~No wonder!!!!

We were up and out the door early Saturday morning to take Courtney to archery (btw, she beat most of the boys heehee). As soon as we turned on the road we saw this nice neighbor fella plowing the roads. NOW I know why it takes so long to get these backroads cleared!!!! LOL

Just teasing, we do have these handy dandy trucks come thru sometimes too.

I actually think the snow is (kinda) pretty ~ when Duane is driving, not me! Look at that mountain of snow! shheeesh!

Nort did so well!!!! They don't usually shoot at balloons but the kids had a blast doing it :-)

~Merry Christmas!

Hmmm someone's a little late getting the Christmas pictures on here, but better late than never I say!!!!

I adore this one of Courtney and Cora. Playing Rock Band on the PS3

She means it too!!!!

Liz, Mom & I

Clea and Chad

a little Christmas night music

~The frozen tundra

....otherwise known as ...... OHIO

I find winter in Ohio utterly beautiful, but with a few stipulations:

1) it must be sunny 2) NO snow on the road! (all these pics were taken on our road)

Today the sun honestly TRIED to come out, this picture was taken at 2 in the afternoon, not exactly "bright and sunny" is it? but by-golly the sun was making an attempt!

I have to admit I'd make a miserable amish woman- can you imagine hanging up that much laundry in the winter!?!? It goes all the way from the left side of the pic (the whitesare hard to see) to the roof of the barn. Normally I love to see the laundry flapping in the breeze, but in the winter, it makes me shiver just thinking about it.

These pics are from last summer ~ Just to remind myself why I live here!

~ I'm MIA

Yes it's true....I've been staying up till 2am every night searching for men.

Not to worry, I'm not leaving my hubby. The men I'm looking for are dead. Hmmm this is not sounding very good at all is it?! lol I'm been playing with my Christmas presents - Paint shop pro 'ultimate' photo 2x and a subscription to Ancestry.com :-) Add that to the new CD that has been playing continuously on my computer (and in my car) at top notch volume for the past 29 days and this is girl is in heaven! Hours of research and mindlessly singing along with Taylor Swift take me to my happy place where I feel completely calm.

Might as well stay in and do a little bit of research when it looks like this outside:

"a bit of research" to me means 8, 9, 10 hours of research, because I become obsessed with it. Like stalker style................. I stalk dead people!!! lol When I want to find something, I'm REALLY determined to find it and make sure it's correct so I have to find the documents to prove it.

Look at the mess I've made on the floor beside the desk.......The computer desk looks just as bad, there's paper everywhere, both computers are open, the printer is officially out of ink and the poor dog has to come beg to go outside every couple hours because I'm so into what I'm doing that I don't see him standing by the front door. Forget taking the dog for a walk-he's lucky if I remember to feed him.......oops I didn't feed him this morning! Luckily the kiddos are in school this week or they might be starving for attention and food too. I can't even explain how thrilled I get to find a new branch of the family tree or a new picture that I've never seen or new proof of who and where I came from. Especially when I find stories. Oh how I love to find a story that mentions one of my people. Like the one of my great grandpappy who joined the army at age 13, he was so tall he easily passed for an 18 year old. Or the great grandfather who was captured in the civil war by the yanks and held at Camp Chase right here in Ohio.

My breath always catches and my heart gives a lurch when I finally find some info that I've been looking for---then I do a little dance :-) I ooooh and awwwww alot when I find a census record for someone that I've always thought of as an 'elderly person' and suddenly I see their name on a document, stated as 3 years old. It makes me giddy to think of a great great grandfather as being a child :-) And I usually have 15,740 windows open on each computer (ok maybe just 10 or 15) because when I find something new I think of something else and go google it. I'm surprised the computers haven't gone up in smoke yet!

Don't worry you don't need to call the shrink, I'm not crazy......just passionate :-) I haven't even gotten any Christmas pics on my blog yet but I did manage to play around with the paint shop a lil. What's more fitting than 'painting' my room with the paint shop program? And I didn't even drip any paint on my clothes :-)

I just wish it was that easy to do a real makeover on the room!!! ok I'm off to get groceries. I don't want to leave my computer but I guess we have to eat something.

Oh Dear........again!

*****I think the last half of this post is now null and void because poor lil swiss died already! thankfully I kept the receipt but I don't know that I'm ready to try this hamster thing ....again. And yesterday I looked in the fish tank and couldn't find the fish....anywhere! but he was just hiding Phew!!!!

Mickey Squeaky R.I.P

Last night my sister and I were flipping thru some pictures on the computer and some adorable ones of Mickey (the hamster) came up, so she wanted to go see him. I was opening the side of the cage and no sooner had she said "How long is that hamster going to live? He's already 2 years old isn't he?" then I reached in to wake him up and realized he was....... DEAD! :-(
(and he hadn't been dead very long) Of course Courtney and Cora walked in that same exact moment. Luckily Courtney was pretty calm about it since we had company over. She's not one for public displays of emotion. So this morning we had a little funeral out in the woods and she made a sign that says "My best friend Mickey the hamster" to mark the spot.
Here's Courtney & Gunner mourning over Mickey after the funeral. Breaks my heart! :-(

This morning, Courtney, Grandma and I went to town and came home with 'Swiss'. Isn't she pretty? We left with plans to find 'Cheddar', a carbon copy of Mickey that Courtney had already named last night. But there were only 2 hamsters at Petco, once grey and one white. So we now have "swiss", because "mozerella" just didn't sound right and we don't know of any grey cheeses. Apparently Courtney was determined to use a cheesey name :-) Marshmellow would be fitting too, IF we were going for sugary food names. Usually new hamsters are nervous about being transported, being in a new place and being handled which equals biting, and sometimes getting sick . But Swiss is adapting beautifully. She's already such a sweetie, who loves coming out to play and doesn't mind being handled at all. what a good girl!

Our other new addition (from a few days ago) is Bubbles the 28cent fish :-) Ozzie "likes" him... A-lot. I'm really hoping there are no more funerals around here any time soon!