Sneak Peek

This is what FARMCHICK won in my Merry Christmas Giveaway. She received her package so I'll post for all to see :) Have a wonderful, Blessing filled, first week of 2010!

Family Pics

My sis, Me and Mom

"B" Family


MeMe, PaPa and the Boys

The Grandson's

Rance & Ben

My Folks

I love this picture

I love this picture too!

The "W" Family

The whole crew

The boys again

We took these in early December on one very nice afternoon at my folks' house. It was very windy that day so we ventured into one of the pastures where there are lots of trees and it made a great wind break for us.

A Merry Christmas

Warning! This is a long post and lots of pictures.

This fence is about 5 ft tall-

the boys walked the alley thru the drifts and had a

BLAST!

CB falling thru a drift!

Christmas Eve Snowstorm

The boys braving the weather!

My niece..isn't she adorable?

Family Christmas 2009

Santa even took time to come by the Sale Barn

and visit us!

Gosh, it's been so long since I've posted...we're nearly into a New Year! So much has happened since I last posted. It was confirmed that my mom did in fact have a heart attack, has been back to the hospital and out again yesterday--after several tests it has been confirmed that she is having residual pain from the pericarditis and it should begin to subside soon, we had quite a little snowstorm for Christmas Eve, my dad is healing well from his surgery and still waiting on the pathology report and the dr to be in town and my m-i-l's husband is taking therapy to help him improve after his stroke. We spent Christmas Eve with JB's dad and his sister and family. Had a good time with family and watched it SNOW and BLOW...the kids did brave the weather...intermittently{smile} Christmas morning the boys were up at 430 or 5 I don't recall exactly...so we had our Christmas--thank goodness for hot coffee!! We had a good time opening gifts and then the boys were outside sledding by 7 am{crazy boys}. We went to do chores and found nice deep/tall drifts everywhere including the alley where the cattle would travel thru to get to water. Nice.

"B" boys with their new Shotguns

ZB and his new boots

CB and His new boots

Santa always brings us lottery tickets in our

stockings...this year, CB and JB were the winners

This is one of CB's tickets, he won a free ticket

on the other one and JB one $1.00 It's always

fun to have these!

This little lady was not interested in running

thru this drift for a drink.

Don't EAT the Brown Snow!

Of course, we had several to doctor. Seems to be
the trend right now :(

JB playing Dr.--he's getting tired

of that game already!

This is our friend, Bob Cat. You may have heard of him. He was most helpful in clearing out all the snow so the ladies could get to water. Let me tell ya, once he cleared the way, they flocked to the waterers!

A summary...

of my week. Let's start with Monday shall we?
My dad, having surgery to remove a mass on his adrenal gland(on the kidney) ok..I'm thinking a couple of hours surgery, recovery, etc. Be back at work by noonish...No. After 2 1/2 hours, mom and I are thinking...did they have to Open him up...no more Laproscopic surgery? Thankfully, my cousin works in the OR...she found out it's just taking a while...ok. 4 hours later.. around noonish the Dr comes out...all went well, it just took awhile, every time he "touched" the adrenal gland to remove it..my dad's BP sky-rocketed. Doesn't think it's cancerous but going to send it off for pathology. Ok...They decide to put him in ICU overnight so they can make sure his BP stays down. Ok, finally get to see dad around 2pm. By now, No work is going to happen for me, we were short at work anyway:) It's gettin to be time to get boys from school at 3. I hightail it out, stop and get gas and make it to CB's school by 3:15 pm--Dad does well and goes home Tuesday afternoon. Tuesday was fairly un-eventful and Wednesday was a very busy day, last cattle sale of the year, had about 1400 hd. CB had B-ball practice and I finally got home at 9 pm.....Thursday...well, is supposed to be normal. I go to work, do my stuff, leave work to get CB from school and decide to call my mom and see how my Grandma is doing(she was going to go see her)she doesnt' know because she is not there. Ok. Mom says, "I'm getting the dashboard lights fixed on the suburban, I'm in Wellington". Ok...Mom says," I was debating on whether to call you, I went over to the dr and I'm waiting for your dad to get here...they are sending me to Wichita" WHAT? Mom says," it's no big deal, I just haven't felt good for awhile and having some chest heaviness and my arm has been aching...I think it's becuase I moved some hay bales the other day" WHAT? she mumbles something about heart cath friday a.m. Ok I say, "I'll be up later" mom" no need, it's fine, dad and I are going, we'll call"
I get my boys from school, head home, get an early supper going, head to work thinking I'm going to be gone on Friday so I'll work awhile tonite...get a call from dad around 8:45pm, mom had an EKG w/significant change, they are taking her in for heart cath tonite...I head to Wichita and get there around 10:15 pm, heart cath went well, found a 70% block, placed a stent but the dr thought the root problem was...myocarditis. Part of heart was not even moving. He asked if she had been sick, yes, she has been. The virus settled in her heart and has made it sick and not function properly. He expects full recovery--Praise the Lord!
Yesterday...Friday...mom doing well...I get a call from my m-i-l, her husband has had a stroke and they are on their way to Wichita...a different hospital. So, back to Wichita we go last night. His speech is not good, but everything else thus far has checked out ok. Hope to know more today.

Please keep my WHOLE family in prayer--it's been an eventful week to say the least! But our GOD is BIGGER than anything and he IS the Almighty Physician. Praise be to God for watching over me and my family as we have traveled, been in hospitals, surgery and everything else. If I don't get back here before...wishing You and Yours a Very Merry Christmas!

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

WE HAVE A WINNER!

And...let me tell ya...I LOVED hearing(ok, reading) all the traditions that were shared.

First, I had to get my favorite bowl to draw the name out of.

And then, I put all the names in the bowl. 19 to be exact. Then a good stir, shuffle and shake.

Then I asked oldest DS for some assistance. He gladly obliged. He also told me he thought he looked BUFF! LOL

Then...He blinked when I took his picture as he was reading the name. You can look BUFF and blink right? ha ha

Ok..here is a no-blink picture! Isn't he a handsome sweetheart? I think so...

And now for the name... She has blonde/brown hair, a blogger I have NOT yet met, she probably has a lot of snow on the ground around her home, she always has GREAT recipes to share on her blog, she recently went to a craft fair, and she says she's finally getting her home decorated for Christmas aaannnddd...she has a strong resemblance to a good friend of mine! Have you guessed her yet?

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ok, just a little further....

CONGRATULATIONS! I hope you enjoy receiving this gift as much as I have enjoyed the giving! I loved having a giveaway and plan to do another...and another...and possibly another!

Have a Blessed Weekend. I have more pics to share but will do it another time.

shoot me an email and I'll get your notecards in the mail on Monday. After you receive them, I'll post a picture of them to share!

brazle at cox dot net

MeRRy CHriSTmaS GiVEawAy!

Yes, it is true! I am finally going to have my very first GIVEAWAY!

Beginning today...I want to hear comments about your Christmas Traditions, old and new~your favorite things, etc. Leaving a comment will automatically enter you in the drawing. Let your friends know and have them stop by and leave a comment too!

The prize??? Well, it's going to be a handmade set of assorted cards.

Let me just say, I do NOT claim to be a "crafty" person of any kind. I love to scrapbook and I enjoy using my "scraps" to make little note cards. It's fun and I love giving them!

I will draw for the winner next Friday evening, December 11th! Have fun and I can't wait to see what other traditions are out there!

TiS ThE SeAsON!

One of my favorite decorations...One of my favorite Christmas Songs...It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Had a wonderful Thanksgiving....hope that you did too. JB and I took in some black Friday shopping, after 2:30 pm and got home around 11:30 pm. Considering we had bought NOTHING for Christmas, we did pretty well. Early Saturday morning, my good, sweet friend Paula over at Broken Y and I took off around 7:30 am and headed to Harper KS for a little shopping at a little place that fellow bloggers(Jenn and Michelle) opened. It was so fun to take a little road trip, visit, and get to meet these fellow bloggers and Shop! Got home from there, headed home to begin the task of decorating for Christmas. It's always a job to drag out my tubs of stuff from the crawl space, CB was a good boy and helped me get everything out and discovered a dead mouse in the process(boo~hiss). I proceed to crawl down there and get a few other things and discover a very wet floor, carpet, etc. Oh great, we have some sort of a leak and it's been leaking awhile...can you say Mold? Gross. Any whoo....JB crawls down, starts cutting out the wet carpet, etc and scraping the mold off...in the drying process now so we can go back with bleach. Still haven't figured out what exactly is leaking or has leaked. My question is....Why must darn near everything turn into a home improvement project?

Here's a little play by play on my assembling & decorating of the tree

First, all boxes must be drug out of crawl space and trash the living room :) Then assembly begins, all my branches are coded by Alphas...

As each layer of branches go on, so do a string of lights, almost always white, once in awhile, colored. I use about 600 lights.

This year, I decided to try a little raffia in the tree for something a little different. I like my new different...will add this new routine in for every year!

Finally, the finished product...lots and lots of ornaments! I love looking at all of them as I put them on, the boys made some, some are gifts, some were wedding presents, the boys always get ornaments from Grandpa every year(since they were born). Some are fun, some are silly and some are very sweet and special. One of my very favorite things to do this time of year is have a seat in the living room, all lights off but the tree and sit and meditate, savor and enjoy the peaceful feeling that it brings. Better yet, early morning is good too....sipping my coffee and enjoying my tree!

And now, I'm going to share a few of my favorite ornaments

The beautiful, purple KState glass ball.

This belongs to one of the boys...they each have one, Grandpa got this for them! GO CATS!

This was a gift from last year to the family...It's pretty special.

These are just a FEW of my favorites. What are your favorite ornaments?

Have a blessed week as we head into the CHRISTmas season.