Christmas!!!

For Christmas Jeff and I drove to Colorado and had a wonderful time with some of his family! Although we were sick the first few days there, we had recovered in time for a great Christmas. Here are some pics of the fun times!

Jeff's Mom and John dressed up for a fancy dinner with friends.

The whole gang piled in the Rover to go for a Christmas hike!

James and Candace stop to pose for a picture on the way up Green Mountain.

My wonderful sister-in-laws!

John is King of the Mountain!

The four siblings

The handsome Hubbs and me :-)

James loved his kimono robe

John's new hat made specially by his twin sister - Aunt Ellen.

Opening cute ornaments from Aunt Ellen

The guys got fun new ties from Stacy

Visiting with Jeff's Grandma

Arkansas Ice Storm

In mid December we were hit with a storm. There was about an inch of ice on everything! We couldn't even leave our driveway. I enjoyed having Jeff home for two days were we played games, watched movies, and ate popcorn. We were very we didn't lose our electricity!

Cheese Blintzes

For those of you who were at our wedding and enjoyed the yummy Cheese Blintzes made by Ms. Sherri, here is her recipe. These are a delicious treat! Would be great for the holidays.

8 oz cream cheese
1/2 c sugar
1 egg yoke
1 loaf white bread
1 stick butter
cinnamon / sugar mix

cut off crust of bread and roll flat
cream together cream cheese, sugar, and egg
spread on bread, roll up (may cut in half), freeze 15 min.
melt butter
dip cold rolls in melted butter and roll in cinnamon sugar mix.
Bake at 400 for 10 - 15 min. Turn during cooking.

May freeze before baking and bake later.

Yikes!

This happened while I was cooking for Thanksgiving - yikes!!! I wasn't even touching it! I was just standing there, and heard a huge, very loud POP. It was the weirdest thing. The glass had just shattered into thousands of pieces.

Family

We love having family (and friends too!!!) visit us. So come see us anytime :-)

My brother Mark and his family came to visit the week of Thanksgiving. Here is a picture of his youngest, William, eating breakfast.

We were so happy to have Sarah here for two days!

And happy my parents were able to come for a day too!

Insulating

One Sunday afternoon Jeff spent about 6-7 hours in the attic insulating. I joined him for about 4 of the hours.

Looking good.

Proof that I really was up in the attic, carefully finding support beams to stand/sit on, and helping Jeff make our house warmer.

Not much room to move around in the attic.

Lovely blue masks!

Newlyweds!

Our efforts were not in vain - insulating the attic has really made our house warmer this winter!

Hallway

Laying Tile (no clue why this is underlined, but I can't make it stop :-P )

Jeff did all the hard, outside work - and it was soooo cold! He did all the mixing and cutting.
I did the laying - inside where it was nice and warm.

Almost finished!

We couldn't walk on the tile for 24 hours, so Jeff set up bridges from the bedroom to bathroom, and bathroom to storage room, then we spidermanned it from the storage room to the kitchen - what adventures :-)
Ta da!

The transition from the kitchen to hallway turned out great - can't see it too well in this picture though.

Living Room

Jeff working on electrical stuff in the living room. Notice all the construction mess :-O

More construction mess.

Jeff sheet rocking!

Jeffrey's awesome sheet rock job!

Texturing the walls in preparation for carpet!!!

Everything off the floor and floors mopped - carpet comes the next day :-)

Yay - carpet is in! Now we can start arranging furniture.

Walls are painted! The morning my parents came to visit, Jeff and Sarah arranged furniture and cutified the living room :-) Thanks guys! View of living room from kitchen.

Dad is getting his camera ready to take pics of the house.

Fireplace.

Futon. Window overlooking neighbor's yard.

Awesome chairs, very generously given to us.

Computer desk.

Yet another view. Check out the awesome stair that Jeff built - go hubby!

Progress on el bano.

My brother and sister-in-law came to visit with their two little ones the week of Thanksgiving. Knowing we needed to have the house "baby proofed" before their arrival really lit a fire under us to get us busy working on things. So here is the transformation of the bathroom

Here Jeff is fixing an area of the tile.

This is only a few days before their arrival - no texture or paint on the walls, no vanity, no sinks, no mirrors - LOTS of work left to do!

I guess I was happy about something - probably that progress was being made :-)

The finished product! Still need to paint the patch up job by the door though.