Love surprises!

Went to my post office today to mail a package to my secret swappee in the fingerless gloves winter swap and fund the package from MY swap partner! What a marvelous surprise!

Lovely gloves! They are a delicious wool. original color was melon.and she overdyed it with Kool aid!

And all kinds of fun goodies...a bag of caramel Chex mix, a delicious chocolate bar, some fun Halloween gum balls, a project bag to hold my recent knitting. a bag of my favorite tea, a sweet smelling peach bath soap, a tape measure and yum! MORE yarn! It's called Noro Kureyon, I've always wanted to try it and I already know what I'll be making with it.

I love exchanges. It's always so much fun to trade talent and gifties. 

The Jesse Tree

I'm not sure when I stumbled upon the Jesse Tree, but it was definitely back when we lived in South Big City. I made ornaments from THIS web site.

I want my family to focus on the Christ Child, not Santa, or presents. I want them to learn to give more, and receive less. With Christ, you can learn that.

We will be making new ornaments this year. We lost the original set I made sometime during the two moves after the fire. This year, I think we will embroider the patterns from the site I shared.

We will be using this book for the devotions:

The Advent Jesse Tree

It's an Advent type of devotional, but I think maybe less Catholic oriented? And I think it makes it easier for the little ones to see the things we are reading about as we hang the ornaments. It's less commercial, and less pagan in nature.

Sick and tired

of being sick and tired. :)

We've been battling illnes here in one form or another for far too long this season. I put my foot down this morning and declared that there will be no trip to South Big City. Really, only one child is fussing-Tink, who is my social butterfly. We just need to step back and let healing happen. I've not been as observant as I needed to be and now we've relapsed to some form of the cold or another. Garlic and tumeric to the soup today.

The patio door was frozen shut this morning. It's a battle we fight every winter. The snow comes, moisture gets down in the tracks and the door freezes shut overnight. It's not a huge issue-the laundry room has a door also. It's just a matter of inconvenience.

I can't believe I lapsed on my standards. When we last went to the library, I didn't pay attention to the fact that Pickle had taken The Polar Express for her weekly movie check out. I usually put my foot down and say no Christmas movies until Thanksgiving. We've now watched that movie every day for the last week. And they wonder why I say no Christmas movies until the season.

I'm debating on a Jesse Tree over a Christmas tree this year. I am frustrated with the commercialism that creeps ever more into other seasons. Local stores here had Christmas trees in the aisles before Halloween. It angers me that the reason we celebrate Christmas is set aside-quite often, even by Christians.

Mellow day here-more garlic, ginger, elderberry and astragalus for the children.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Yes, it is snowing again. And it is snowing TONS of snow. I am thankful that it's not blowing as well as snowing! I'll be grateful when the barn is done however. Milking in the snow is a definite challenge.

We still have sick ones here. I am about ready to bite the bullet and break the cycle by taking Duck to see the doctor. It's been over 4 weeks of someone being sick and she seems to be the one that is getting slammed the hardest with everything.

I am struggling with routine. Namely, I can't seem to create one. 
The majority of this issue is my own personal laziness. I'd much rather sit and snuggle and knit and read than do anything else. So, I'm looking for ways to encourage myself to stick to a bit more of a schedule than I have been previously. That's a challenge. :)

No 4H RC cars tonight-I try to share but I am sure that the community doesn't want to share illness! And the boys have speech tomorrow, so I want to see if we can get them better before then. 

Holiday frustrations

Crafting can sometimes make me crazy. I have less than 8 weeks to the holidays. Less than 4 weeks to get things done that are to be mailed out. And I am losing or breaking the things I need to finish projects. I just broke a set of 9 inch circular needles that I was using to make fingerless gloves. Thankfully....I have DPNs in the exact same size. I wish I could use the magic loop but this particular project gets involved when using the loops.

AND, in the middle of all of it, two of the girls need me to stop and help them with their knitting. Tink and Pickle just learned how to knit, and they frequently need Mom to pick up stitches, figure out where they added a stitch, help them fix something.

Ah. The joys of the holidays. :)

Hmmmm

I just looked at  my Ravelry profile. I've been crocheting 6 times longer than I have been knitting. Yet, I can preetty safely say that I've accomplished 100 times more knitting than crocheting projects in the last 4 years. Pretty wild.......

Winter

The snow is flying today. I am aggravated that my barn isn't finished, but understanding that my husband's hands only move so quickly and his time is even more limited than my own. And there are days, I am certain, more precious. He works so hard to take care of us so I can stay home.
We've been spoiled. The Wyoming winter has held off until today. We've had sunny and warm, mild temperatures. My poor goats won't know what to do!
First fire of the season to really warm the house is in progress, the children are snuggled in jammies, after spending weeks fighting off colds-and losing horribly this week I might add. Hot cocoa is steaming, the cats are indoors for the winter season. Time to hunker down and brave it out. I do love Wyoming!