Frozen Fluff Falling Freely

We woke up to a cold and quiet frosty morning.
The snow fell for a few hours.
The sun came out warming up the ground.
The beautiful snow is no more...however

Life is good!

Bird house waiting for occupants in the spring.

Looking out over our deck to our neighbor across the street.

Down the driveway the snow was falling quite fast.

Our neighbors are in Arizona for the winter.
They missed out on the beautiful frosty morning.

Waiting for the Big Snow Storm

We drove to Napa on business last week which normally would be a beautiful drive. We were accompanied by a whole lot of rain while traveling both ways. We arrived home and Mother Nature stopped raining just long enough for us to unpack. Little did we know that it had actually snowed in Park Sierra while we were gone, but it only stayed on the ground a few hours. The next morning we found out that our daughter's place up the hill from us had over a foot of snow and a second larger storm was heading this way. Since her whole house is electric, we loaded up our generator so that she'd have something to start up the pellet stove should there be a power outage. Then we started thinking that maybe there would be a chance that we'd get snowed in and how fun "getting snowed in" would be, so we decided to invite ourselves up for a "sleep-over" and just survive the storm with them. They said "Sure!" So that's just what we did —in great anticipation of the predicted storm.

Jen said that quite a bit of the snow had already melted by the time we arrived. She said the hills in the background were all white with snow-covered trees. She love sitting by the fireplace, nice and warm and cozy, watching the fluffy snow fall outside. I took these pictures upon our arrival. When we left this morning there was no snow to be seen!

Planning that we'd be forced to stay a few days, we brought some food to share, a quilt top to work on, our computers, the generator with lots of fuel, a portable propane heater, and in town we bought our first set of chains for the truck (just in case!) We've spent since Friday waiting for the big storm. And we waited. And we waited. And all we got was lots of rain last night which finally washed all the snow away! The big snow storm —which was in the forecast to come from Alaska and Canada and supposedly much bigger than the first one —never showed up.

But we had a great time with Jen and the kids, cooking and sharing food, enjoying good conversation, watching some TV, perusing a chicken catalog while dreaming of the fresh eggs and organic chickens they want to raise in the spring, spotting a small herd of deer led by an 8-point buck stroll through their yard, helping the boys with their homework, watching Miss Michigan win the Miss America contest (even though we were all hoping Miss California would win), cheering the boys on as they played in a couple of exciting basketball games at the highschool, and I even got the quilt top finished.

Life is good!

CD is Seven!

I can vividly remember seven years ago tonight. We were house-sitting for my sister in Healdsburg when we got the call at about 4:30 in the afternoon informing us that Jennifer was in labor . . . six weeks early! Now a tradition had been already set that I was privileged to witness each one of our grandchildren's birth and we weren't about to break that tradition. We booked a flight and K raced down to the Oakland Airport and I got on a 7:00 p.m. plane (after all—he had to stay and take care of the house and Cokie, the cat). It was late when I got to the hospital nearly 10 o'clock that night, but I could hear "Okay, Grammy's here . . . let's do it!" as I entered the room and within ten minutes CD was born. Oh my gosh, unbelievable and so precious was that little baby boy. His lungs were not fully developed so it was necessary for him to spend two weeks in NICU (a worrisome time which we'll never forget) . . . but look at him now, an extremely active and happy seven-year-old! Happy Birthday CD, you are a sweet grandson, and a good basketball and baseball player.

I asked him to pose like a seven-year-old . . . and this is what I got!

He picked out the flavor of the birthday cake, which his mom made, and asked for it to be "the kind with the stripe in the middle" . . . it was a confetti cake with whipped cream, strawberries, and raspberries . . . yummo! Since he was the birthday boy he also got to choose the dinner menu which included hotdogs with chili, french fried, and white layered cake with vanilla ice cream.

I have loved making a birthday quilt for each of our five grandchildren. This is a picture of the top before it was quilted—basketball fabrics bordered with baseball fabrics. It is backed with a baseball soft flannel . . . it'll be great to snuggle up with on these brisk winter nights.

Here he is reading the label on the back of the quilt. He's reminded me several times in the last few months (actually it started at Camp Cascadia last summer) that he would really like a quilt— (He's the last of the five grandchildren to get a birthday quilt, and he felt pretty sure he'd be getting his.)

His seven-year-old "toothie" grin just makes you smile inside. He loved his sports quilt—he loves to play basketball and baseball. We've had fun watching him play basketball the last couple of weeks, and he's quite good for his age.

Happy Birthday CD! Your Grammy and Papa love you!

"Definitely a Winner!"

Those were the words out of my husband's mouth as he scraped his plate clean after tonight's dinner.

As you probably know, by the list of my favorite Blogs on the left, I love reading Pioneer Woman's blogs . . . both her "cooking blog" and her "life in the country blog." I used her recipe to do the first pot roast I've done in years. And, I swear, it's the best we've ever tasted. I'm drooling even as I write this. It's been roasting in the oven for nearly five hours . . . and it was so worth it. In fact, it's really an easy way to do a pot roast because after you've done the browning, you don't touch it until the timer goes off! I hope all my "fans" try it because it is soooooo yummo, and you'll be glad you did—in fact you'll probably adopt this as your pot roast method from now on!

Here it is with the vegetables and chuck roast browned and in the pot.

Here it is after it's been in the oven for about three hours . . . I just looked through the top, I didn't take the lid off!

And here it is after roasting all afternoon . . . ready to serve with mashed potatoes and maybe something green like broccoli or a salad. This was a five pound roast and, needless to say, we'll be getting many meals from it . . . hmmmmm leftovers of this same meal, soft tacos, vegetable beef soup . . . lots of options!

Life is good!