Christmas Eve

This Christmas marked our first real holiday welcoming Abby home as a "visitor." It's always a wonderful time when this girl walks through the door!

Other noteworthy points about our Christmas Eve...

* I was experiencing acute sciatic pain as a result of a thrown-out back. I spent the evening on the living room floor. My family picked up the slack. 

* UofA T-shirts were the theme of the year for us all! Go Golden Bears!

 

December Delights

 

Christmas Lights - Throw back post

It's July, people. JULY!  And here I am posting pictures of this past Christmas!!!

Want to know why?  

Well, because life has gotten busy. 

You know all those other times when I have blogged and written and posted about how busy my life was?

Those were all lies.

Misinformed hints of busyness that were completely unaware of what was to come. 

These past six months have truly rocked my world, but here I am. 

Still standing and back to pick up the pieces of the moments that have mattered to me most over this wild and crazy period of time. 

So with that in mind - welcome to my flashback to Christmas 2021!

 

Brace Face

This girl has been waiting a very long time to be able to get her braces. (Why is this something kids want to have so bad?  I guess it compares to my desire for glasses.  I can empathize, without "getting it" right?)

At any rate - here she is!

 

October highlights

We spent a lot of time in October trying to socialize radar. 

He doesn't always play well with other doggies. It was nice to get to steal Nala one day for a walk along the Chief Mountain Highway. 

The kids are still loving the "dog life" and I've been impressed with their efforts to still take care of Radar!

(So far, it's not falling on John and me!)

I made several attempts in October to make a clementine cake. We LOVE the movie "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" and I've always wondered what that cake Walter Mitty likes so much, tastes like. Turns out, we will have to keep wondering!

It's a strange cake, made without flour, that requires boiling oranges and for some reason, after three attempts - I still couldn't get it right. This was the closest I'd gotten to it looking okay, but it turns out, those aren't oranges I used - but GRAPEFRUIT! (This definitely gets filed in the "fail" category.)

Jess and I were in the mood for a drive one day and we were feeling nostalgic so we decided to drive to Claresholm to see if my brother and his family were at their farm. They weren't, so we stayed for all of 5 minutes, but it was nice to get out of town for a bit. 

When my brother-in-law heard that Abby was coming down, he booked me and the girls in for pedicures together. Who does that?!  None of us had ever had pedicures before. It was fun!

October and November both produce spectacular sunrises and sunsets. 
We've had some breathtaking mornings, this past while!

Jessica just finished a good season of Volleyball and learned this past weekend that she has made the Basketball team!  

Life doesn't seem to be slowing down for her OR anyone these days. 

How has this year gone by so quickly!!

Halloween

 I love/hate Halloween.

I love the crisp autumn feeling, the apple cider, caramel apples, and handing out candy to the most adorable trick or treaters. 

What I hate though - is trying to make sure that my kids, my hubby, and  I all have something to dress up as. This task used to be a lot more challenging, mind you because my kids used to actually need my help with it all, but still, it just kinda nags at me. Where I used to have to spend days and days sewing and creating elaborate concoctions for them all, now I spend days and days pleading with them to settle on an idea, in case I need to sew, create or concoct. 

As it turned out - 

Jessica and her friends went as gangsters, so...not a huge effort was needed. (For Jess, it was more about the vibe than the outfit;)

Sam threw on a pair of pajamas. (Uh...thanks, buddy)

Nate and his friends all dressed as hippies, which apparently thirty other people at the Junior High did as well. (It must have looked like Woodstock in those hallways that day!)

John made his own costume and went as "Major Monogram" at the request of one of his students. John was flattered to be asked to join their group, but only wore his costume for about 20 minutes before leaving for a volleyball tournament. 

I (and two other EAs) went as the Three Musketeers. 

Abby and her roommates dress up as the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.

I love that she is enjoying her time with her roomies.

And radar- well..he just made me happy all day long.

I think I'll just focus on dressing the dog, in years to come!

Turkey, Larches, Lights & Family

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, this year, mostly because Abby came home to visit! 

It is hard to believe that she had already been away for 6 weeks, by this point.

She got home late on a Friday evening. We ordered wings from Pizza Hut and all sat around the table listening to her share some highlights of her new life in the city. 

The next day we prepared our first Thanksgiving feast of the weekend. We had to have TWO turkey dinners because the plan was to share a dinner with John's sister and her family, but I still wanted Abby to have our normal Thanksgiving dinner here at home too. 

It was tough, you know, all that turkey and stuffing...;)

Dinner #1:

Dinner #2:

After Thanksgiving Dinner #2, John and I took the kids out to Waterton to watch the Elk. It was a really nice evening out there and the Elk were close to the road, which doesn't always happen. 

Abby left for home (well, "home away from home) early on Monday morning, but we still had the day off and the sun was shining. We figured it would be a good day for a hike to Upper Rowe Lake. 

John had been wanting to dip his rod into some water again, and I longed to see some Larch trees, which I'd heard were looking amazing this year. 

John and I both struck out. When we reached the lake, we found that a thin, but an unpenetrable layer of ice had already formed above the water. Poor guy. 

Up until this day, I had heard about Larch trees, but never seen or noticed one before. They are a type of deciduous tree, that looks like a pine tree, but the needles are soft and turn a beautiful burnt golden color (for a short time) in the fall.  I suspect I was a week too late, as all of the needles had fallen by the time we set out in search of them. John and I were thrilled to get to find one, lone baby larch, as evidence that these trees do grow in our area. It was cool- once we found this tree, we began to recognize that all of these other trees around us, that we had assumed were dead, were actually larch trees, after their prime. 

We will have to time things better, next year. 

It was a great hike together, even if we weren't as successful as we'd hoped.

And - as if my Thanksgiving weekend had not already been totally perfect, that night I got a call from a family member, letting me know that the Northern lights were out and visible. 

It didn't matter that I was in the middle of taking a bath, when the call came, I FLEW out of the house and headed straight north, towards Standoff. 

Sure enough- lady Aurora was out.

This was a first for me.  I've been wanting to see the Northern Lights for YEARS!

We don't often get a show this far south, so it was definitely exciting. 

As I stared at the sky that night, I felt overwhelming gratitude for this world and for my family. 

I got to see the sky light up, I found a larch tree that had hung on just long enough for me, and I had the best three days with these people that I love. 

God is always good - but sometimes that truth just hits harder.