Happy New Year from Chilly Iowa !

We went to Indiana to be with my family this year on Christmas.  With Christmas being "early" this year and me being gone for Thanksgiving not getting home till Nov. 30th, Bill and I felt like most people did this year - that Christmas was all of a sudden here so it hasn't felt quite right.  And now all of a sudden it's already New Year's Eve!

It's been a very cold winter here so far and tonight is no exception.  We'll be in by the fire staying warm and having some shrimp, cheese & crackers rather than going out.  There are no restaurants close enough or worth going out in this cold for.  It's already just 4 degrees with -11 wind chill at 5:30 tonight.  Brrrrrr.  We haven't had much snow yet though.

Diane and girls came over Sun. to open Christmas gifts, and I babysat the girls today while Diane worked.   The little one has a cold and is miserable.  Bill had one the whole time we were in Indiana and then I got a mild one. 

Bill has been pricing and ordering chemicals for next year and working on his shed.  Today he had lumber and sheets of steel delivered for the inside walls.  He and Tim have already been to a few farm related classes this winter.

All of the area farmers are ready for 2013 to be over and they're even glad the fields are white to help them forget the issues we had this past year with the long, cool, wet spring which made us not get some fields even planted, then drought again during the summer. 

I hope everyone has a safe night tonight and a relaxing day off tomorrow.

I'll be posting more pictures soon from Tahiti to warm up the winter.  :)      

We're Ready !

As of this afternoon, I have our cards all done, gifts wrapped and laundry caught up!  This is early for me to be ready for Christmas and I like it!

Bill has been going to farm related classes and working on his shed.  

Monday he had an appointment in Algona so I went with him.  The jewelry store we love there that has been in business for almost 70 years and where Bill got my engagement ring is closing and has been having a sale, so we went to see if we could find any good deals.   The cute little guy, Erv, that owned it died this time last year and his kids didn't want to keep it going.  Very sad. 

After that, I got Bill to go in the pet store and coffee shop because he hadn't been in them for years and they are really, really nice - as nice as you'd find in big cities.  Here are some random pictures of the pet store.  

lizard on the ceiling

  

the sign by this parrot said "I bite"

Bill looking at all the fish.

Christmas Road Trip and Misc. Pictures

One day last week, we headed to Des Moines to Christmas shop.  We had a couple of things to return to two stores that we don't have in our area and still needed to get some gifts.  The first day we went to several places around Ankeny and Ames and got all of our gifts bought.  We spent the night in Ankeny and went to one of our favorite restaurants, Texas Roadhouse.  We don't have any restaurants in our town so when we go out-of-town we really appreciate being able to have a nice meal out.  We had lunch at Hickory Park in Ames.  It's a huge restaurant that serves a lot of hickory smoked meats.

Since we had such good luck the first day, that left the next day for just looking around for fun.  Bill had not been to Jordan Creek Town Center in Des Moines.  It's a very nice two level mall.  I happened to see this and got a quick picture.  Santa was having his picture taken with a little baby.  He acted like he had been reading a book to the baby and had fallen asleep.  Really cute picture.  You can barely see the baby - it was so tiny.

The Jordan Creek Mall is always decorated very nice.  The tree was there in Santa's area.  The above double sided fireplace is in the food court area.  I could've sat there for a while.  All in all, it was an enjoyable couple of days away.  We got a lot done but had fun too, and it really helped get me in the Christmas spirit.

I kept Diane's girls on Sat. and they helped decorate our tree!

Our church is always decorated so pretty for Christmas with several trees up front.

 
  

Start of the Trip - Pepeete, Tahiti Market

After the eight hour flight from Los Angeles to Papeete, Tahiti,we checked into a hotel for two nights to rest up before the cruise.  We took a bus tour of the island and also visited the market.  The market was fun to see.  Look at all the fresh fruit, vegetables, flowers and fish!  So colorful. 

freshly caught fish including red snapper

I love tropical flowers.  They smell so good too.  On the whole trip, there were 
lots of leis and crowns for just $5. 

We tried a couple on here.  You had to tie these in the back so we were just holding them on for picture taking purposes.  Mom looks good with hers. I ended up wearing one pretty often since all the humidity was super bad for my naturally curly/wavy hair!!

These white flowers were a form of gardenia so they smelled so good.  They had the type of gardenia that I love but also this one.  This type grows all over the islands.  

We ended up buying a bouquet of a variety of flowers to have in our cabin on the ship.  They stayed nice the whole trip.  On one of the islands, we found bouquets of just gardenias so we added those to our vase.  Every time we'd return to our cabin, it smelled soooo good. 

big arrangements

Gemutlichkeit Luncheon

This was the 25th Gemutkichkeit Luncheon in Humboldt at the Zion Lutheran Church.  It's a new tradition for us to go to this every year with friend, Terri, and her mom - this was our 3rd. 

They serve a huge German meal for just $10.

definitely not hungry for a long time after eating all of this!

Let's see, looking at the picture helps.  There was a brat and sauerkraut, slice of very tender & moist pork loin, potato soup, German potato salad, homemade relishes including pickled beets and pickles, about 3 kinds of bread to choose from, deviled eggs, fruit soup, springerle cookies, peppernuts and black forest cake.  There is another cookie there - the brown rectangle - that I don't know what it's called.

the relishes

 

We were happy the weather cooperated so we could go, and we look forward to going again next year.
 

A Fun First

Saturday, I went to my first ever Cookie Walk.  It's not something new here, but I had never heard of them and lots of other people haven't either.  This one was in Algona at a Methodist Church.  Bill's sister, Karen, and our nieces usually go to one every year that their church does.  When we're at her house for Christmas, she always has all of these pretty cookies for us.  It's fun to try all the different ones. 

Churches or other groups have cookie walks as a fundraiser.  They just have members of their groups bake cookies to donate (this church asked families to bring 4 doz.), usually at Christmas time.  The day of the "walk", they line them up on covered tables, give you a plastic bucket with a lid and you just walk along the tables and pick up the ones you want!  Fun! It was $8 per bucket.  It's an easy fundraiser.

They say that usually they are out of cookies 30 minutes after the doors open. I was done in about 10 min.  It was fun - I will definitely go again.  Next week there is one in Humboldt.  It looked liked a fun thing to take kids to. 

When I got home, we headed to Humboldt for the annual German meal for lunch.  Will post pictures of that next.

Bill is working in his shed doing some painting, and tonight he and Tim are going to a chemicals class in Humboldt.  I should be making Christmas cards, but I'm going to make caramels first. 

Back from Paradise

I'm just back from a trip to Paradise with my mom, Aunt Dana, Uncle Dale, their travel agent and her husband and others from the Carmel/Indy area - 15 in our group. We left on Nov. 17th.  I flew from Des Moines and met up with the rest of the group in Dallas.  We flew from there to Los Angeles.  Then it was an 8 hour flight to Papeete, Tahiti.  We were greeted with leis and Tahitian music at the airport!

Uncle Dale & Mom

We spent that night and the next at the InterContinental Hotel there to get over the jet lag.  This hotel was beautiful.  Most of us said we would've been happy if we stayed there the whole trip.

This was our view from our balcony! 

Breakfast the next morning was more beautiful than good.  I don't really remember what I had to eat, just that the buffet and the view from our table was amazing!!

cereals

yogurt & toppings

all open to the amazing pool & lagoon area

pastries

mural

Happy Thanksgiving !

I hope you all are having a nice day with that traditional Thanksgiving food that you look forward to and being with family.  

My family always has turkey, baked dressing (not stuffed in the turkey), sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry salad, homemade butterhorn rolls and pecan and pumpkin pie.  Every year we say "yikes, this is all carbs!" and try to think of something green to have with it at least or usually just say "oh well, it's only one day a year". 

This year I got a couple of new things to decorate our table and really like how it looks.  I love table runners and have had this on the table all fall.  Some bittersweet around the candles would be nice too.  I spotted some bittersweet along the trail but it's mostly up high in the trees.

an unusual pumpkin

I really like this Jack-O-Lantern I have up in Oct.

Camry asked me why this "clown" was in her little chair!  She didn't know about scarecrows yet.