A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

(first comes Benjamin's blog, then mine)
Ahh Ha I stole the computer for a second. Christmas was awesome! We had such a great time. Melinda and I decided to buy each other a new washer and dryer. She didn't stay to that so well. Santa brought a plow for the 4-wheeler. Boy have we had a great time not shoveling! We have been playing the going out of business contest at Payson Sports and Trophy! We are in the top ten points right now, which should give us a prize. I am sure loving the results of playing the game. Melinda let me buy some VERY nice binoculars.
Jaxon and Benjamin trying out the plow Melinda's turn to try it out

The water pipes froze last night. I went out to check the pumphouse. After I went in there was a slight breeze which was cold so I went to shut the door a little. The door latched and locked me inside. I wrapped the "heat tape" around the pipes and then went to work getting myself out of the pumphouse. I rammed the door a few times with my shoulder which gave me about a 1/2 in of space to work on the lock. I then tried multiple attempts with wires and whatever was handy to unlock the door. I came up with a wrench, broken pipe and brick as my final tools. Boy was I glad that someone didn't clean up their mess!!! I stacked the wrench and the pipe together with the wrench on the latch, then I hit the end of the pipe with the brick. After a number of attempts I was able to break free. In the end the metal latch shattered. I think it broke due to the cold. I was locked in the pumphouse for 45 minutes. When I got back inside Melinda started questioning me on what took so long :) Anyway I am going to send this back to her. I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year!! Here's the shed where I spent the morning

Ok, my turn.
We had a good Christmas. Of course, Christmas is all about the kids. I get the most joy in watching the kids gets excited about their presents. I also enjoying watching the surprise in Benjamin when I get him something he's not expecting. As he said, we decided that a new washer and dryer would be our Christmas this year. We bought them this week and I am just learning to use them. (If your interested in knowing, we bought LG front loaders) The boys got me some new cartridges for my Cricut, that's always something I love to get. And now that I have learned how to use the Cricut Solutions program, that's next on the list.

Benjamin has gone on pheasant hunts with a few groups mostly to act as a guide. He takes the dogs to help find the pheasants. We spent some time with the Palmers since Benjamin's sister Melissa and her family were visiting from Iowa. Here's the dogs working the field. They are both on point

For New Years Eve this year (I guess it was last year) we attended a party at our friends house (Nick and Cammie). Benjamin encouraged them to have a party and they went for it (thanks guys!). We played games, boogied down on the DDR, ate alot of goodies and the kids ran crazy. Cammie went all out for the event and provided hats, noisemakers, streamers, and even confetti. We all went crazy at midnight and the house showed for it afterwards. There was confetti everywhere! (when we got home I ate an olive from our relish tray and got a chunk of confetti with it). We had a great time and the kids did great. Even Jaxon stayed up until 12:30 and was happy the entire time.

Now it's time to get back into the school routine. After 2 weeks off we got use to late nights and late mornings, lounging around in jammies until 10. Now it's back to the grind.