Happy New Year!

It's about 12 hours to go until we reach 2008.
Today we worked our last shift at the paper for this year and we finish these papers beginning New Year's Day night at midnight.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

This past week we were busy attending memorials; first Ruth and I attended one in Clyde, and Then Jake and I attended another memorial for a long-time friend of his; Sandy drove us.

Today the weather is beautiful blue sky and hoar frost not only on the trees but on wires, fences, and many other things. It is also cold.

Today's Quote:
What I am doing today is important
because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.

On December 24 I went to Clyde to the lovely candle-lit service at Clyde.
A lot of people attended and we sang many Christmas Carols and had a message by Chris Lantz. Two of our young men announced their engagements, one on Sunday and one last night before the candle lit service.
The country roads running north and south were quite drifted--I had no idea until I left home.
I had an amount of trouble getting anything posted and this piece about the service was omitted and also the picture of Christmas here on my first attempt.

This was the scene in our living room December 24th late night--with all presents and decorations on and up.

Peter added a few more gifts today.

What Christmas looked like here

A few days ago we had this beautiful hoarfrost--Jake asked me to bring the camera. I got a couple of shots. These trees are in our driveway

Last Sunday Ruth and I were greeters at church. This is one of the food items we took.

I have been bogged down so I couldn't BLOG. Christmas is almost here and everyone is trying to get ready for it. That meant some cleaning, a bit late, but some as we had to do 2 papers last week. Fortunately some good Samaritans came to help us.

Tonight Ruth and I went to Westlock where we took in the Teddy Bear Christmas at the libary. Here we sang 3 carols, and the ladies there read 3 stories about Bears and Bear's Christmas. We had hot chocolate, cookies and got to take home a few discarded books. They had a donation jar. I took a few pictures. Then we looked around a couple of stores for an hour or close to that. A big dump of snow had come and it felt sticky and our road is quite deep in places.

We received several cards today in the mail including this 65th card for my Birthday made by Ginet. I think other card-makers would like to see it. Thanks Ginet, that looks like a lot of work.

The picture below was taken by Kevin Berger shortly before 2 a.m. as Ruth and I were presented with a lovely carrot cake by our staff on December 4th. We also received cards and certificates. Thanks Kevin for taking this picture. It took a week to figure out how to get it from his camera through our system so I could put this picture here. I have blocked out the first aid kit which was behind my head in the picture.

Pictured here are Ruth, Judy and LX Sandra at the Christmas Party December 7th, 2007.
Ruth and Judy were also 65 today, and were honoured for 20 years with Great West. The name of the Company has changed several times in 20 years.

Wow! Someone moved into our house today, and she wears a red hat and purple feathers. Sandy says, she is sophisticated. He also noticed that she can sing. She sang "Girls Jusst Want to have Fun" --he says it is Cindy Lopper 's song. For those who might wonder why this stranger moved in, she was a gift from Ruth for my very special BD. I know it's a day early but tomorrow we will be very busy.

I got to church Sunday to find it all decorated for Christmas; from fall last week to Christmas this week. It is the 3rd week I drove alone cross-country because of snows on Sunday.

However, since then we really got a large dump of snow. Have to be careful now not to get stuck.

Today was a busy day at home. I cleaned enough space to set up the tree and some ornaments, got the tree down and set up; the stand was still covered from last year (it's a CD wooden box), and decorated the tree.
Then we made supper together and after supper was over I wrapped gifts for 2-3 more parcels. Two at least going to one house as the gifts are too bulky for one parcel. While Jake was starting to wash the dishes I then opened up Ted and Liza's parcel and Tammy's so those gifts were the first to go onto our newly decorated tree. It is different this year; I still never found all the decorations that were lost 2 years ago, but I "found" some silver bows--so I used them on the tree--those are new this year, and also put on the beautiful snowflake with blue ribbon that came in Tammy's parcel from Texas. Christmas will be here before we know it!