Snowshoeing 2022

Our snow is getting deeper with no significant melt off so it was time to pull out the snowshoes and to practice getting them on and trekking through the deep snow to retrieve the mail.

Mail retrieved and heading back to the homestead. The only treacherous part of this journey is crossing the street to the mailboxes.

I decided to blaze some trails in the back acres, too, since the shoes were already on.

Snowshoeing is a great winter exercise and the only way we can walk on our property when we get significant snow like we’ve had this year.

Current tidbits: Woke up in the wee hours to temps at 9 degrees F, brrr. It’s in the teens now and the forecast is for a 26 degree high today.

Our Colville kids are coming for dinner. It will be nice to catch up with them. Pot Roast is going in the oven for a slow cook this afternoon. They’ll bring along a salad.

I’ve been watching World Cup Soccer and the championship game will be played on Sunday between Argentina and France. I’m rooting for Argentina along with our Russian Argentinian friends. The game is early enough on Sunday that I will be able to watch before it’s time to head to church because of the time difference between us and Qatar. They are 11 hours ahead of the Pacific Coast. Any other soccer fans out there?

Our church service this Sunday will consist of the Children’s Play. It is called It All Happened in the Country. The children have been practicing for a couple months. I’m looking forward to the story they present. Another round of snow is predicted on Sunday.

The days are ticking down to Christmas. Ten more days to Christmas and sixteen more days in 2022! Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

A Slow Melt

Our snow is having a time melting off since our daytime temperatures are only getting above freezing for a few hours.

Our second bird feeder has been well received. I throw extra seed on the snow covered ground for the Quail that come to visit, too.

Our Dish TV stopped working because of this build up of snow. That was a first for us. Happy that Dear/Greg is healthy enough to trudge out to the dish to clear it off and restore our TV signal.

We made it back and forth to Spokane on Monday for some follow-up appointments for Greg and all is well with his Carotid which is good news.

In between our two appointments we enjoyed a meal at The Park Inn conveniently located to the hospital complex.

A Cheeseburger chowder was the special soup of the day, delicious.

Our road and a few other roads we had to drive on were like driving on a washboard. Needless to say we have been driving well under the speed limit.

Always thankful to make it there and back again, safe and sound.

Christmas Decorations 2022

Our tree is the same fake tree we’ve had the last couple of years. This year I held back and only put a few ornaments on it.

I was supposed to hang a couple starts on those exposed nails that fit the other artwork we have up in this space the rest of the year. Oops.

We bought this ornament from Blenheim Palace this past September.

We had another several inches of snow over the weekend. Thankfully the snow has ceased for a while. If our grands come over we’ll have to watch them carefully so they don’t get lost in a snow drift! They love the snow!

We’ve received several cards already and our cards are being mailed today. I always feel relieved when I drop those down the mail slot!

How are preparations in your corner coming?

Feed the Birds

We have been entertained by Quail and smaller birds like Juncos these days. We bought another bird feeder to put up this weekend since we are going to get even more snow and the birds are flocking to the bird feeders and the seeds that fall on the snow.

Our grounds will most likely be covered with snow through Christmas. They are predicting more snow until Sunday morning. Time to pull out our snow shoes!

I’ve been busy trying to get our Christmas Greetings ready to go to the post office. Some Christmas decorations are up but the tree is still undecorated. My organization is suffering these days.

Hope all is well in your corner. I’ll try to get around soon and see what y’all are up to.

Call It A Foot!

Tuesday night into Wednesday we had a significant snowfall here. By the end of the evening we had at least a foot of new snow.

These photos were from Wednesday the 30th of November. The rest of the photos are from Thursday December 1st which turned into a beautiful sunny day.

We are going into a frigid 4 degrees Thursday night into Friday and we have nothing over freezing on the forecast for the next week. Yikes! We put out bird seed for our little feathered friends. The Quail were enjoying our Oregon grape plant gathering the berries from it. This chubby guy was the lookout and a few other Quail were in the plant finding the berries.

Dear’s occupational therapy is going well. Hope all is well in your corner.

Willow

Andrew and Katie were given permission to bring their cat Willow with them for Thanksgiving. This was a first for us and the first cat in our Country Bungalow.

She had many new discoveries to make and routes to enjoy that no human could.

There were two rooms where the doors were closed and she was denied access. She became obsessed with wanting to get into our room one night and we saw her little paw under our door and then she rattled the door and meowed. Hilarious.

She knew where she could hide when the grands were here and were playing their hardest.

She survived and by the end of her time with us was making a little contact with me and Auntie Lolo. We’ll see if she wants to come back at Christmas.

Welcome to December!

30 Days Hath November Hodgepodge

Here we are at the end of November Hodgepodge. Thank you Joyce From This Side of the Pond!

Our yards have been covered with snow since November the 7th.

1. Sum up your November in ten words or less.

November had a scary start and a grateful, peaceful end.

2. Are you hosting any holiday parties this year? Attending any? Party pooper, party animal, or life of the party…where do you land when it comes to parties?

No, we are not hosting any holiday parties this year.

We will be attending our first Christmas Party on Sunday December 4th in Chilliwack, Canada. Hopefully the weather will settle down a bit for our drive to Spokane for our flight on Saturday and then our drive from Bothell to Abbotsford on Sunday. It will be our first time back in Canada since the beginning of ‘you know what’. We are so looking forward to being with the Mennonite Girls Can Cook and their hubbies! We will miss our two girls that live in Manitoba for this event.

The last MGCC party we were able to attend was in early December 2019 and this was one of the amazing desserts we enjoyed at that party.

I’m not a party animal or the life of the party or a party pooper. I do like to decorate for a themed party.

3. Do you purchase holiday clothing of any sort (sparkly tops, Christmas jammies, Santa suit, etc).

There is a festive holiday top or two in my closet. This year with limited time to shop and limited sources I have nothing new. The old sparklies are too snug for comfort, sigh.

Comfy jammies all the way!

4. What’s your go-to recipe when you’re asked to bring an hors d’oeuvre to a party?

I like to bring a charcuterie board of some sort. This year I’m trying Charlotte’s Red Pepper Jelly Tarts (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) for a ladies brunch I’m invited to on Thursday.

5. December 3rd is National Play Outside Day…what might you do to celebrate?

We are flying from Spokane to Seattle that morning and will hopefully celebrate our daughter in law, Laura’s birthday in some way that day or evening.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

In World Cup news, the U.S.A. advances to the round of 16 playing against Netherlands on Saturday. It was a brutal 2nd half but in the end we eliminated Iran and we move on.

Wednesday Morning Update on our overnight snowfall which is still falling this morning:

As of 7am we have 8-1/2 inches of new snow. Our neighbor has already plowed our driveway before she heads into work. We are very grateful for her and her kindness to us. I did hop out in my jammies and Uggs and slipped her some cash for gas!

UPDATE at 11:15 A.M.: We have a total of 11 inches of new snow. PTL Dear is healthy enough to shovel snow!

Lots of cancellations in Colville today because of snow. Happy we can be home and today is baking day for my event on Thursday. Perfect weather to bake!

Rounding Out November

Our Thanksgiving weekend was completed Monday morning when we said our goodbyes to Uncle Joshie and Auntie Lolo praying for a good drive home especially over the passes. Auntie Lolo shared more of her photos with us on their drive and I’m using them to round out November here on my blog. Thank you Lolo!

Our November has been a wintry one with temperatures in the teens and below freezing for a lot of the month.

Addy has a recital coming up in December. She’s the youngest in the bunch so she’ll start the evening off with this song she is practicing.

Addy is practicing her selfie skills in this one.

Me and my guy.

Uncle Joshie captured this shot.

Thank you for making the snowy drive to Colville and home again Uncle and Auntie. We miss you already!

Monday night I had a Women’s Ministry meeting at church with a light meal of appetizers shared. The meeting was short and then the fun task for the evening was decorating the church for Christmas. Our head of services gal was in charge of that and had already gotten a good start so the task was lighter than usual. I opted out of the decorating and headed home on the snowpacked/icy roads.

Today is a quiet day here at our Country Bungalow. We started the morning off at 10 degrees. Brrr. I’ll be watching World Cup Soccer today as the USA plays Iran. My parents were married in Iran and our oldest 2 sisters were born in Iran. We’ve mostly called that country Persia. So thankful God led our people out of that country back in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Our parents were the first of their family to immigrate to the USA in 1947.

Thankful for this quiet day and hope the predictions of up to 14 inches of snow into tomorrow morning is an exaggeration!

Sunday Last…

On Sunday October 23rd we had a church potluck to celebrate our Pastor’s 10 year Anniversary as Pastor of First Baptist Colville.

We have outgrown our gym at our facility so we rented the Ag Center at the Fairgrounds for this event.

One of the families at our church decorated the tables.

Since it was in honor of Pastor Dennis they went with a manly theme.

We surprised Pastor and Lori by flying in Dr. Jim Tillotson, president of Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary in Iowa to preach the sermon in the morning. We managed to keep this a secret until Dr. Tillotson stepped up on stage to speak. After the service our church family were to drive over to the Center with their Main Dish or Side Dish to share with everyone. I was way too busy to take a photo of the two rows of 4 tables which meant 48 feet of food brought to share.

This is Dear and Me while we were still fresh before the event began. Since the event wasn’t on our campus we had to haul a lot of things to the Ag Center and when the event was over, haul them back. Our day started at 7am and we were pulling into our driveway at 3:30 in the afternoon. We were going for a solid 7 hours. By cake cutting time my brain was not functioning well. That happens frequently when there are so many details to store in the brain and then the explosion of all the things that need to happen at the same time when you have 100 dishes arriving simultaneously!! When we got home on Sunday we put our feet up and and did a lot of sighing with gratitude. It was a successful event with 300 people fed and satisfied with food leftover.

The important thing was that Pastor and Lori were celebrated well and they enjoyed the love and surprises on this special day.

So thankful for the willing hands to step in and help in any way they could.

Not too Scary Hodgpodge

Time for Wednesday Hodgepodge. Where Joyce asks the questions for us to answer. Join in the fun HERE.

1. In two or three sentences describe yourself to someone who has never met you.

I’m the daughter of Russian Immigrants and was raised in the Los Angeles area with my seven siblings. God chose to save me from my sins through Jesus Christ, His Son, who is my Lord and Savior when I repented in 1963. Happily married to Dear for 48 years where in the course of those years we have enjoyed our three children, their spouses and our two grandchildren, the cherries on the top.

2. Will you celebrate Halloween this year, and if so tell us how?

We will actually be going to a Reformation Conference Halloween weekend in Sandpoint, Idaho. On Halloween Monday also known as Reformation Day we will enjoy our grandchildren coming over and trick or treating at our door. They will be the only trick or treaters since living in the country on dark country roads we don’t have the usual city trick or treaters.

Let’s play this or that-chocolate candy or fruity candy?

Chocolate

Pumpkin seeds or pumpkin pie?

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Halloween party or scary movie?

Neither 🙂

Hay ride or corn maze?

We have a great corn maze here in Colville and the majority of our family enjoyed it together this past Saturday.

Carve a pumpkin or paint a pumpkin?

Carve a pumpkin.

3. What’s something that scared you when you were young? Are you still afraid?

The movie King Kong. If I watched it today I’d probably laugh at the animation.

4. Your favorite soothing drink?

Hendrick’s with cucumber and Fever tree elderflower tonic.

5. Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

Yes because we are planning a family trip in January which caused discussion about Christmas and reminding ourselves that we would not do ‘present overload’ and save our money for the trip.

Does this make you feel happy or stressed?

Happy.