Summarizing January 2013

I have woefully neglected the Ponderosa blog.  I haven't made a single post in 2013, so I am going to try to summarize January and do better the rest of the year!  Here goes:
We rang in the New Year with a big party at the homes of the Ponderosa Princesses.

 Everyone was happy to be together and well since we had been plagued with sickness for a while! We made festive bottles for our New Year's Celebration!

The grown kids made supper/dinner. There was shrimp, craw daddies and ham and cheese sliders with lots of sides.

After dinner there was:

Wrestling

 Shopping Cart Racing

 Brownie Making

 General Rowdiness

And Taste Testing--Is it Coke or store brand cola?

After a few games of Sequence, it was bedtime for babies and we took the party to another location where 6 year olds can stay up until the new year!

The first day of the year began with a New Year's Day lunch with all the foods that are suppose to bring you good luck. There was hog jowl, cabbage and black eyed peas.

 P-pa and Nana went back to the Ponderosa and things were great until the end of the week when I got the flu, despite the fact that I got a flu shot and had eaten good luck foods on New Year's Day.

The next couple of weeks were uneventful with Peanut opening Gibson Tax Service for the season and me continuing with my now two year project of de-cluttering the Ponderosa. 
Then. . . the squirrels returned!  They get in between the stories of the house and into the laundry room which is under the stairway.  We tried glue traps with little luck.  They began hiding hickory nuts in the dirty laundry, so we tried a live trap.

Nothing happened here and they were quiet for a while so we hoped they had left.  One night when we returned home from an outing we saw one had been on a glue trap, dragged it into the hallway but escaped.  Later I decided to have a snack of cookies and milk.  As I was leaving the kitchen carrying said snack,  I stepped into the hallway looked up and sitting on top of the laundry room doors was the squirrel!  I took one step back,  let out a blood curling scream and somehow went around the kitchen table and jumped into a chair in the small room beside the kitchen!  I did not spill one drop of milk in this process!   Peanut, who had already gone to bed for the night, rescued me by picking up a BB gun and ridding the Ponderosa of this pest!  No one but the squirrel was hurt!
The last week of January I spent some time with the grand kids doing lots of playing and book reading and running around. Parker even got a day off from school while I was there because a tornado the night before had caused power outages. Ponderosa Princess, Stephanie and I took The Babies to the Discovery House children's museum in Murfreesboro.  They enjoyed it and wore their little selves right out, playing in the store, climbing, digging, driving the firetruck, riding the rocking toys, and watching the turtles and ducks! 

These were just a few of the highlights from January 2013.  The Ponderosa also enjoyed a week-end visit from Brooks and Brynn.  We joined the smart phone generation by upgrading to iphones.  Mom and I got in some good shopping days.  I made progress on my quest to remove the clutter from the Ponderosa and Gibson Tax Service is off to a busy start.  And tomorrow we get to start a new month full of birthdays and new fun!

12 on the Twelfth of December

It's time for this year's last twelve on the twelfth.   I think I missed two months, last month because of illness and one month in the spring.  Today was a special twelfth, the date being 12/12/12.  It only happens every one hundred years!  It is suppose to be a lucky day.  We didn't have any especially good luck, but I don't know of anyone who was sick today so lately that would be a lucky day for our family!

The day started out a little frosty!

One of Peanut's facebook friends posted a status that it would be a good morning for chocolate gravy, which made him want some too.

My Christmas cactus has started to bloom.  It's actually Tracie's cactus.  Mom got it for her birthday several years ago and it has been sitting in my kitchen window since!

First chore this morning is to clean up all the stuff we dropped in the living room after non stop Christmas shopping for a day and a half.  Our feet were hurting so we just carried it in and dropped it.

Peanut assembling and charging some of the Christmas presents. 

Round two of the Ponderosa Christmas card mailing.  We are doing our best to keep the post office from going broke.

Spent some time this afternoon maintaining the Imagination Library data base.  I am Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in Pickett County!

 

If you need some vitamin C we have lots here, tangerines and oranges arrived this afternoon.

Made this orange jello and filled it with apples and oranges this afternoon.  Jello is always better with fruit.  Now if we just had some angel food cake.

Wrapped a few presents.  We don't have a tree up yet, just a corner full of presents. There is just so much to do!

This is the room where I am preparing the Christmas boxes.  Everyone gets a box for Christmas filled with surprises and snacks and things you need and things you don't need. It's fun to go through and easy to carry home.

I think I'll end the day with a little reading on my kindle.  I am just starting Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett.

Christmas Parade

Yesterday Gibson Tax Service participated in the Byrdstown Christmas Parade!  We had a small float and a golf cart decorated for our family to ride.  The theme was a Patriotic Christmas, so there was lots of red white and blue on all the entries!  Everyone had a great time waving and greeting the people along the parade route.  Our favorite part was tossing candy to the children watching the parade, expect for Brooks who loved waving flags the best!

 Getting ready to go.  It rained just before, but when it was time to start the rain stopped!

 This boy loved waving flags!

 He really loved to wave the flags!

 His enthusiasm was contagious and Brynn started waving too.

 Tracie and Peanut drove the golf cart.

Parker the elf, was an excellent candy thrower and wished everyone a Merry Christmas!

Circling the square

After the parade we went to visit Santa and Mrs. Claus and their reindeer.

Parker was glad to talk with them and put in his Christmas requests.

Brooks was not so happy about his visit.  

He did like the reindeer and even tried to feed them some grass and hay.

We all had a great time and are making plans for next year's parade!

Welcome December

Welcome December, we here on the Ponderosa are glad to see you.  November was not very kind to us!  Since November the 10th one of us has been sick, having surgery, recovering, or spending all day in the doctor's office!  I started the trend and Peanut followed!  We think we are on the mend, although there is still a little cloud of doom over my head because this week Peanut had a virus and I have yet to get it.  I have treated him like the plague for the last couple of days and I am armed with Lysol disinfecting wipes and bleach water and I am not afraid to use them! I am hoping the hand washing every few minutes will also save me!
 It's been a long three weeks and we've missed out on some things and caused others to have to change their plans.  It makes you want to have a little pity party, but every time I started feeling a little sorry for myself I would see something to remind me that I am not in charge!  On the way home from the drugstore Thursday night, after Peanut spent more hours in the Byrdstown Medical Center than the doctors, my stress was getting the best of me until I turned onto the road that would take me home.  There was the most magnificent full moon ever lighting my way.  It had swirls of color around it and was so beautiful it made me forget the long day.  Today I was washing windows and thinking what a beautiful day and we did not feel like enjoying it when I looked at the window I just wiped and saw that my Christmas cactus is loaded with blooms that are just about to fill my kitchen window with  beautiful pink flowers.  It just reminds me.  I am not in charge(this is hard for a person who has the bossy gene) and despite how I feel or what I plan the world will go right on and I don't run the show!