Miranda and Dan and Deborah and Ian arrived with their families on Monday. Dan and Miranda got here in time for dinner. We stayed up WAY late watching a movie and had just finished it when Deborah and family arrived.
Tom and I had spend the day making beds and dusting and shopping and getting ready for the influx.
I had lots of to-do's on my list for the week, but hardly looked at it at all. On the writing front, I got a couple of case studies done for the book. On the family front I had lots of hugs and snuggles! Tom and I read books to the children. We played games with the adults and watched movies. We fixed lots of food.
On Wednesday Andy and Kera and kids came up. They arrived before dinner so we had some of that day to enjoy them. Aaron went out and caught a chicken and held her. He was just as delighted as he was in Kenya when he got to hold a chicken! The kids traipsed across the fields and went to the pond. They climbed the tree-house and swung on the zip line. They had a great time playing with cousins.
One day Tom and a cluster of kids and menfolk went to the pond area and cut up some of the trees that had been dead since the ice storm of 2009. They chopped it into firewood and burned the small limbs. Of course they had to roast marshmallows and make S'mores.
Miranda brought presents for Deborah's family and Andy brought presents for our family, so we had belated gift exchanges as well.
One afternoon Ian and some of the kids went out back and shot a .22. On Saturday, Ian and Tom when to the range.
Saturday Miranda and Andy and families left to go home. We were sad. We tried to get them to stay til Sunday. They were wiser. Saturday night it turned cold. Rain turned to sleet to snow. Church was canceled and the roads are slippery.
They are forecasting BITTER cold weather! It will get down to zero tonight with wind chill factors like -18. Tomorrow the high is 9 degrees. It warms up a bit from there. Truly this is a cold winter. I am grateful we got the chickens a water warmer to keep their water from freezing. We put a tarp on the west side of their large run. Most of the storms come from the west-- south or north. This time the snow seemed to be mostly from the north.
I got a new camera for Christmas while we were at Jonathan's... but had not brought the old camera to switch out the memory stick. Tom, bless his heart, bought me one when we returned home. Here are some pictures from the merriment.
Oh, sure, NOW she has a family portrait! Looked like it was a fun time!
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