I need to upload the photos from my camera, but this one will do for now. It was a great Christmas, busy and active and a bit crazy, but oh, so much fun! We had an ice storm right in the middle of it all, and had to have 2 80 foot pine trees taken out on Christmas Eve so they didn't fall on the house. Here are some trees by the house after the ice storm:
And the day after Christmas we got about 5 inches of snow which prevented everyone from venturing down to Burlington to walk around. But all in all it was a pretty special holiday. We went to the neighbor's for New Year's Eve, even though we didn't stay until midnight. And I've worked and turned the store around after the holidays, and have now settled into the post busy period into the calm and quiet and rather challenging dead time of year.
On the home front, I do see my sister at least once a week or so. They have begun looking at houses and hope to find the perfect one for them in the next few weeks. It is exciting for them, and I am anxious to see where it takes them. This morning they picked me up for breakfast (my dear husband is sick with a terrible cold) and after we ate we went to look at two of the houses they looked at yesterday. We just looked from the road. Both look nice, but I think I see them in one over the other. Both are close, about a 10 minute drive. I really hope we will continue to see each other often.
Like I said, I have a sickie in the house. I have been fighting a lousy cough for about 2 weeks, and it finally seems to be winding down. I don't have coughing spells during the day anymore, and just a few coughs at night. Just the same, I have been sleeping in the basement for the last few nights for a few reasons: 1. I need to cough when I need to cough, and I found sleeping in my bed, I would wake up and try not to cough so I didn't wake up the man next to me, and I would end up having a horrible coughing spell. So I would leave the room and go downstairs so I could cough my head off, and sometimes that was at 1am and sometimes it was at 3:30am. Either way, it was hard to get back to sleep afterwards, so I found if I just slept downstairs I could cough all I needed and roll over and go back to sleep without any worry. 2. He is pretty sick and when I need to go to work I get up about 6:15am, and of course, this wakes him up. I am tiptoeing around trying to be quiet, while I know he is trying to sleep. So, by being downstairs I can cough when I want, get up when I need to, shower and dress in the light, and be on my way just as he is crawling out of bed. Besides, he is pretty sick, and I don't really want what he has-I'm still trying to get over what I have! I think another night or two, and I'll be back upstairs.
It's been an interesting start to the new year. The winter has been so unusual. Lots of ice, freezing temperatures of -13° with -30° wind chill, and lots of ice. Our driveway was such a solid sheet of ice I barely made it up in the morning, then I slid all over the place. We finally hired someone to put down a layer of salt and sand, and that helped tremendously. We haven't had too much snow, and yesterday it was 50° with rain. Who knows what the next few months will bring! But it is new, and that is good...
