Last day of 2009 in review~

What a busy and enjoyable day yesterday was!

In the morning, after chores were done, Jacob helped me make some of our favorite holiday treats--Almond Bark covered Ritz cracker sandwiches that have peanut butter on the inside...


Delicious!

Once the cookies were cooling, Mom and I gave Dad and Jacob haircuts. I combed Jacob's hair straight up, so as to get a good "Before" picture, but then he kept making such silly faces. I finally asked him to make a serious face and the result is as follows: :)

Snip, snip, snip...
It was soon time for lunch and, joy of joys, time to open the package that came from some dear friends of ours--the Wiechmanns. Amongst other delightful things, there was a long letter from my dear friend, Dorena, but I didn't have time to read it as I had a babysitting job to do, so I tucked the letter in my pocket and hurried on my way.

Remember these cuties?

While Amelia, James & Michael ate, I had a few moments to enjoy my letter. What joy a letter from a friend can bring!!!

I cared for these little ones until their mother came back around 4:30, at which time we visited until 5 something. I realized then that I'd best hurry home for the barn chores again, as we wanted to do the milking early so as to be able to get to our friends, the Geigers' house as early as possible.

Chores got done in good time; everyone washed up and changed and we headed out around 7:00. It felt so strange to be leaving our home to visit friends at such an hour, but it was a nice strange!

We stopped at my uncles' house in Bismarck on the way, to deliver some items he'd left down in SD during the Christmas weekend.

Finally, we pulled into the Geiger's long driveway and made it into the warmth of their home!!!

My dear friend, Miranda was there to greet us right away, along with her baby brother, Micah, and Mother snapped this picture for us...

Not-so-little boys blue (my brothers, Jacob & Andrew)...

Fellowshipping in the kitchen...

Some of the Geiger sisters... (The Geigers have a total of 11 children, one of which is married now and has a baby of her own.)

My parents visiting with Mrs. Geiger...

Morgan with her camera...

The host and hostess...

After a time of singing and sharing things from the Bible; and after everyone went through the long food line; there was a time of game playing amongst the younger people...

The one game turned out to be quite messy--a game in where you put shaving cream all over a balloon and then tried to shave it off without popping the balloon. Andrew was the only one in our family who tried this game, and he said it was actually quite easy...

However, somebody had to go and poke several balloons with their pocketknife on purpose, and shaving cream went flying all over the place! I'm guessing this game won't be repeated any time soon, as it required a lot of clean-up time...

Andrew had taken our PIT game along and taught the others how to play:

If any of you have ever played PIT before, I'm sure you know that it can get to be a loud game--especially with several players! For those of you who don't know this fact however, I'm including the following video!

I had thought to join in the game of PIT, but there were many people who wanted to play it, (and the limit is 8), so I asked Jubilee if she wanted to play Dutch Blitz with me and she readily assented. Soon we were joined by her little brothers, Justus & Isaiah--who didn't really know how to play very well, but we had a fun time anyway. :)

Here, Justus was excited that he was winning and wanted me to guess his score...

After a while, Miranda came over and I asked to see her new (used) car, as I had heard a lot about it, but had never seen it. We donned our coats and boots and went outside into the nippy, 20 (F) degree below zero weather. Once we got in her nice Buick, we turned it on to warm up some while she showed me all the nice features inside. Of course, once we got warmed up, it was really nice in there, so we stayed and visited for a while... :)

My family & I finally left the Geigers around 1:30AM and got home at about 3:00AM. It's not really surprising, I suppose, that I turned my alarm clock off in the morning (without remembering doing so later) and that we all slept in until a little after 8:00AM. I thought we'd be pretty droopy through this day, but outside of Mom needing a nap, we enjoyed our first day of 2010. We're very much ready for bed now though!

As I was thinking about this new year, and about "New Years' Resolutions" (things that teach responsibility and consistency!) and such, I remembered what my resolution had been last year. I found where I'd written it down in my journal and thought I'd share it with you now:

"Jan. 24th, 2009~

I have finally made a New Years' resolution... Starting today, I will write at least once a day in my journal--every day until Jan. 24th, 2010. It may just be one sentence, but that's something!

I've been neglecting my journaling something awful and hope to get back in the habit of writing consistently again."

And so, I wrote--first in a journal and then, at my dad's suggestion, on my brothers' old lap-top computer, (to save time, as I can type so much faster than I can write by hand.) Then in March, my parents gave me the nicest birthday gift I've ever received--a new lap-top--one that was able to connect to the Internet even! :) About a month later, I started my blog--my on-line journal. Naturally, I don't write everything on my blog that I'd write in a personal journal, but a lot of what I was journaling about was of the things we do on a day to day basis--things that I thought may be interesting for my friends to read about as well as my family. Since I began blogging, the Lord has blessed me with even more, wonderful, new friends and I'm just so grateful that blogging has become a part of my life. (I still think the word "Blog" is a bit odd sounding, but that is what it's called...)

As far as last years' resolution goes, I've applied it to my blogging and have posted once a day every day since I started (except for when I was gone at my friends' wedding--at which time I resorted to paper and pen--and then still missed a couple days...)

I still have 23 days to go until my resolution is resolved and then I can rethink if I should resolve to redo my resolution for another round of writing posts regularly. Would you rather I did or did not continue?

For right now, I'm resolved to retire to rest some. Goodnight and, once again, happy new year!