Christmas Day

 As I mentioned before, Christmas was a little unusual this year because of the blizzard.  Aaron and Laura and girls, along with Andrew, Heather and Cassie were all planning to come and spend Christmas Eve here.  With the Sheriff saying people needed to stay off the roads, along with reports of accidents and cars in ditches, we decided to postpone and they planned to come on Christmas night.

However, on Christmas morning, I got a message from Laura telling me she started feeling sick the night before and on Christmas morning, she tested positive for Covid.  She was feeling pretty awful, and they were obviously all staying home and away from people.

Heather and Andrew decided to still come, so we had a small gathering this year.  We had a nice supper together and enjoyed watching Cassie having fun.

Cassie had just had a birthday, so she was very adept at unwrapping presents, and she helped all of us with ours!

We started by reading the Christmas story.

She thought she was pretty cool in Grandpa's slippers.

She helped her Papa unwrap a present.

and then had such fun trying to crawl into this skinny box.

Hanging out with Grandpa is fun

Helping him open a present

and she had fun playing with new toys.

We had a nice time, but sure did miss the others.
Laura got pretty sick and by Tuesday, Aaron also had it.  They are doing better and so far the girls are clear.  We are praying they don't get it, but we'll see.

I took down all my Christmas decorations and the tree, but there's still a stack of presents, for one last party when they're feeling better!

Blizzard!

 Like many of you, we had crazy weather over Christmas!  They started talking about bad weather early in the week, and by Wednesday, they said we would be under a blizzard warning by 4 pm Thursday.
I'm so thankful to be working where I am.  I spent a lot of years having to get to work, regardless of the weather, so I don't take this for granted.  The office managers decided to close the office on Thursday and Friday and have us all work from home.

Here's my workspace from Thursday and Friday.  They have it set up so I have headphones and can take phone calls through the computer, and can also fax things that way.  Technology is amazing sometimes!
Snow started falling in the afternoon and it just kept coming.

This was the view of our backyard on Friday.  Bob had the day off so I didn't have to worry about him driving. The sheriff's department was asking people not to drive unless it was an emergency.  On Saturday, his store closed - which has never happened in the 24 years he has worked there.

Saturday, the snow kept falling.

Laura, Aaron, Andrew and Heather were all supposed to come over on Saturday - Christmas Eve, but that wasn't happening.  We decided to try for Christmas night instead.
Our church also cancelled the Christmas Eve services, as did most every church around us.

Before long, our church and all the others were closing on Christmas day too.

By Sunday afternoon, the snow was slowing down and the blizzard warning had lifted.

This is our porch.  The snow had blown around to the inside of the beams.

Here's a shot through the glass door to the porch.  You can see how much snow is up on the porch.  The snow in the yard was even with the porch and my pretty Christmas porch pot was covered with snow.
I have 2 small lighted trees by the front door that were also covered.

This star is hanging on the porch, and it also got covered in snow.

Here's Bob snowblowing on Sunday afternoon.  He had done this once on Friday in case he had to get out, but by Sunday, it was all filled in again.

Here's the backyard on Sunday.

Here's another photo of the porch - you can see how much snow was on the roof.

The trees were buried!

Here's our house on Monday - I've never seen snow on the roof like that.  Bob worked hard when he got home from work on Monday, pulling a lot of that snow down.

I didn't take this picture, but wanted to share what the lighthouse in Grand Haven which is near us, looks like.  Lots of wind and very cold temps turned it into an ice sculpture!

Here's a closer shot of it.

And one more!  This is the Muskegon Lighthouse, about 30 minutes from us. It's amazing what happens when wind and waves mix with freezing temps.

It was quite a storm!

The National Weather service put out these statistics on it:

Total snow: 24.5 inches
Peak wind: 45 mph
Number of hours of visibility at 1/4 mile or less: 12

Average Temperature: 15

Happy New Year!

I'm back from my blog break and anxious to catch up with you all!
I have a few things to share with you from December.

First - Cassie turned 2!  It's hard to believe 2 years have gone by since she arrived early and spent 10 days in the NICU.  You would never know it now. She is such a blessing to all of us.

Cassie loves her cousins and they love her too.  It's so fun to see them together.

She was a tired girl when we left.

But - there was more celebrating to come the next day!

We had my family Christmas party the next afternoon.  We were under a winter storm warning with snow coming down hard, and lots of wind so we were happy that almost the whole family could make it.  Only one niece who lives in New York wasn't able to be here.

The big surprise was that Andy and Nikki came for the weekend.  My Dad didn't know and was so happy to see them.

Dad is always happy to see the great grandkids.

I had to share this, because I was trying to get a picture of Aaron and Laura, and a little photo bomber snuck in.

Here's Dad and Ann with all the grandkids and great grandkids, except for Halle.

I'm so blessed with a wonderful family and we always have a great time together.  Our kids all came to our house afterward, so we could give Andy and Nikki their Christmas gifts, since they were planning to drive back to Kentucky the next morning.  However, the weather was too bad, and they ended up waiting until late afternoon to leave.
It was great having all the kids here together, even for a short time.