White on Blue

Today was a beautiful blue-on-white day. I couldn't resist taking my camera and capturing some of it.

A friend's yard.

Good ol' country barbed wire.

In our church cemetary.

White on black.

The Beauty of Frost

After 2 days of fog we had beautiful, thick hoar frost!
I'd say it ws about 3/4 inch thick.

Makes everything look beautiful.

Too bad I didn't have a blue sky to contrast it. Maybe tomorrow!

Our house is finished its hail damage repair and we made some changes; new stone beside the garage door, new people door into the garage, and black trim instead of green.

Happy Birthday, Magan!

Magan, do you remember when Jon played the chef for you?
Was this your birthday or Valentine's Day?
I'm guessing you were about 17. You were still in high school.
Cute, eh?

In high school, this was a pretty big stretch for Jon to produce!

Have a great day tomorrow!

Saturday Night Fundraiser

The fundraiser held Saturday night was to help Darrell and Jess finance their trip to Africa to complete their adoption of twin girls. It was a great success, and we are so thankful for all the friendships and support. They raised enough to pay for the four tickets needed to bring them all home. What a blessing!


It included a steak dinner, a jazz band, and a silent auction. Close to 200 people came.

Darrell and Tim both play in the jazz band, but Darrell took the night off. Tim is the drummer.

Kaleb having fun with Grandma Schmidt.

The friends at our table bought some of the stoneware I brought for the auction. So glad they went to good homes!

Family Christmas

Uppermost in our minds this Christmas was Darrell and Jess's trip to Africa this January to facilitate the adoption of twin girls. They will likely be there three to six months. So the girls were definately on our Christmas lists.

Our girls.

Sorry, I don't have a corresponding picture of our boys!
I do have a nice family picture of all of us, so leave a comment if you would like me to email it to you.

The basement still isn't finished, but it was good enough to use. The grandkids enjoyed the playroom.

And it was nice to have room to hang out downstairs.

There was definately enough snow for sledding!

News from Darrell and Jess

Most of you know that Darrell and Jess have been working on International Adoption from Ghana, and that they are one of many couples who were affected by the bankruptcy of Imagine Adoption Agency. They had 2-year-old twin girls referred to them last February and have continued to work on the adoption through a Ghanaian lawyer. They are working on the necessary steps and are planning to go to Ghana sometime in January. This is a huge step that means a leave of absence from their work.

A friend is planning a fundraising dinner for them on January 9th. If you want more information, you can check out their blog and follow the link on the poster above to the facebook site telling about the fundraiser. We would appreciate prayer that God would lead the way and turn the many mountains into smooth roads!

Snowstorm

The storm began Friday morning and Saturday night it's still snowing and blowing, but it's eased up a lot. We had a side door put into our garage, and it came in handy to get out of the house to shovel, since it had blown clear.

Our driveway became a dumping spot for blowing snow - five feet of it! For some reason our driveway was worse than many. As you can see, our siding has only been partially replaced since our August hailstorm. The soffits have been replaced, but not all the trim or eavestroughs. We had stone put on either side of the garage door when they replaced the siding. Our shingles still need replacing. Think it'll happen Monday???

We shovelled out just enough to get our truck out. Mal and I started, then the neighbor across the street helped substantially, and eventually two other neighbors joined us. It took all of us about 2 hours - but then we're only half done! By morning we may have to start all over.

In between the two piles of snow is our sidewalk nicely shovelled out. Not too much of our lamp post showing! Before the storm hit we had no snow at all.

This is our street. All morning trucks were trying to get out, and then backing up because they couldn't get through. About 4 p.m. a grader came through.