Snow, Christmas, new first day of school, and more!

There has been so much going on here. We got hit with several snow storms that had us loaded with snow for over a week. Rachel will proudly tell you it was Portland's snowiest December ever. I think the snow was on the ground for 14 days. Anyway here are pictures from the first snow fall.





I only found 1 good one to share from the 2nd snow fall.

And then these are from the storm that hit over the weekend before Christmas.

The last picture is of Chuck holding a sheet of ice and snow off the top of the car.

Jill was singing "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" this year.

Christmas was wonderfully simple. We had a great celebration. We enjoyed a leisurely Christmas eve exchanging our homemade gifts. We draw names in November and then we make a gift for that person. We loved listening to the Christmas story and enjoyed watching some Christmas cartoons.

Christmas morning found us having a good time opening our gifts.

Christmas night found me sick with the flu. I ended up in the ER and then Urgent care center a couple days apart. I was really dehydrated. The trip to the urgent care center brought I had blood drawn and they found a staph infection in my blood. They said it was growing the MRSA bacteria. That is some nasty stuff, very resistant to antibiotics. SO when it was done growing out I was nearly better from the flu. I felt fine. I had to go spend New Years Eve in the hospital going through a bunch of testing and lots more blood work and starting on intense IV antibiotics. It took 3 hours to pump that stuff into me. Then you are off for 9 and then start all over again. So I wasn't showing any signs of being sick so I talked the doctors into letting me go home. Well then I got called and said nope your second draw is showing staph in the blood too. SO back to the hospital I went. Start in on the same cycle as before. After more time and several more rounds of IV antibiotics I am sent home. They decided it wasn't the MRSA staph after all just a regular staph. Well at any rate it is more than gone. I got told to spend this week resting and drinking lots of water to flush my system. Oh joy! It really zapped me at any rate.

So now I have another new life style change. Grace decided after seeing how happy the other 2 girls were to go to the neighborhood school she would like to go as well. We had been planning to let her do that in the fall. She said she would really like to go now if possible. So since we were about to experience a teacher change with the virtual school anyway we decided to just let her go. Chuck went in Monday prepared to have to fight with the principal. She said she would accept Grace as a 4th grader. So away she went. I can't believe how quiet the house is with everyone gone! I have so many things I want to do with my free time! I want to scrap, read a book, work on some ornaments for my trees, sew, quilt, and I could keep going on!! So anyway for today I am baking bread and pies. We are having dinner with friends tonight.

So now you are all caught up!