(Make that Wednesday, February 10. I don't know how to change the date that's showing.) We had a quiet, but lovely Christmas. When we first moved here, in 1971 we bought an artificial Christmas tree for $11.88. It has served us very well over the years, but every year at Christmas Jim was faced with those dreaded words "Some Assembly Required…" We have loved that tree (at least I have) but in this case, Assembly meant putting the trunk of the tree together, and then inserting each individual branch. The stems of the branches were color-coded, but over the years much of the paint has worn off--making it even more time consuming to figure out which branches went where. Then the lights had to be strung, and all the ornaments put in place. 
All in all, it has been a very homey, sweet tree, even if it was a pain to put it together. (These pictures are from 2007.)
All in all, it has been a very homey, sweet tree, even if it was a pain to put it together. (These pictures are from 2007.)
We decided to do something very different this year. Some years ago Jim and I did the decorations for a big spring dance at the church. Jim lashed together some 6-8 foot tall honeysuckle branches (it was early spring so there were no leaves on them yet) and stood them up in Christmas tree stands. Then we decorated them with little Christmas lights, and artificial pink roses. It was really quite pretty, and lit up the corners of the room quite nicely. Well, it was fun, but took quite a bit of work. Rather than do that again, we got some white Christmas trees on sale one year. We got 5 trees, but two of them didn't work right, so they were returned. The remaining three have been used several times at the church, and one was used to light up our swing house one Christmas.Betsey had the BRIGHT idea of using them for our Christmas this year. What a novel idea! (^o^) She would have liked to have all three in our living room, but we settled on two. They still have a little bit of assembly, but nothing like our old one. Betsey decorated them with bows and birds. I like this picture because it shows both trees, the snowflakes on the ceiling, (the snowflakes stay up all the time because I like them) and some of the Christmas lights outside. It was quite festive.
This shows more lights that Jim put up outside. It was taken Christmas day. As you can see, we had no snow. It really was fairly dark when I took this picture, but it sure doesn't look like it.
Now, if you use just a little imagination you might be able to see what I saw when I looked out my window one day. If you look real close, does it look like there is a nativity scene in the picture below?
The sun came out just for an instant, and illuminated it very brightly. OK, so it's some kind of bent-over plant, but if you squint your eyes just a little…
Right now our world looks very different. We've had several big snow storms lately. The snow stuck to every little twig, and was quite lovely.
Our back yard bench which has a deep layer of snow, was caught in a brilliant flash when the sun came out for an instant. Those are asparagus plants in front of the bench.
Icicles anyone? We have a nice crop of them this year. (I know Cousin John is going to give me a hard time about this when he sees it.)
And here's the path that Jim shoveled so our little dog Angie could get out to the yard. It shows how the deck looks after the snow has settled for a few days.
Jim also shoveled a path out to the bird feeder. The birds have appreciated him!
We've got snow piled all around. Here's what our mailbox looks like. At least we've still been able to get mail.
The Christmas lights that we had on the deck turned out to have an interesting side effect. Angie, who is going on 16, doesn't see as well as she used to. She was having trouble going down the deck stairs at night. We discovered that the Christmas lights on the deck railing helped her to see--so we left them up. 
Well, that's it for now. Hopefully it won't be so long before I post again. Love, Kathey