1989

It was cold in 1989. Not just a little bit cold, it was very cold. I remember getting very excited Christmas morning when I unwrapped a nice warm pair of camo coveralls to wear while waiting for the bus. ANd that is the year when the creek froze. Now, in some parts of the country, that isn't all that amazing in and of itself, but in the southwest corner of Missouri, it just doesnt happen very often. Ponds will freeze, sometimes even enough to walk out on them, but not for the entire winter or anything, but the creek, a moving body of water, rarely freezes, but in 1989 Crane Creek froze over. I remember going to Granny's and getting Daddy's ice skates and going down and skating on the creek. (I had to wear my shoes the ice skates were way to big but daddy wore them). How is it that slipping and sliding on the creek can be so much fun, but whenever it is someplace we have to go, we despise it? I think that may also have been the winter whenever we had to tie a rope to the tree to get between the house and the garage because of the ice. And possibly even the year mom took the garbage out. Ok, Mom has taken the garbage out frequently, probably almost every day, but there was one memorable time. There was ice. She took it out and had gone slightly down the hill and when she tried to come back she just kept slipping further and further down the hill, until she decided she wasnt going to make it up and just went down the hill to the road and to the driveway. (thus making it to the top of the hill) The trick was stopping on her way back down at the house....which she did manage. I suppose helping her would have been the nice thing to do, instead of standing in the house laughing, but you can't change the past, and it was funny:)

I have been writing Christmas memories this month, but we aren't living in the past. The ten or twenty minutes I spend writing is about all I think about it. We are having a wonderful Christmas season and I finally got around to putting a few pictures on the computer of the past couple weeks.

Emily decorating her tree.

She loves putting baby Jesus in the stable, however Mary has ran off and the animals tend to live on top instead of inside but that is ok. Whenever she sees the nativity anywhere she says, "baby Jesus". Its adorable.

I asked her to pose and she did, just not terribly close to me and with a messy toybox in the background!

Dress up is one of her favorite games, especially hats!

I'd been brushing her hair and it was actually somewhat straight on top.

They spent most of the time waiting for the bus running around the pole in the garage (look how clean the garage is....Neal spent all weekend cleaning it last weekend and it looks great!)

She still sometimes uses the baby swing, but she is about to be too big and she loves teh big kid swing too.