Bye Bye 25!

 My final blog post for this year has arrived. Hard to believe this year is going out in a few hours.  All the cheers saying Happy New Year, all the hugs, smiles, and toasts to the new start of 2026 give hope for a good future.  A good 12 months of adventures, health, prosperity, family, friends and most importantly, faith.  When I was decorating for Christmas, I found a note to myself that I wrote putting away the decor in 2024.  I wrote that I hoped 2025 would be good and that I was ready for what it would bring.  So today as I put away this year's decorations, I again wrote a note to myself with the same hope. My prayers are for all my family and friends for the best year ahead.  As I look back at 2025, I'll post some pics of what went down in my life these past 12 months.

January had just a few pics of birds that frequented the feeder but I must have deleted them.

February: Annabelle got some wheels that came in handy later in the year.

March:  We gave my sister a surprise 70th birthday party.  It was a success with the surprise, and we had a great time that weekend!

April:  April showers brought lots of flooding.

April also brought the annual Easter gathering with family.

May: Spring sprung with greenery at the Pines and deck time to enjoy the weather.

Creepy woods in spring glory!

June: The family reunion in Chicago that brought cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, parents and friends all together for a jam-packed weekend of laughs and memories and salutes to those who came before us.

Jordan, the tall one with his friends from when he lived in Chicago.

Craig and Jackie

Jack and my brother, James.  Till we meet again at the Pines in October 2026.
July:  This month brought a girl's trip to Salem, Mass. and Maine.  Me, my sister, my nieces, and great nieces had a blast!  

Midge and me.  The gang waiting for our lobster dinner.

August: Time for summer Creepy Woods walks with a man and his dog!

August 31st gave us another time to celebrate 51yrs of marriage and a look back at these crazy kids in 1974!

September: This month our boys helped Jack repair our sagging deck.  I'll paint it next summer after it's had time to age.

The signs of coming Autumn were in the air.

Homecoming for our granddaughter, Rae.  Growing up too fast!

October: My favorite month and time of the year!  Time for brains for eating

Family fun day for gathering..Phil, Lex, and Rae

My kitchen witch.

My coven featuring Midge, Amy, and me!

November: Thanksgiving gathering

Me and my boys!

Our oldest turning 50 made us take a deep breath of unbelief!  How did he go from our preemie baby to a grown up and grandpa?

December: This was a jammed packed month but we kept the reason for the season first and formost.

Decorating is always fun and now it's coming down today.

Throw in the wood gathering and help from our awesome sons that has kept us warm this chilly month.  The last 2 weeks were weirdly warm but now we have snow and cold fitting for the beginning of January.  

That's my wrap up for 2025.  Sorry (not sorry) for all the pics but this will all be in my blog book soon, I hope everyone has a very happy, healthy, and wonderful new year.  Let's keep the faith, have patience, do good, love your neighbor, be kind always, and praise the Lord daily.  Happy New Year. Bye Bye 25!

Merry Christmas!

 Another Christmas is in the YaYa history books and blog.  Whew, I was bit worried I wouldn't get it all done, but with Jack's help and sometimes guidance, it was accomplished.  I did take time Tuesday night to go walk a fairly new activity in Ashland.  It was started a few years ago and now has grown much bigger and draws more folks to this free family time.  The Candy Cane trail has also made it into the Guiness book of records, I know that has to do with the number of lights but not sure the name of the true record.

I grabbed my walking partner with her Santa Paws sweater and took off to the trail.  The weather was warm for us...50de...but a bit misty.  The trail is completely paved but Annabelle managed to find some wet and messy grass.  This little white dog had a quick bath when we got home!

Beautiful lights and little vignettes depicting all the Christmas stories from the Navity to Santa, elves, reindeer, and even Charlie Brown.  Love it!   The next day was Christmas Eve and I was off and running preparing food, wrapping gifts, and watching old Christmas movies along the way. 

Jack and I did take time for our traditional Christmas Eve dinner of breakfast for dinner.  We've done this since our kiddos were little because we couldn't get them to eat breakfast Christmas morning, so we ate it the night before!  Now it's just us but we still enjoy this tradition.  We were up late into the night/morning to get all the gifts finally wrapped and all the food ready.  

The living room was set up to accommodate the family, friends, and anyone who wanted to stop by. The gifts were great but having everyone together was the real gift and it's what makes all the prep and rush and late nights worth it!  I didn't get food pics except ones of some appetizers.

They were good but the honey baked ham, (thank you Jordan for that!) and cheesy potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry relish, mac'n cheese (thanks Phil for that!) Evelyn's green fluff, rolls and many desserts really made the day. We had about 18 folks all total.  It was great! We also played games. 

Jordan and Haylee had a mad game of marshmallow knockoff.  I believe Haylee was champ! In the dining room there was another game that my friend Brenda brought.  She made the cutest prizes, and I threw in the lottery tickets.  

Driana was giving it her best.  I know she was one of the few who won some money with the tickets...4 whole whopping dollars but she was happy!  Well, I usually get group shots and more pics but I was busy keeping it all running..that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  I did get one shot of a couple:

Jordan and Brittany with sweet Haylee.  It took many shots to get Haylee to just smile.

She was more interested in silly shots, and I loved this one!  I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  Now it's time for that long winter's nap!

Chocked Full!

 I feel like I've been on the Polar Express on speed dial.  The weeks of December have been chocked full of many activities and all the things that go along with this month. I've been decorated inside and out, and I have 99% of the gifts bought and a few wrapped.  But I still feel like I'm behind!  We had the little issue of the water crisis fixed and it's all good.  Our youngest son moved into his new home yesterday with his brothers and Jack helping him out.  I made food for everyone after the big stuff got off the truck.  

Jordan's kitchen with the guys trying to get all the appliances in the door.  I hate moving and I know one day we will probably have too, but watching all the work yesterday makes me want to go and get rid of everything except what I can carry in an Aldi grocery sack! Ha!  I know Jordan will enjoy his home with 8 acres and a pond and barn...and a lovely front porch with wrap around deck to watch sunsets! But oh the work!  Good luck kiddo!  Last weekend we had our annual church Christmas social.

Tables set up and the decorating was simple and cute and all I had to do was make a potato dish and a dessert. 

Jack checking out the program.  There were many musical performances done by our youth and also some singing from everyone. The food was good and even though our weather was really not good, we had a good turnout.  

These are some cookies I made for the youth at church to take to the folks they went caroling too.  I feel like all I've done is bake these days and I still have more to do before the big day! But at least I did get it done along with getting the items for the groups our church was helping to provide gifts and gift cards for.  Helping others is a good part of this special time of year. 

This scene is what our backyard looked like after last weekend's snowfall.  Today it's all melted and green!

Our sons, Phil and Jack, came over this morning and split wood for us.  As you can see the sun was out and the grass is back!  I couldn't believe when they called and said they were going to do this today after all the heavy lifting they did helping Jordan out yesterday!  But we sure appreciate all they do and then they joined us for lunch. We had invited our Missionaries over for lunch too.  It turned out to be a lovely day, and I know they worked off any calories eaten! I have the best kids!

Last but not least, here's a Santa I found thrifting last week.  I always swear I won't get any more Santas, but he called out to me from the shelf! The green and red covering on the table is a blanket my grandmother made when she was a young girl in Greece.  She passed away in 1936 on Christmas day. My Mom was only 10.  Mom brought home many of her mother's blankets on a trip to Greece many years ago and I'm happy to have this one.  I never knew my grandmother, but I hope she's looking down from heaven along with my mom and is happy this very old treasure is being enjoyed today!  So, although I've done a ton of baking and cooking, more is on the way this week.  I think taking a long winters nap will be in store afterwards!  Merry Christmas week!

Wellllll...

 Well, now that's a deep subject!  On Sunday I noticed the water pressure was a bit low.  Then it was even lower until it wasn't at all.  Hoping it was just a valve replacement or something, we got hold of a plumber we always use when in trouble.  He couldn't make it until yesterday and after examining the pressure tank and valve he said the good news that they were fine but then the bad news was it was our well pump that wasn't working.  We've lived here 24yrs and we don't know how much older the well pump is than that, but we were told those pumps have about a 20yr lifespan. So we got a few more years from it, but I would have liked to have had it go bad in the summer and not at Christmas.  I joked that everyone would get a bottle of water for Christmas this year!  Living in the country is nice and we do enjoy it but there's always those "things" that come up or go out that we didn't deal with in town.  Anyway, now we can turn on the faucet and flush the toilets with success and water! We did have to pretend to primitive camp with warmed up bottled water for bathing and bottles by the commode for the necessary times!  Glad that's over!

Thanks Aqua Aces for showing up bright and early and braving the rain/snow mess.  Jack was his helper and did the running up and down to turn off pumps, electric, or whatever was going on with the fix.  Although it was a bit balmy today...in the mid 30's..the wet and wind was  bone chilling.  

Bye Bye bottled water!  Thanks to my boys for refilling them as needed from their home and also offering use of their baths.  Jordan just got into his new home on Monday and we were there to congratulate him and fill our bottles!  So, all's WELL, that ends WELL!