work and noticed Morgan's wasn't on the porch. 

 

After a little investigating, this is what she found.

Backed over and left for dead! Ooops, Sorry Morgan!

High ponies and hair doodles

Occasionally, I get to work with these 2 fabulous ladies that love their hair doodles and it just so happened that I found my stash of scrunchies the previous day while cleaning out under my bathroom sink. So, of course, I had to rock the high pony and scrunchie that night at work!

He thinks he's our gift

This is our barn cat - Linus. He has been a very good hunter of mice, lizards, and birds. He has been fine sleeping out in the garage at night and hunting all day in the fields, out by the chicken coop, out in the barn and the perimeter of the back yard. All was good until he got stepped on one morning by a 125lb 12 y.o., unintentionally of course. He just happened to choose to sleep on the first step down in the garage, in the dark and wasn't seen until it was too late. Poor kiddie and poor devastated 12 y.o.

 

So, Linus has spent a lot of time in the house this winter recovering.

Birthday kids

 

What a pure delight this girl is!

 She works so hard and is the sweetest and funniest person!

Happy 25th

 

This guy - what a wonderful guy he is! His wit, charisma and tenderness is unparalleled

Happy 22nd!

Tree hunting

It was another fun and successful Christmas tree hunt in the McKenzie Wilderness.

It took a little longer to find the tree this year, but we didn't give up

They get along, sometimes

Morgan and Dawson build a snowman for the forest

Dawson was very determined to make sure that the tree we choose would smell like a Christmas tree. He sniffed a lot of trees that day. Under his sleeve he's giving us a thumbs up to this tree.

 

It definitely helped having a sled around to play with

 

Finding fresh bear tracks was pretty unnerving though

 Finally the perfect tree, at least it seems that way until you set it up in the house

 

 

 

It was a good size