First Snow!

Today we woke up to see the first flakes lazily fluttering down. They didn't really amount to much (thankfully!) but we had snow flurries off and on all day. In honor of the first snow, I turned on some Christmas music, and Sam and I made our first batch of Christmas cookies together! We had so much fun. I knew he would be a little young to get the hang of it, but he actually did pretty well with cutting them out, most of the time. When it came to decorating them, he mostly ended up trying to either eat the sprinkles or dump them all on. :) I'm hoping to make at least one batch of cookies every week so I can freeze a bunch and have them all ready to go for Christmas. If I can actually accomplish this, it will be the first time I've really made a whole bunch of Christmas cookies since we've been married. I hope to start some cookie baking traditions like my mom did with us!

Here are a couple of pictures I took of Sam, the baker:

Cutting out the cookies


Testing the finished product :)


Jim went out hunting today for the first time, but didn't see any deer. Lots of tracks, but that was all. He didn't stay out more than a couple hours or so, though. I'm sure he will be trying again.

I'm so excited that the final Mitford novel (by Jan Karon) has been released this week. I'm dying to get it, but am restraining myself for the moment, since I'm currently working my way through 3 other books, plus I have a few things selling on Ebay this week and I'm hoping to use the money I make from them to get the book. I love, love, love the Mitford series and highly recommend it. I never thought I would enjoy books about a 60-something Episcopal priest, but I was wrong. They are so good and so like real life. Jim enjoys them, too. We've read through the series once together, and are working our way through it a second time. I was hoping we'd be ready for the new book (Light from Heaven by the time it came out, but we're not there yet. However, maybe by the time we drive to Ohio for New Year's we will be up to that point, and can read it on the trip. :) As a side note, Mitford is responsible for one of my closest friendships, with a lady I've never met in real life! We met on an Anne of Green Gables message board back 4+ years ago. I happened to post a topic about the Mitford books, having just finished the series (I borrowed them from our library before eventually buying my own set), and she and I struck up quite an online conversation about the books, since she was a big fan of them too. We ended up exchanging email addresses, and have been "pen pals"--mostly via email, but also sometimes snail mail--ever since. We even call each other from time to time. Since she's in the south and I'm way up here, we haven't yet worked it out to meet in person, but hopefully someday it will happen! I have also met some other great ladies on the Mitford Books website, which I have a link to in the sidebar. I don't visit there too much anymore, as it's just gotten huge and too hard to keep up with, but it is a nice message board and website.

Well, I should close here and get this posted. It looks like Jim and some friends will be tearing the roof off our old trailer tomorrow. We had been planning to demolish the whole thing, since it hadn't worked out to sell it, but then my uncle found someone who will take it for free, but the roof has to come off first. So hopefully they can get that taken care of tomorrow and then it will not be hanging over our heads anymore. :) It will be nice to have one less thing to think about!

Hope everyone has a terrific weekend with many blessings!