Happy Chinese New Year!

Today began the year of the Rabbit. We had a great celebratory day at our home.

We had a huge dinner of Gingered Chicken and Broccoli, Oranges, Egg Rolls, Steamed Rice and Hot Tea. We used Quinny's red and turquoise tea set from China. The girls wore their beautiful dresses, and we played both traditional and contemporary Chinese music for dinner. Afterwards we celebrated with jelly-filled spongecake, fortune cookies, and firecrackers on the back deck. Yes, the deck is still there.

Mother Nature, What Have You Done?

Boo Hoo - My Mother's Day Willow Tree..10 years old. :(

Frozen berries on John's trees across the street

The McKim Observatory - Beautiful no matter what the weather holds.

Me - Beautiful no matter what the weather holds! :)

Alex - Spending as much time with him as I can....Two more years and he's gone..

We have been battered by an ice storm. Two days off of school so far, and the kids have been pretty well behaved.......so far. (It's still 8:30 a.m. and only one of them is up.)

Yesterday Alex and I walked to the dentist over by Kroger. Our car is frozen solid, and currently Henning's tree is in our driveway.

So far, we've lost the Willow tree, and many large branches from some of the older trees. This pleases me, since they were rotting and needed to come down anyway. However, there are just as many mangled ones dangling up there in the tree now.

It was so quiet walking to the dentist yesterday. Like today, yesterday there weren't any cars on the road, so it was peaceful. You could hear his high school bells ringing from over a mile away.

We took lots of pics on our one mile hike to the dentist, and I didn't even have a cavity!