We had more snow overnight. We have had snow enough now that they are saying we may have broken some records for the most snow in December. So much for Global Warming. Here is a picture of the snow in the front of my house. We are supposed to get more snow tomorrow.















I am running out of room to pile it by my driveway and sidewalks. Well, not me really, but the guys that plow out my driveway and shovel the walks. They are making a killing this year in fees. But I guess it will make up for last year when they hardly had anything to shovel.













I am going to some friends for the evening and then I am having some others over for lunch tomorrow. I am going to be serving a Mexican turkey chili. But I am saving the pork and saurkraut for later in the evening. I didn't think it would be a big hit to serve to non-Germans on New Years Day (or any day for that matter).

My friend Susan gave me a recipe for some "Fluffy Stuff" that is very tasty, and very low in calories and fat. It is extremely easy to make. Here is the recipe:

Susan's Fluffy Stuff

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 5 min
Level of Difficulty: Easy
Course: desserts

Ingredients
· 8 oz Cool Whip Free Whipped Topping
· 2 pound fat-free vanilla yogurt
· 1 cup canned crushed pineapple in juice
· 2 Small boxes Jell-O Sugar Free, Fat Free Instant White Chocolate Pudding. Do not prepare this – just mix it with the yogurt dry.

Instructions
Mix pudding with the yogurt. Then fold in the Cool Whip and the pineapple. It is good eaten just as you prepare it, but it is even better if it is chilled for a few hours.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year.

Here are a few pictures from Christmas Day at Tommy and Kathy's House. I had an absolutely wonderful time.

Christmas morning in front of the Christmas tree in new pajamas.

Tranformer Star Wars Death Star.

New racing video game!

The Princess opening her monkey from Grandma and Grandpa.

Still going after all the wrapping, cooking and transforming the Star Wars Death Star.

Happy Daddy.

Aunt Linda and the kids. We had a great day, playing, eating, laughing, and even a little napping!

Saturday Chantelle and Doug were married. They had a beautiful wedding and for my first "Texas" wedding, I was very impressed. We had barbeque for the meal, the music was "country" and the bride wore a cowboy hat at the reception! It was great to meet so many of Joye and David's friends - ones that I have heard about over the years.

I have heard a lot of you asking for an update to my Blog. I know it has been awhile. I am going to take just a quick minute to upload a couple of pictures. This first picture is Dad, Mick and Mick's boy Dustin. They stopped in to visit today.

This picture, of course, is the "greats" again on Christmas Day. They were having fun playing with each other.

This is a picture of Tom, Kathy and the kids, taken just before Christmas.

Pennsylvania in the Fall!

This picture was taken at the top of Yaw's Hill. It was so pretty this past weekend that we were in Pennsylvania.









1966 or 2006? It is hard to tell from this picture whether it is Bill Evans or Brady Evans on that old garden tractor! I think it is still the same tractor we used to ride in when we were kids. This is Brady Evans, by the way. I think he said he is ten. He is in the 5th grade.









Mike and Kim standing by the "hole" that will eventually be the foundation for the basement of their new house. They are building on a property in Liberty, PA. This is Ethan, Kati's son, standing with them.








Aunt Mary and Mom after church. Aunt Mary will be 80 in December. Last week she replaced the ceiling tiles in her kitchen. It is a drop ceiling but is about 10 feet high! She fixed lunch for us on Friday! Cole slaw, baked turbin squash (tasted like pumpkin pie) and chicken pot pie with cheese biscuits on top! Then she had apple pie for dessert! We were so stuffed. It was the best. She is one awsome lady!





This is Mom and Aunt Ann in front of Ruth and Aldie's house. David Holdren made the siding for this house. It is really gorgeous. Ruth was recovering from her first chemo treatment while we were there. She is a trouper and will beat this cancer and she isn't going to let the treatment keep her down. She was up at Kim's property on Sunday when I was up there. Keep Ruth and her family in your prayers.




Dad, Aunt Betty and Uncle Jerry. Dad told Uncle Jerry he was better off than him, so he would get up for the picture and Uncle Jerry could sit still. We got a good laugh at that at Uncle Jerry's expense. We had such a good visit with all of them.









I loved this picture of Mom. It was taken at Greenfield. We were out there with Thomas' cub scout den.













Here is a new picture of Thomas, Steven and Lauren. We were walking through the woods.

I have posted more pictures at Winkflash. You can click on the link on the side of my blog.

Thomas, Steven and I picked apples on Saturday at my friend Paul's house. Paul has a professionally maintained apple orchard surrounding his house. He also has about 80 trees on his own land. He and his wife lease them to the orchard owners. The orchard then maintains them and Paul has access to them. It is always a fun day and I usually think of it as the beginning of Fall.




Lauren had a cold on Saturday, so she and Kathy stayed home (Tom was working). But she had put on her boots to go with us. As you can see, the boots didn't match and one was about three sizes too big for her. She is such fun!



This is Thomas and Paul's son Zachery playing "Star Wars." Zachery is only five years old. But he is a tall boy. The left side of the house in the background is the old cape that Paul is restoring. It was built in 1733!










The boys each picked an entire grocery bag of apples. We had fun. We went out for lunch afterwards at Shorty's. The boys wanted to go there because they love the espinaca dip!

I have posted some new pictures to my winkflash site. With Amy's help this link on the side should take you to my pictures and it should let you see all my folders. Right now I have three folders there.

I am going to put a few of my favorite pictures here of course, just in case my link doesn't work. This first picture of Emily, Haley and Aiden mirrors the one of Tom and Kathy's kids. Mom has that one as her wallpaper on her computer. The girls were looking at it and I mentioned that I would like to take their picture like that. Haley, at only three, immediately said "so I will be behind Aiden because he will be on the bottom, and Emily will be behind Aiden and me." I was so impressed that she could look at the picture of Thomas, Steven and Lauren and figure out the order of the kids, then how that would be mirrored in her own family. We had fun taking this picture.

This is a picture of RaeLynne and Josh's house in Smolan. It is a really cute house, with a full fenced in back yard. I think it has three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, a living room, dining room, kitchen and full bath on the first floor. The back porch is enclosed and has a washer and dryer on it. The house has central air conditioning and has that great front porch. I think it is a great house.








These next three pictures are of Madi. Here she is with her parents. I liked this picture. Madi is so alert!





This is Madi with one set of her grandparents. I thought this was a particularly good picture of Dan and Jane. Boy don't they look like the proud grandparents!

Just as an aside, I am going to have to do another study when next I am in Kansas. I am going to see how frequently husbands and wives wear the similar colored shirts as both Dan and Jane and Chris and Amy did on the day of these pictures.




Then here is Madi with her great grandparents. What a rich family history this little girl gets to experience!








This final picture was just too precious. This little tiny girl has the complete attention of all three of these guys (Dad, Ray and Chris). You Go Girl, keep up the good work!

Do you remember playing Twister?

I think I figured out how to get you to see my photos from Thomas' birthday. I had forgotten to make them public photos. So try this link:

http://www.winkflash.com/photo/public.aspx?u=LJH916

Beth said she could not link to my pictures, so I have added a few more of them here.

Thomas on his seventh birthday.







Steven loves to say "cheese." Even if I don't ask him to say it, he does the minute it looks like I am going to point the camera at him. But then cheese is one of his favorite foods, I think.








Lauren is such a ham. I asked her if I could take her picture. I expected her to grin big like the boys do and say "cheese". But then she did this pose and I was able to capture it. I was laughing so hard at her. She is adorable.

Thomas turned 7 today! We had fun eating, playing hide and seek, drawing chalk art, and mugging for the camera. I have a few more pictures I will put on the media site I have linked in my previous post. Some of them are really cute (of course the subject of the pictures are always cute!).






Thomas loved his transformer "The Millenium Falcon." He has seen the original three movies and loves them! And of course his Dad is sitting on the couch reciting long quotes from the movies as Thomas is flying the Millenium Falcon around the room! A whole new generation of fans.





I took this picture, and several like it, of the kids sitting on my stairs. Aren't they cute?

I am not sure how to put a link on the side of my blog for my pictures. So I am posting the link right here.

http://www.winkflash.com/photo/public.aspx?u=LJH916

I had the best time in Kansas with my family.

I am going to add a few of my favorite pictures here on the site. But you can see them all through the link above.

This was the first opportunity I had to meet Madi. Please note Beth, I am holding her before you!














These are the four "Greats" together. I had no problem asking them to smile (or say cheese) on this picture. The Zsuzics children just adore Madi!







For some reason I did not get a picture of Madi with her Grandparents together. But I did get some good shots of each of them holding her.




But I did get one of Madi with her Great Grandparents! She is such a doll.












And don't you just love this one of Dad at the shop?







I had such a nice time in Kansas visiting with all the family.

As you can tell, I am finally getting my railroad tie curbing replaced with granite curbing. Here in New Hampshire granite curbing is everywhere. They use salt on the roads during the winter and so concrete curbing would just disintegrate. Besides New Hampshire is known as the "Granite State." I think you can see from both these pictures that in addition to the curbing, I think I am also getting about a foot or a foot and half more of yard. This first picture particularly shows where the road was and by that then, where the old curbing was. The granit curbing is about a foot and a half further out into the road. I wonder if they are going to discover the change or just leave it like that. I guess I don't mind, but it does seem odd that the road in front of my house is narrower than in front of my neighbor's house.



So now it is up to me to figure out how to make the new curbing look right with my yard. Does anyone know, should the yard be even with the top of the curbing? Or can I leave the curbing higher than the yard? It might be kind of dangerous. But if the yard is to be higher, then I am going to have to do something about making my yard more level!

This morning I read about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Daniel 3. These guys were pretty amazing! They are being prepared to be thrown into a fiery furnace and their response to the king is "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up." The furnace was so hot that the men throwing them into the fire were killed. Yet, they survived and "their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them." It is so easy to limit ourselves by not recognizing how truly awesome is our God.

These are a couple of pictures of my freshly painted house. It also includes a picture of my newly redone porch. I am pleased with how nicely it turned out. The previous paint job was a little dull looking compared to this new paint. But I stayed with the same color. I love the red and cream color look.















Notice above the garage door I have a Pennsylvania Dutch "sign". It was hanging inside the garage. I had the painter hang it instead of the huge wreath that was there previously. This particular design stands for friendship. If you want to read about these signs you can link here to http://www.amishnews.com/featurearticles/Storyofhexsigns.htm.

I looked to see what actually constitutes being "Pennsylvania Dutch." I checked it out on the internet. This is what I read:

The Pennsylvania Dutch are not even Dutch at all. They are not from the country that we know today as the Netherlands. Some say that the Pennsylvania Dutch should be more properly known as Pennsylvania German. Deutsch means German and the early English in America corrupted the term Deutsch to Dutch. The term German though had a different meaning before 1800. The Germans were not members of a formal country at that time, but were a loose collection of principalities, free cities, protectorates and confederations. The country that we know today as Germany came into being in 1848 with the unification process starting around 1800. German areas before 1800 included areas that are now part of Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Russia, France and other areas as well as Germany. A more formal definition of Pennsylvnia Dutch then are those that came to America from those areas where the German language was spoken before 1800. Those that came after 1800 are usually referred to as Pennsylvania Germans or just German imigrants.

So I suppose technically our family may not be able to trace our roots back before 1800. I have not done a geneology history of Gram Helm's family (Hardy) or Grandpap Helm's family, but I suspect that they were closest to being here before 1800. I know that Grandmommy Holdren's family (Mundrick) were only first generation American, so they probably came in the late 1800's. I don't know about the rest. I will have to check it out someday. But in the meantime, I like the looks of the Pennsylvania Dutch sign.

Yesterday was Deerfield Old Home Days. Thomas' (and Tommy's) Cub Scouts had a float in the parade. It was the best float! You can see Steven sitting in the float, but I don't know which of the white helmets is Thomas. Tom rode in the jeep pulling the float. The kids had candy they were tossing all along the parade route. After this float my next favorite was one the local nursing home had. I didn't get a picture of it until they were finished, but you will get an idea from this picture. They had the float filled with residents all dressed in World War II uniforms. They had a truck decked out like a USO show (with the people that could stand for the parade) and then the trailer with the "soldiers" that needed to sit. It was great. One of the older gentleman they were helping from the float looked pretty tired, and maybe even a little "out of it." But when he walked past Lauren standing with Tommy, he patted her on the head. He had enjoyed himself. The whole parade was quite fun. They had all the local emergency vehicles as well as a few from neighboring communities. So they were noisy. Kathy and I both raised our eyebrows at the "Mass Casuality Unit" when it went by! It was shared by Raymond, Deerfield and Newfields, funded by Homeland Security.

I am going to add a few of the extra pictures from today. It was a fun afternoon.


"Astronaut" Thomas had completed his mission to distribute candy all along the parade route.














Thomas, Steven and Kathy's Dad. Riding in a parade was hot, hard work. Both boys needed water right away! They are so cute.





Cub Scout leader Tom and his mother-in-law Diane.








These are a couple of random parade shots. For a small town, they had a nice parade. It was fun to watch. There were a lot more "floats." Everyone on the floats knew someone along the side of the road and were talking back and forth with the parade viewers. It was a fun parade and I enjoyed the "small town" atmosphere of the parade.