Enjoying Winter

Thanksgiving was a double celebration for us; we also celebrated Jim's birthday. The boys are masters at making the birthday person feel loved, and Jim's day was no exception. While Jim was working on something in the house, the boys were busy decorating their skating area with balloons and "danger" tape. If you look closely, you can see the balloons and tape down on the lake. We keep our four pigs down the hill in the valley between us and the lake.

Andrew has taken over the job of making cut out cakes, so he decided to make a cake for Jim that highlighted Jim's favorite berries -- raspberries and blueberries. We grew a lot of raspberries this past summer, and Jim is working on a domestic blueberry patch as well.

I asked David this afternoon if he wanted to walk with me the quarter mile down our driveway to get the mail with me. I guess boys don't really care for just walking. He needed a mode of transportation, and had Peter help him get Calliope ready for a ride.

As you can see, we had more snow yesterday. The township plow has not come in since it really isn't enough to keep us from getting out of the driveway.

David does a good job of getting Calliope to tow the mark -- unless she wants to do something else. We got down to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, and Calliope decided she wanted to take a run on the gravel road. Needless to say, we need a saddle! David slid off. I was glad to see that as soon as Calliope felt David falling off she stopped and patiently waited for him. We had to tie her to the mailbox post so I could help him get back on.

Peter then decided to take Calliope for a ride in the field, and allowed her to run. She loves running through the field, and I have heard she loves to run through water as well. I guess we'll find out for ourselves in the spring.

This isn't a great photo, but above is a picture of our one and only snowmobile. It was given to us the first winter we were here, by someone that probably wanted to unload some junk from their yard. I'm not sure how old it is, but we think it was built in the 1970's. Andrew found something on it that stated the machine was built in Twin Valley, MN, and it came with a Minnesota Vikings logo on the side. The machine was "updated" a bit, and a Canadian Motoski engine was installed in the thing. They don't even make snowmobiles like that any more! It's currently sitting in the middle of the field because it quit for the umpteenth time, and the boys are having trouble figuring out how to get it started again.

I had to include some photos of my flowers. The violet is doing well this time of year, and blooming like crazy. I dug the geranium out of the garden before the frost hit, and it's doing great!