Winter

The only redeeming quality about winter for me is Christmas. Ours was wonderful. At times, it seemed quite busy, but we were able to do all of those things that we had in mind. Somehow, we managed to clean/straighten the house between each set of guests that arrived to celebrate. Christmas celebrations are definitely kind of messy (a good messy). There are so many new things around in the living room, wrapping paper, dishes, cameras out, extra coats, Christmas clothes, Christmas cards--you get the idea.
Josh worked for part of the day on Christmas Eve. We took a later lunch and then someone stopped by--the girls had lots of fun! We left early for our Christmas Eve service--it fills up very fast. It was beautiful with lots of carols and readings. A great start to celebrating Christmas. The children go up front and one of the pastors reads a children's Christmas book. It was called "The Animals Christmas Eve". This was a wonderful book for Aliyah as the children got to make the sounds of the animals during each part. We came home and the four of us opened gifts. There was much to do to get ready for Christmas day. The gifts we had opened had to be straightened, the house cleaned, the food prepped, table set, table/chairs put upstairs, gifts put out for the girls, and a couple of gifts to wrap. WHEW--we made it to bed at 1:30 am.
Christmas morning was fun as we had breakfast and then proceeded to open gifts and have dinner. We mingled and then Josh's dad & his wife came over. Following that, we visited my aunt & uncle & cousins. Everyone had fun and ate some yummy food. Josh's grandma lives nearby my aunt & uncle so we visited her on the way back. Since she lives in an assisted living facility, it was rather warm inside...by the time we left we were feeling sleepy. The cold air outside fixed that problem rather quickly.
Once we arrived home around 9 pm, the girls went to bed and Josh and I chilled out on the couch--a book for him and the computer for me.
Yesterday, we did some shopping--more returning than shopping. Everything I looked at was cheaper before Christmas and now it is much more picked over.
Today, we had plans of going to a place near Chicago, however the weather forecast of heavy rain made us decide otherwise. After we left and went to lunch, I was very glad we decided to avoid the trip to Chicago. As we were driving along the interstate, we experienced what I called "hurricane rain". This rain was so hard that it was white and visibility was about 0! I was driving and couldn't see anything except for the occasional brake light of the car ahead of me and the signs--only as we were right at them. We couldn't see the lines on the road to even pull over. Josh told me to put on the flashers since we were driving slowly. Everyone was going slowly at that point--maybe 30 at best. It was very scary because when you go from around 70 all the way down to 20-30, you don't know what those behind you are doing/seeing or not seeing for that matter. Thankfully, we got through that safely. I couldn't help but thank God and breathe a huge sigh of relief.
I am very happy to say that we are experiencing a HEAT WAVE! All of the ice and snow has melted, but we are having TONS & TONS of rain. It was 64 at one point. That is at least a 50 degree swing from what we have been experiencing. It has been a cold winter already and it's not even January. I opened a couple of windows for a short time this morning to circulate some fresh air =).
Gotta go--there is work to be done again!