'Tis the season, 'tis the Holidays... |
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| I turned on the holiday music the day after
Thanksgiving and it won't stop playing until after Christmas.
I have enough Christmas/Holiday music on my iPod to play for 2 1/2
days (nonstop) without having to restart it. So... if you turn
it off at night or when you are watching the Christmas specials on
TV, it lasts that much longer! I love Christmas music! I have several favorites, my two Chipmunk Christmas cd's and my two John Denver Christmas cd's. They get a lot of playing time. I found these out on You Tube and I thought I would share them with you. Aren't you the lucky ones? :) |
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| The house is decorated, inside and out. I do almost all of the decorating, Jim helps with the hauling & lifting. Oh and the tree cutting (and I don't mean a Christmas tree)... We have a "faux" tree here, way too dry to put up a cut tree :( but I get to have it up longer this way too. | |
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| I don't think Jim ever learned what a real chain saw looked like. Yeah, this is orange, but ... | Don't do this at home! Use a jigsaw to cut down a red bud tree that is in the way of the house/porch. |
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| Kris is holding up the tree as Jim does his sawing, at least I think it was sawing. The tree is in the way to put up more Christmas lights! | Randy is making sure Jim knows what he is doing and checking on that final cut. |
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| Yeah, the final cut and no one got hurt. That is a miracle. I kept running back and forth to take the pictures and Jim was yelling at me to stay out from under the tree. Like I would let the tree hit me :P | The tree is gone and Kris is putting up the final touches. I did all of the other lights, Jim strung all of the extension cords, he is MY master electrician. |
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| Snow is falling around the snowman and trees :) | The front of the house, the topiary trees are out year round and they are lit. My theme is Snowflakes, Poinsettias and Snowmen, inside and out. |
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| Another view of the front of the house, you can see a little bit of the icicle lights Kris put up for us. | Looking down the other way, you can see the snowman at the corner along with the house. |
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The back of the house, more lights, the house really lights up the corner when it is dark outside. |
| The weather has been crazy,
it has been as high as 80 degrees, then the next day it would be
down in the low 50's. Then back up to 70 or so, then it would
thunder and lightening! It can't make up it's mind.
Well, now it has decided to snow! Can you believe that?
I would rather have the snow than freezing rain, it was a surprise
though, I think we woke up the entire neighborhood when I started
yelling to friends in the house that it was snowing! It is suppose to warm up again, the town Christmas Parade is this Saturday, it is suppose to be in the 60's thank goodness. Two years ago we froze our little tooshies off, last year we were in shorts and flip-flops!
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| This is how much snow was on the car when we first noticed.... | 1/2 hour later, there was this much and big fat flakes still falling... |
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| My snowman has real snow now :) | I just love snow :) |
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| We had John and Carol over to play cards, they are on their way home now in the snow. | Another view of the house with lots of snow flakes falling... |
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| The next day, here is the snow on our holly tree. | We probably has a total of 2 inches of snow, it was wonderful, but gone around noon. It got to be 50 degrees the next day, where it never got above 35 the day before. |
| We enjoyed the Livingston Christmas parade once again this year. We had good weather mostly, not too cold, in the low 60's with a chance of rain. It did start to drizzle at the end of the parade, so you couldn't have asked for more. | |
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| Christmas lights coming on while we are waiting for dark and the Christmas parade to start. | Ok, it's dark now, let's get the show on the road (literally!) :) People are lined up across the street, so we know the parade is just about ready to start. |
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| I took this short video of our square dance club float. | This was our favorite float, it is dressed up like a Christmas train on a very long flat bed. I haven't figured out yet how to take good light pictures, especially when they move! |
| The kids from San Antonio came to visit for a few days before Christmas. It was fun to have them here, even though there isn't much for the kids to do here at Rainbows End. We decorated Christmas sugar cookies and enjoyed eating a few too! | |
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Celi, Scott (in front of Celi), Mike, Kelsey, Jim & Kim |
| Christmas was a quiet affair, Jim and I got up and opened our presents and enjoyed each others company. Most of the stuff Jim received were surprises, but I think I knew most everything that I was going to get, not because I peeked, but because I found them and gave them to Jim to put under the tree! Works for me! We were joining our friends once again for Christmas dinner, but I wasn't feeling so well. Jim went by himself, taking over our contributions to the meal. I am still not up to 100% yet, am going to see the doctor this afternoon (Monday the 29th). The rest of 2008 is going to be quiet also, so I will share a couple of other items from this year that might be of interest. 2009, here we come!
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I was checking out my parents neighborhood on Google Earth the other day, and guess what I found??? They had taken new pictures of the area last year in July and low & behold, our RV and car are in the picture! Yep, that long white looking thing is our RV and our red Chevy Trailblazer parked in front of it (center, left). We are parked next to my sisters house (the one with the swimming pool in the back yard). Across the street from my sisters house is my parents house, they have a car and a 5th wheel in their driveway. When we visit my family, this is where we park our RV. We get electric & water from my sisters house, out convenient can that be? The street that we are parked on goes into a cul-de-sac, so very little traffic. |
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| This is what our 2008 trip looked like when we were done :) We drove around 7060 miles in our RV during the trip. We (I) crammed in so much fun, that Jim is still speechless :P He just asks that we don't do quite so much history next time, but how can you not, when we had never been to so much of this part of the country and there is so much of this great country to see? We are so blessed. |
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| This brings 2008 to a close, we will be heading back to the Great Pacific Northwest in 2009 to visit family & friends once again. We miss you! We are going to take a new route of course, we still haven't done anything in Colorado, it is a big hole on my map in the RV. I would like to visit new Nat'l Parks that we have not been to, like Canyonlands, Arches, Mesa Verde, Moab, etc. Maybe I can even get Glacier in up at the top of Montana, you never know. We hope you had a great 2008 and that 2009 is even better... Kim & Jim |
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