A White Christmas

We had a very simple Christmas this year and I will let the pictures tell the story.

It is true! We had a White Christmas! This is so rare for us that I had to document it for posterity. Even now, New Year's Eve, the back yard is still covered in snow...but it is melting...yeah! The sad part of being snowed in for Christmas is that all the plates of cookies I was going to deliver didn't happen and by the time I could get out, I wouldn't give them away as many had gone stale...but we are eating them anyway!

The guitar was from Grandma and Grandpa Jensen as it used to be Grandma's guitar. My parents had flown to Salt Lake City to see the Temple lights and so it was arranged that they would bring the guitar back with them from Utah. That sure saved a lot of postage! And was Scott ever so pleased with it! He was hugging it when we came down the stairs. Now we just need to get some new strings and lesson materials and we are set!

Every year for Christmas I give Scott a stuffed cat. This year it was a bandit cat!

Stephanie in her new hat...wore it all day for two days!

Santa brought a Bryer horse...

...and a Bella Sara game.

I picked up this pillow for Steve to further document our "White Christmas". It was also marked down quite a bit!

A cat toy in his stocking...since Isabella has adopted Steve as her favorite person. :)

Here is Isabel admid all the gift wrapping...she only stayed long enough for this picture...

Merry Christmas!

Our Winter Wonderland!

The snow just doesn't seem to want to stop. We even received a few more inches today! And according to the weather report, more is on the way. We truly are having a "White Christmas" this year!

This is the blue spruce in front of the house and it truly is beautiful. I told Steve not to knock off the snow from the bottom branches as they are scheduled to be trimmed anyway...in case the weight of the snow is too much for them. We do have a few trees in the yard that are having some problems from the snow, so that will have to be taken care of.

When the snow first came, it was only an inch or so, and we didn't bother shoveling it. Then on Thursday last week, we got 12.5 inches, so we borrowed a shovel from our back yard neighbor and Steve worked hard at getting a path to the sidewalk and did the full length of the sidewalk. He even started another path from his garage to the sidewalk, when he came in and needed a rest...and sugar. That is when I went out and finished shoveling the path for his car to get out of the garage. My van was not shoveled out at this time.

Then...we got another foot of snow. This time both of us were out there...and the snow was heaver as it had started melting a bit. I used our small pointed shovel while Steve used the borrowed one again. It still took us a long time to get things cleaned up. These pictures show how much snow we piled up on the sides of our driveways...but this time both vehicles can get out of the garage!

Here is Scott helping to clear the sidewalk! We found that he really doesn't like getting cold and would much rather spend his snow days inside playing on his electronics. The boots we got him come off just as soon as he comes in the house!

This is just a pretty picture I took at the back door of our neighbors cedar tree.

Here are some more back yard pictures. One of them I tried to take a close up of the ice on some limbs from the water that dripped off the house.