| Sun, 19 Dec 1999 06:35:04 Hope everyone is doing well! We finally decided to cut one of our own trees for our Christmas tree. It was one that needed to be thinned anyway. It is definitely a Charlie Brown tree. Cody has not managed to pull it over yet! We have made it through everyones B-day but mine. Adam got a much needed pair of basketball shoes. His team is 3-0 now. They are a tough bunch of kids. I am having fun helping out with the team. Jon got some cool Legos and other stuff for his birthday. He is doing great. He helped me last weekend outside pulling staples and nails out of some used lumber I got from a friend. We are going to use it to build a chicken coop. Cody is the biggest little roughian you could imagine. He insists on going outside with us. He gets wet and muddy. He loves it. He still does not sleep through the night, although he is getting better. Lorelei is doing well. She has been doing lots of walking. The trail that she likes walking is too muddy now so she mainly walks up and down the gravel driveway. I got her a pedometer for her b-day, so she can walk wherever she wants and keep track of her mileage. She generally tries to do 2 miles a day. We had a big wind storm blow through on friday afternoon. It blew the top of our chimney for our woodburning stove off the roof! It also blew the spa cover off. I got the chimney fixed yesterday. The boys helped me split the cherry tree wood that we cut a few weeks ago. They did a great job! We had some snow about a week ago, didn't stick. Since then it has warmed up. We have had rain, but it has been in the mid 40's to mid 50's. I took wednesday off from work and took Lorelei Christmas shopping. I wore her out! She was not 100% happy with my shopping style (e.g. don't spend time looking at things that are not on the list!), (if you are having trouble deciding between two items, flip a coin and go on to the next thing on the list!), (stay at one end of the store until everything on your list that is at that end of the store is purchased!) I realize these are foreign concepts to many Christmas shoppers, however she was pleased at the end of the day when she realized she was DONE! That's about it for now. Gotta get some breakfast before it gets light! Glynn Jr. Dec. 31, 99 Hope everyone had a great Christmas! We had a fun time here. The weather for the past two weeks has been incredible. Not a cloud in the sky! It has been rather chilly though. A couple of days before Christmas things started to freeze. There was ice on the front lawn until yesterday. The boys and I shut down the non filtered water line from the pump house, it is the most exposed and likely to freeze. Hopefully the supply to the house keeps running! I installed a thermostat and a heat lamp in the pump house and it seems to be working well. The chicken coop is coming along nicely. The posts are set and the roof is almost finished. It will be completely enclosed. Outside dmensions are 8' x 14', it should be able to house as many as 10 chickens with plenty of room for storage of feed and other misc. stuff. For Christmas my dad sent us some cool walkie talkies (thanks dad). The day after Christmas the boys and I were outside and they wanted to go to different ends of the property and talk on them. What happened next caught me by surprise! Jonathan yelled "I'm going on the rain forest trail" and took off running. Adam and I headed for the super trail. The next several communications from Jon went something like this, "I crossed the creek, where are you guys", " I should be almost to the knoll", " I don't recognize where I am", " I don't know where I am!". In a matter of less than a minute in his haste to beat us around the trail Jon had taken a wrong turn and gotten LOST! I calmly told him to stop and relax and we would find him. We went to the top of the rain forest trail, where he should have been, and I told him to yell. Sure enough he was out of sight about a hundred yards to the north! I told him to walk towards the sunlight, and in a few seconds he came into view, he was visibly shaken. There are no homes that I know of in the direction that he was heading! It was a very sobering experience for Jon and myself! As for other stuff for Christmas, Adam got a stereo for his room (he is the music lover), Jon got leggos and lots of drawing stuff (he is the artist), Cody got a ride-on car and some blocks. Monday night about 6 o-clock Cody brings me his shoes and coat! I told him it was cold and dark outside! He persisted, so we went out, I figured he wouldn't like it,(wrong). The temp was around 28 degrees with frost and ice everywhere! He wanted to play ball and we went across the bridge over the creek at least three times. That's about it for now. Hope everyone has a happy new year! Glynn Jr. |