Snow Day!!

Wow! This snow sure took us by surprise! Sure, they'd been calling for it all day and the previous day, but how many times have we actually had the snow that's expected?

As the snow began to fall Friday night, we invited our community group over for some pizza, snacks and games. We all watched in amazement as the snow kept coming, and coming... Two of the couples left together and called us about 20 minutes later - they only made it halfway down the street and were stuck! They started walking back with plans to crash with us for the night, but some friendly stranger with 4-wheel drive stopped and took them home. It's nice to hear good samaritans like that still exist today.

Jesse and I stayed up until the wee hours of the night, enjoying the fire and watching the snow fall....

Saturday morning arrived and it was STILL SNOWING!! Jesse measured and estimates we got about 15 inches. Unbelievable!! I haven't seen that much snow in a really long time.

It really is a Winter Wonderland. Madi loves the snow and jumped right in, whereas Rummy stood on the porch shivering. I didn't want to embarrass him by posting a picture, he tries to come across as a manly dog.

So, what do you do when you're snowed in?? Jesse and Scott played Xbox 360 pretty much all day long and then went to the neighbor's and played pool for awhile. I, on the hand, painted part of our living room. It took me pretty much all day long. The color is Smoky Blue and it covers 3 walls. I'll be finishing the rest over New Year vacation (hopefully). The other color is called Prelude and is a lighter shade of blue. I'll post more pictures when everything is complete and the house is put back together!

Merry Christmas

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year!

Love, Jesse and Carrie

Fun with Sharon and Charie Rose

Sharon and Charie Rose are on the West Coast Team of the Children of the World Choir. Once the tour begins, they usually don't make it back to Virginia until the end. This year, however, they were able to perform with Steven Curtis Chapman in Tennessee and then they came to Lynchburg to perform at Thomas Road Baptist Church. So, we got to have a few days with the girls again. I had such a great time with these two special girls. We played at Kids Cove at TRBC, went to the pet store, saw G-Force at the dollar show, went to Cold Stone Creamery (where the girls made disgusting concoctions and therefore proceeded to eat my ice-cream instead of their own), and drew lots and lots of pictures. It was hard to say good-bye again knowing I won't see them again until June. :(

Fake dogs outside of TRBC (why??)

Our fridge is covered in their beautiful drawings right now!

Me and Charie Rose

Me and Sharon

Our Yard

In a recent post, you saw Jesse cutting down the 2 dying cherry trees our yard. I was sad to see them go. Jesse had more plans for our yard though, and for this, I am excited! We have a retaining wall in our yard that was made out of cinder block (side 1) and railroad ties (side 2). Side 1 was slowly starting to fall over because whoever put it in didn't do it right. It looked terrible. So we tore out the wall and are having a new stone wall and paver patio put in, complete with a walkway to our back shed. Here are some pictures of the progress so far:

Side 1 wall removed and land prepared for pavers

Side 2 wall removed

The area directly behind our deck has always been uneven and hole-filled. As Jesse was clearing the area for the walkway, he came across what turned into a HUGE project: The retaining wall behind the deck was one 6x6 that was rotting away and some more crumbling cinderblock. Dirt was slowly sliding past it underneath our deck, thus the reason for the holes. Jesse spent all evening fixing this, working well into the night. Our neighbor's friend helped him place the new 6x6's. I helped carry them from the truck though (She-Ra!).

Measuring depth to make sure new wall will fit

Working into the night...

New wall in place

A job well done!

Next up was digging out the path for the walkway. We all pitched in and worked this time

digging the line

dig, dig, dig!

I told you, I'm She-Ra!

new pathway

Finally, I have some pictures of the progress made so far on the new retaining walls and patio. It's gonna look good!!

Side 1 new wall and pavers

Side 1

Stairs on Side 2 and part of new wall

We'll post more soon!

Experimenting...

Earlier this week, we had Mariam from the Children of the World stay with us for 2 nights. She had to have hernia surgery earlier in the month and was staying behind until she fully recovered and was able join back with her team today.

The first night I asked Mariam what she would like for dinner, and she requested spaghetti. That's easy enough, until I discovered I was out of spaghetti sauce! I remembered all the frozen roma tomatoes from our garden I had in our freezer, and the green peppers we just picked and decided to make my own rather than run to the store. It was my first attempt at homemade spaghetti sauce, and I think it turned out pretty well. Mariam liked it at least!

homemade spaghetti sauce with turkey meatballs

Mariam

For my next meal, I decided to try to make Panang Curry, one of my favorite Thai dishes. I didn't have all of the necessary ingredients, so I had to improvise a little... I'd love to tell you what I did, but I can't remember now! I was happy with the way it turned out. Jesse said he didn't care for it, but he said the same thing when he ate it from Thai 99, so I counted it as success!

Unfortunately, with both of these meals since I was just "winging it" I didn't write everything down! I don't think I'll ever be able to recreate them!

Our yard. Cherry trees.

So, our yard is going through another transformation of sorts. I didn't do much yard work over the Summer because it's no fun in the heat. However, the weather is now agreeable to spending to many hours and weekends working in the yard. My newest project is cutting down the cherry trees in the back yard. I love them but they are at the end of their 25 year life span. Branches are dying and we barely got any cherries last year - they were moldy. I had a helper named Buddy assisting me for a while today.

I made a lot of progress with my 10" folding saw! More to come.

Home Improvement

One major project we've had in the back of our minds since we moved into our house over 2 years ago is to paint the windows. We have a lot of windows, so this has stayed in the VERY back of our minds!

Just look at the shape of these windows though... it has to be done!

Gross

We found a solution to our aversion: have someone else do it for us!

An old co-worker of mine and ex-employee of Jesse's (not in that order) does odd jobs, so we hired him to do all the work. :) He's doing a great job.

Here is the progress so far... Old paint scraped off and one coat of Behr Premium Plus Exterior paint in semi-gloss. It's a primer and paint in one. Looking better already!

Hi!

We'll keep you updated on the progress!