Happy New Year!!

Yes, I know I'm a little late getting up a New Year's post. :) We've been super busy here in Ohio, enjoying time with Jim's family. Our original plan was to stay a week . . . we arrived on the 27th and planned to leave last Saturday, but Jim has to fix a couple problems with the truck, and we are still waiting on some of the parts to arrive. Hopefully they will get here today or tomorrow at the latest. We have been having a wonderful time, but it will be good to get back to our normal routine soon, too! :)

Here's a little bit of what we did this week: Had Christmas last Sunday with the whole family, including Jim's grandparents. It was tons of fun and very crazy, with 7 kids under the age of 7 running around. :) On Monday my SIL Joanne and I went shopping with Jim's mom; we've started a tradition of having a girls' shopping day every year and it's so much fun. Of course we always end up bringing at least one or two of the kids along; this year Josiah and Ruth got to go. I went in a Hobby Lobby for the first time ever! Wow, what a great store!! I got some really cute corduroy that was on sale for half price, to make a dress or jumper for Julia, and also a couple little embossing punches for card-making or scrapbooking, and a rubber stamp. It is really a bummer that there are no Hobby Lobby stores in all of New England!! Oh well, maybe that's a good thing, because I could see myself spending too much time and money in there! :) On Tuesday we hung out at the house and Jim took his fuel tank out of the truck to deduce what was wrong. We also went for a nice long walk around part of the farm, with most of the family. On Wednesday, Joanne and I spent some time sewing for our girls. We made matching jumpers for Ruth and Julia, from some other cute corduroy that Joanne had. Our sewing bee was a lot of fun and maybe we'll have to make it an annual event! :) I'll be posting pictures of the girls in their jumpers (and more from our vacation) after we get back home. On Thursday, we went to visit Jim's grandparents in the Columbus area and had a really nice time with them. On Friday, we spent the day at home again, and on Saturday the SC gang headed home.

This week, we have filled in the time with another visit to Papa & Grandma, a short trip to Amish country, and some time spent shopping in town. I had an extra special blessing yesterday at the Hartstone outlet. Hartstone is the maker of my dinnerware set of chickadee dishes, which I love. Sadly, they haven't made dishes for my set for several years now--the set was originally made for LL Bean, but isn't sold by them anymore, and now the pieces are hard to find. Hartstone has started making a new, similar chickadee set which is very nice, but not quite as nice as the original. Still, I decided it would be worth checking out to see if I could get a plate or two to replace mine (I've broken 2 over the years), since they would still coordinate well with my set. Imagine my delight when I found a plate that exactly matches mine, in the discount room, for $10. Yes, I know that sounds expensive for one plate, but it really isn't . . . considering how much they go for on Ebay, anyway (around $20/plate, give or take a little). I was so tickled; it was another special gift that I feel God put there, just for me. :)

So, that brings you up to date a little bit on our lives for the past couple weeks. Hopefully soon we will be heading home, ready to jump into a fresh start for a fresh new year. :) I have a bunch of goals for this year--as usual, who knows how far I will get with them, but it's good to have something to aim at. I'll share those in a separate post. Happy New Year, everyone!! Hope your holidays were lots of fun. :)