Christmas 09

We had a great Christmas.  We definitely missed not having the opportunity to enjoy this Christmas with our extended family, but nonetheless it was great.  Jessica's job was waking everybody up early in the morning to open gifts.  By her standards she did a great job, she woke us all up before 10 o'clock.  After the gifts were opened we had breakfast and a few hours later dinner.  Once all that was pretty much settled in our stomachs my dad and I played a few games on one-on-one to work it all off.  Jared has been battling a little bit with his knee lately so he was not able to play.  After that we wasted the last few hours of the day and went to bed.  This was our Christmas.

A White Christmas

How many times have your heard the song that contains the words "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas"?  How many times have you said the words "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas"?  How many times have you had a white Christmas?  This is what our Christmas looked liked

You may be thinking "Whats so special about that?  You live in North Dakota."  What is so special about this is the fact that visibility is less that a quarter mile.  According to our mathematical calculations it would be around 400-800 feet.  All you see there is the church parking lot, nothing more.  Here is a picture with snow, but pretty much full visibility

Now that you can see the difference I must say that it is actually quite amazing and awesome.  This is what makes Christmas memories.  This is the opportunity to play more basketball, eat more food, and listen to more XM radio.  I totally forgot to answer the question that someone earlier asked about us being able to listen to the XM radio.  The answer after much suspense and delay is YES!  It has been a staple so for this winter.

Merry Christmas

Right now I am sleeping, or at least hope that I am sleeping.  I scheduled this post so that I could be the first to wish you Merry Christmas on the day of Christmas.  You may have woke up and a family member told you "Merry Christmas" but I still said Merry Christmas first.  I hope you all have safe and Merry Christmas.  Hopefully all of you that are out west are able to get a little bit of snow.  Perhaps this could happen on the first week after Christmas Break so you can get a few days of school.  But through all the hustling and bustling remember who made this all possible.  Remember who came to this earth and sacrificed his life so that we could have the opportunity that we have today.  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Just a Little Something

Here is a picture of some Norwegian cookies that a lady in our church gave us.  They look very intriguing.  I have not yet tried one, but if they taste as good as they look than I hope she makes some more.

On an entirely different subject, I though you all might want to know what our entry way into our house looks like.  The only way for it to look like this was for us three boys men to go outside and freeze ourselves until we started to turn blue and then come back inside and feel the warmth upon our frozen bodies which hurt like getting poked with needles.  Nonetheless the work needed to get done and is done.  Here is the picture...

Update

Earlier today when I walked out side and took those pictures it was around 24 degrees and it felt like it was over 30, it was warm.  Now, just a couple of hours later, the temperature is 19 degrees and the wind chill has it marked down to 4.  Visibility is just over a mile, we will still be having church tonight.  In some parts of the parking lot you can actually see the blacktop, not a good thing, because the snow is getting blown around so much.  It is actually a pretty cool site to see.  Hopefully, we are not home bound the next few days.  We have a Youth Retreat starting on Sunday and we have to drive a couple of hours to get to it.  It would be a terrible thing if that was canceled.

It's Here

I am obviously not talking about Christmas for that is still a day and a half away.  I couldn't be talking about Christmas Eve because that is half a day away.  I could be talking about December 23rd, but I am not.  How about the mailman?  Well he just left a couple of seconds ago, so I could have been talking about him.  But with a logical conclusion I am not.  Has anyone seen the news headlines lately?  They probably said that snowstorms were hitting the west and the mid-west.  To all of you out west, even though North Dakota is east of you we are still in the mid-west.  Matter in fact here is a link to the article that I saw on the front page of Yahoo.  For us in North Dakota it has arrived and will keep on arriving.  It is sort of like the gift that keeps on giving.  Once the snow starts to melt then we get flood, TERRIFIC!  Or maybe I should say horrific, I don't know.  But none the less I braved the snowstorms and took a couple of pictures which may not excite you at all.  Here they are

These are deer footprints in the snow

Thank YOU!

We would like to thank you all for coming to our blog.  We would like to give an extra special thank you to Sis. Cheri Witmer for all the comments she has left.  We really do appreciate your thoughts via comments.  Thank you all for coming!

Goofin' Around

  The worst thing about Christmas Break is all the excess time that you have on your hands.  Not that I don't enjoy that fact because you sure can dispense of this time by doing bible quizzing, playing Xbox, being lazy, or possibly even playing a game with the family.  Last night we started a game of rook around 9:00 pm and got done with the same stinkin' game around mid-night.  If you looked at the score sheet you probably would have been surprised by how many times the game could have been over.  My dad and I won by scrapping for every single point possible.  On the winning hand if we would have lost another five points we would have gone set and played another hour.  But instead we were able to overcome the fact that we did not have the rook and the trump black one was captured with the rook.  This is simply Christmas Break.  Not many other times during the year would I tell you about a rook game, but this just happens to be the time.  When we finally accomplished the feat of finishing the game we looked outside and the ground was covered with a sheet of snow.  I hear that supposedly we are going to have a blizzard sometime this week before Christmas.  With the thought that we might be going to the mall pretty soon I must end this post, probably to your delight.  I have said it before and will say it again, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas Party

We had our home school Christmas Party Friday and as you can see these are the pictures.  We had a great time and the fact that Christmas Break is here is really settling in very nice.

Gingerbread House

It is that time, or maybe I should say past that time of the month when all gingerbread houses need to be made.  Jessica and my mother accomplished the job last night.  This was also the night that their was a five part Johnny Dollar series, but that is a different subject.  They did a great job and I took a couple of pictures to commemorate the moment.  Here they are...

 

 

Something Interesting

Yesterday there was a surprise for us all, Jessica won a coloring contest.  We went to a restaurant called "Badlands" and Jessica entered the picture that she colored in a drawing contest.  Now she can go to "Badlands" and eat for free, one meal that is.  I do not have a picture of the picture that she colored.  Sorry!  I do have a picture of this up north and to your right though.  Everyone is making that last second phone call, getting Christmas gifts, and in the midst of all that getting a picture together.  Hope you all have a blessed Christmas - or as the stores say it "Happy Holidays"!

Christmas Program

In the midst of the cold, hustling and bustling we had our Christmas Program last Sunday.  It went great!  In the picture on the top and to the left you can see my dad and sister all dressed up for church, something I didn't do.  Due to the fact that we were having our Christmas Drama we did not have to dress up for church.  In the second picture  to your right you can see Jessica and the many other Sunday School kids performing their performance.  They did a fantastic job singing "Joy to the World" and giving us the legend of the candy cane.  I would say history but as we all should know a legend could very easily be a myth so it possibly could be inaccurate to call this the history of the candy cane.  After all the kids were done performing they thought that it would be a nice time for the youth and adults to perform their drama.  We could and probably should end this post here, but I must go on.  On the third picture to your left you can see Jared playing the role of Joseph.  Every boy has to play that role at least once in his life just to build memories it seems.  Jared did a fine job, I would expend some more time on him but I think you all know what Joseph does in every single Christmas play.  One thing that was different in this play unlike a lot of other plays was the fact that there was a lot of music (they are holding mics in the picture because they are singing).  Next, we come to the role that I played in this play.  I also was a husband, except my wife was bossy.  I am trying to sleep and she come and tells me to get up and get to work.  In the bottom left picture you see me talking with a friend about how we always are getting told to get up and get to work.  The play turned out great. It never ceases to amaze me how you can go through practice for one of those things and everyone will be goofing off and having a grand old time, but then the Saturday before the play when you have your big practice they all settle down and you are able to get it all together.  This year I had to wonder whether or not it was all gonna come together but in the end it was fantastic.

Merry Christmas everyone!

~Jonathan

Christmas Cookies

This past week the ladies of our church have been making cookies for some cookie trays that we sell.  Let me say this, when they broke a cookie I was happy because they were quite delicious.  My mom, obviously, makes the best Christmas cookies, no one can compare.  They can spend all the time in the world, they can make the cookies look like they are for royal company, they can spend all the money in the world for that matter, but it will never compare.  As many of you know, I am not a biased person at all :).  But anyways back to the topic of the article we enjoyed the cookie tray that we received and, of course, my moms stuff on there was the best.  Who could ever beat homemade cherry cordials?  Who can beat homemade chocolate peanut butter balls?  Anyways, they were able to finish the trays and pass them out.  Now to go eat some peanut butter balls.

                   

Annual Weather Check-up

As I am writing this post a nice drizzle of snow is coming down.  Most of the estimates that I give on this blog should probably be considered hope estimates.  Right now I would estimate that there is slightly less than a foot of snow that has fallen.  Considering that fact that the wind is constantly blowing it does not look like much until you mistakenly walk into a drift and it goes up to your knee.  The last few days the straight temperature has been in the negatives.  This is not a bad thing until the wind starts blowing and you freeze into a popsicle.  Now that I mention that about popsicles,  ice cream does sound pretty good about now.

Dickens Festival

This year we had the pleasure of attending the Dickens Festival.  The Festival take place in a small little town in North Dakota called Garrison.  During the day they will have a tea, a house tour, bus rides around the town on a really cool and old bus, and food.  The tea was a fine thing, about as good as a tea could be for a teenage boy.  The house tour was very interesting considering the fact that the house was probably built in the early nineteen hundreds and was completely renovated.  We never actually went on the bus ride but it looked really cool.  It is the only double decker bus in the Midwest.  The opportunity to talk about the food in finally here.  The first few words that would come to mind would be grand, delicious, interesting, and decipherable (OK maybe not the last word).  I had the pleasure of eating some Swedish Buffalo meatballs which were very good and I was able to try this hamburger which was inside some deep fried sour dough bread, or something like that.  But again it was all very good and I believe we all enjoyed ourselves very much.

Brothers

There are so many famous brothers in the world.  You have the Wright brothers who were able to fly the first airplane, you have the Duryea brothers who set up the first American car manufacturing company, and you have the two homeless brothers in Budapest, Hungary that just got amazingly blessed by their grandmothers death.  I was looking at some news headlines and read one that said "Hungary brothers in line to receive 6.6 billion dollars".   They will no longer have to live in a cave on the outskirts of Budapest.  From being hungry in Hungary to potentially living in a mansion, what a story.

~Jonathan

A Plain Day

Today I woke up and was told that it had snowed the night before.  My first worry that hit was whether or not the skylight (I think that is what it is called) would be covered and we would not be able to get reception for our XM radio.  After looking at the weather forecast it looks like winter is upon us for good and if everything stays the same, we will be having another white christmas.  The good news is that less than an inch has fallen, hopefully it stays that way.