DEC. 22 UPDATE: Catching up on photos

Online shopping has kept me from blogging for a while. (I'm only half joking. I had a little too much fun shopping on Etsy this year. It was way too easy to personalize gifts that way.)

And it's way past my bedtime, but I thought I'd at least catch up on uploading photos for you all.

Erik is still as smiley as ever. He really wants to grab and chew things lately. No tooth coming in yet, that I can see, but I can't imagine it will be long.


We've had several good storms since I last wrote. This photo was taken inside the granary after the Dec. 14 blizzard. Snow was whipped around and driven into every possible crevice -- including, as pictured here, through the point where the siding meets the eaves. Not really a good thing. We'll ask the Prairie Builders construction company owner about that soon.


This window was not quite latched, and the snow found that crevice, too.


Snow was piled up pretty good in front of the door to the tractor shed.


Visibility wasn't very good for much of that Sunday blizzard. This is the view from the kitchen window.

SOFIA IS THREE! We had a nice little party on Dec. 13 before the storm hit, and everyone made it home safely. We had a Santa Lucia-themed cake -- this particular Santa Lucia doll just happens to have three candles. Who could have planned it better? (Actually, the theme was a last-minute diversion, just because I didn't want to have a Barbie-themed party.)


Since the blizzard day, the weather has been COLD. Wind chill warnings for many days. But on Saturday morning, even though another blizzard was forecast, it was pleasant enough to head outside for a bit of sledding ...


... as long as we stayed out of the wind. Doesn't that just look cold? We didn't venture past the trees on our little walk.


The wind is going to be a bit of a problem for us -- the north wind creates a nice drift right in front of the front door. And the wind just whips around that corner -- we'll have to consider planting trees.

Oh, and how's the house coming? Well, Dave hasn't been putting in the longest hours when the wind chill is 35 below. The slacker. (Note: There was sarcasm in the previous sentence.) And winter brings its own to-do list: Snow-blowing the road, plugging in the tractor, plugging in the car, etc. But he's still managed to get quite a bit of wiring done. If we had a stretch of decent weather, I'd say what he has left on the wiring is just a weekend's worth of work.

And we'll soon be off for a few days of Christmassing! As long as the weather holds, and it looks like it should be OK for our drive to St. Paul on Wednesday and our drive to Iowa on Friday.

Merry Christmas, everyone! May your holiday fill you with gratitude and peace.

DEC. 11 UPDATE: Still wiring

Does it look cold here? That's because it is! Sofia and I went out and investigated the frost on the porch windows Tuesday morning. It was pretty with the morning light shining through it; I had fun taking a few pictures.


The sparrows were huddled in the lilac bush outside the window.


Winter sunrises will be nice once we get into the new house -- look how much light we'll get in those south windows!


Sunrise through a lilac branch.


Just an artsy frost picture. The color was more impressive in person.

... Dave has been working steadily on wiring. The upstairs is nearly finished; Dave just needs to wire the smoke detectors up there. I think then we're down to wiring the kitchen and bathroom, and a few other details here and there that need finishing or changing.

It's good that the wiring is nearly finished. It's starting to get seriously cold here, and every time the temperature drops into the single digits, Dave gets nervous about the above-ground pipes freezing. They are inside the house, but it's still unheated when he's not out there working in it. And even then there's nothing to stop the heat from going out the vents in the roof in the addition. Once the wiring is done, Dave can get busy putting up insulation -- which will not only help the pipe-freezing worry, but will make it much more comfortable for Dave when he's working in there.

Dave and I plotted out where the appliances in the kitchen would go with chalk on the floor last night. Everything will fit where we'd planned it, but with not a whole lot of inches to spare, and we have to get the skinnier versions of the refrigerator and the dishwasher. Oh, well -- it's probably what I would have picked, anyway. We will have a large freezer in the addition to help with food storage as well, so hopefully the 30-inch fridge will be OK, and I think the 18-inch dishwasher will be adequate.

... It really is nice to be able to go into the house and really envision where everything is going to be! It's calming, really -- even if we're standing in the midst of construction mess, it's nice to think of actually living in that space. And it's so interesting to be creating something new on the old homeplace -- outside the door the farm is just as it's always been in my memory, while inside the door is something completely new, more like the design books that I've been reading than the granary it used to be.

... I've been working on planning Sofia's birthday party on Saturday, and now it looks like it might be done in by the weather! Hmph. Well, we'll see. Sometimes weathermen are wrong.

DEC. 2 UPDATE: Days are shorter

We went for a nice walk yesterday evening and enjoyed another lovely sunset ... though we didn't really enjoy the fact that it was setting at 4:30 in the afternoon! Hurrumph. Dave said that by the time he stops in to get some coffee and we go for a family walk, he doesn't have any natural light left to work by. Ah, well. Tis the season.


The renter's cows were grazing in the pasture across the road; one was out when we returned from our walk. It didn't look like it was in a big hurry, just grazing on the other side of the fence. Our renter's hired hand arrived shortly to shoo the cow back in. We weren't sure how it got out, as the fence didn't look to be down anywhere; maybe the cow was inspired and jumped!


Mari and her girls (Viena, Eliana and Amara) came over for a baking day on Saturday -- we made four different kinds of Christmas cookies. It was a little chaotic, but I think the girls had fun!

Eliana and Viena are posing here with some of the finished treats. (Sofia was too tired to smile by that point.)

Sofia's cookies had a signature look. She's apparently a frosting minimalist. Can you pick out her creations?