S-N-O-W-!

Yes, when I went out to check the cows this afternoon, the misty rain we were having when I walked out the front door quickly turned into huge snowflakes! These cows weren't expecting snow either, obviously, as they weren't over with the rest in the protection of the shelter-belt....


While the wind blasted and blew the snow all over outside of our house, inside we were having a lovely family day. :) Mother and I realized we were wearing similar outfits and asked the guys to take our picture. It doesn't show here as well as in real life, but my skirt does have gold in it, and Mom and I were wearing our matching necklaces even!

Next, we realized that Jacob's shirt also matched our color theme--black and gold! Mom wanted a picture of the 3 of us children together, now that Jacob's taller than I am, so we searched Andrew's closet for something black and gold for him to wear, but all to no avail. So, here he is, looking a bit disappointed that he's "Just" dressed in black and green. :) (We're all a bit blurry in this picture for some reason...? Must have been laughing too hard!)

Of course, we couldn't leave our camera man out of the fun! Here he is, with 3 extra heads. :)
Mother and her little boys...

The following pictures are older, from days gone by.

I received a big package in the mail yesterday (the one bright spot in the day!), and it contained a dream come true for me:

A Kitchen-Aid mixer of my very own! :) :) :) I've wanted to get one for a long time, especially for making smooth icing for my cakes and for whipping cream, etc... Now that our Dimension Bread Maker broke though, I had incentive to go ahead with my plan of "Buying one some day." This is the heaviest duty mixer that Kitchen-Aid makes (with a 6 qt. bowl), so I'm hoping it will be able to handle a full batch of bread, but if not, we'll just knead it in 2 batches I guess. Does anyone else have experience with mixing up bread in a Kitchen-Aid and, if so, how much dough can it handle well at one time??? I made one dessert already with my mixer, following a recipe for Lemon Cream-Cheese Bars that Jacob requested and, those of us who like lemon desserts, really liked how it turned out!

This piece of paper came in the mail the other day and, though it was no surprise to me, it still is nice to see it written down on official paper, don't you think? :)

As I imported the pictures onto Mother's computer today, I found some of the greenhouse that I didn't know we had. This one was taken right after the guys and my mom put the plastic on...

...and this one is of the inside of our greenhouse, right after we finished planting the rest of it. We now have peas, beets, broccoli and lettuce coming up and the plants that I transplanted in the ground are doing well. You can see the door(s) the boys built on the other end of the greenhouse a few days back. Dad designed it so we can either open the 2 foot door for a slight breeze, the 3 foot one for more air, or open both for the best ventilation, depending on the needs of the day.

Here Jacob is assembling the little red tractor planter that we now have sitting out by our mailbox with some tulips planted inside, for the time being.

Oh, and here the guys are testing out their 2 street bikes that they fixed up and are now trying to sell. We don't have much use for motorcycles out here!

The beautiful bouquet Mom bought last week to cheer us up:

And this last picture is of Andrew, getting ready to leave with his grain cleaning rig:

Please join us in praying for all the people who lost their homes and/or loved ones in the recent storms down South farther! Reading about their struggles and losses makes me feel guilty for feeling bad about the loss of a few animals in this weather! There are so many people hurting far more than we are...

I'm going to post this right now and go talk to our Father above! Good night~