Blizzard 2011 and Basketball

Holy Cow! We survived the Blizzard of 2011. In all honesty, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had prepared for. I had food supplies stocked, flashlights ready to go with fresh batteries, and activities lined up for us if we lost power. We never lost power nor did we lose our satellite TV or Internet signals. Yeah!

We were snowed in, however. The drifts out the back door were over my head in places. I stayed inside and caught up on a few household duties while Jim plowed the driveway. Here are a couple of pictures I took when we woke up Wednesday morning:

When we aren't plowing snow, we have been going to Jared's basketball games. His 7th grade team won Regionals and won their Sectional. It is the first time in the school's history that the 7th grade boys basketball team has made it to the State championship games. It is down to the final 8 teams. Way to go boys!

Regional Champions!

Sectional Champions!

Wish us luck as we begin our quest on Saturday for the State title.

Christmas Cards

Each year I send out about 100 Christmas cards. I love this part of the holidays. It's such an easy way to keep in touch with family and friends. I like to let those folks who mean alot to the family that even though we may not see them or talk to them on a regular basis, we are thinking of them. I love getting Christmas cards, too.

Over the past few years, the amount of cards we receive has been fewer and fewer. It seems people are not wanting to spend the money on sending Christmas cards. This makes me sad. Are we turning into such a materialistic society that we'd rather buy one more video game than send cards out? You can send 100 cards for less than what the hottest new video game costs. I realize everyone is cutting back on expenses these days, heck I know we are, but I just won't make Christmas cards one of those cutbacks.

OK. I will get off of my soap box. We did something different this year. The kids have always wanted to send the cards that have a family picture or, as is the case this year, their picture. So, off we went last night to find a suitable place to take a picture. I will plan better for this next year but we did find a nice spot by the bridges in our town.

What do you think? I cropped most of the background out for the card but I think it's a good picture of the two of them.




Our weather is going to be cold this week. I am so glad most of my remaining shopping can be done online. Have a great week!

O Christmas Tree

We go to the same tree farm every year to get our tree. We usually go right after Thanksgiving but since Jared was sick this year we had to wait until Sunday. We like to cut one down so it stays fresh longer and I like the way it makes the house smell. This year the weather was perfect - not too cold but not too warm.

We rode the tractor around the large farm until we came to an area where we thought we would have some luck. We jumped off and started looking for THE TREE. We walked around and saw a few potential candidates. We were getting ready to head to another area when we stumbled upon not 1, not 2, but 3 candidates. After some serious discussion between the two kids, we settled on candidate #1. Jared gets the honor of cutting down the tree each year.

Jim supervising the cutting to make sure it is straight.

Nice job, buddy!

The kids posing with the 2010 tree.


Taylor supervising the boys. The story of her life.

Our annual picture buy the Talbott's Wreath.

And it wouldn't be a Christmas tree outing with hot cider.

I love holiday traditions. Don't you?

Dora

The Holiday Season

I don't know about your family but we love the holiday season. Unofficially, we start getting into the holiday spirit right after Labor Day weekend. This year we are going to have a bit more time as Taylor isn't playing any winter sports (yes, she's bored silly) and Jared is playing on the middle school basketball team so we won't have his travel basketball games on the weekends.

We start decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. We typically get the tree that day but this year we had to wait until Sunday due to Jared feeling under the weather on Friday.

We did start a new tradition this year. A town close by always has a Festival of Lights parade. All of the floats are done in Christmas lights. We were invited to a friend's house to have some food and drink before the start of the parade. We then walked about a block over to the parade route and drank hot cider and watched the floats go by. It definitely put us in the holiday spirit.

Here are a few pictures from the parade:

It is snowing here today, well flurries really, but I'm counting it as snow. Puts me in the mood to shop so I am off to do a bit of shopping before heading to the school to help decorate Christmas cookies for the troops with the 7th grade class.

Dora