Our "pre-" New Years company arrived on Friday, Dec. 29

 We had a house full of family!  And it was lovely!  God gave us a home that is big enough to have people come and stay.  There is room to spread out if "you need your space"!  Of course...we tended to be all together talking and laughing and enjoying the fireplace or endless Shark Tank episodes.

 Miss K loved the nativity set...watching Velle...and playing with Teddy!

                                                     How thankful we are for our family!

                     A family memento brought lots of discussions and laughs.  Who knew!!!

We had the built-in babysitters do their job and the adults headed out to celebrate these birthdays!  Happy Birthday, dear ones!  We love you and are glad you made the trip to MI!

 Black Rock!  It is super yummy and fun to do!  755 degree black rock that you cook your steak on to your liking.

The Volcano dessert...for any celebration!

The many moves and faces of Teddy!

One of our teachers took pictures Tuesday night during the game against Bethany.  She stood under the baskets and snapped away.  I loved all the shots she got of the expressions on the players faces!  It is fun to see the team grow up and play.  These boys are now men!  

A week in the life of...

 I finally got to working on Thank You notes listening to good music and enjoying a cup of coffee delivered by my love.

 I had to finalize lesson plans for the first week back.  I know it will be tough and we will be doing a lot of fun review.  Alisa woke up with the stomach flu Monday morning!  Not a good way to start back!  She missed two days.
I had a PCC student spend time with me before break and then this week again.  It has been nice having another set of hands, ears, and eyes!  She will make a good teacher!  I'm sad that she has to go back to school next week!

We will send her back to college with some teacher/student love on Monday.

 We are back to the basketball schedule too.  Teddy is really fun to watch when he gets out on the floor!

 I made a good meal...well, I started!  I took the pork loin out of the oven after a short time to add some water to get pan drippings up for gravy and the pan exploded everywhere!  After the shock and checking myself for glass/cuts...I cried!  A whole pork loin had to be thrown away.  I couldn't think to do something different for supper.  I had to clean up all the slivered glass...it took an hour!  Ted picked up Teddy from practice and they brought home pizza.  I cried again.

 Velle and I sat and worked on filling out the Thank You and thinking of you notes I made...it helped my mental state of the night to focus on other people!

 The Kinders liked the fun activities we did this week...but my one little friend is struggling to great degrees right now.  I have friends that were still gone due to illness and vacation...not sure when I will have a full class.  We will press on as we work hard toward May!

Our Winter Getaway to Traverse City

 We took off for a couple days to go up north...where it was snowier and colder!  We had been on the road an hour and a half and saw 8 accidents!  It was slow going but pretty!

 This man has nerves of steel and delivered us safely to our hotel right across the street from Grand Traverse Bay...except we couldn't see it for all the blowing snow!

 We had supper at a Mexican place we found on Trip Advisor...and I forgot to take a picture of it.  It was yummy and we shared so we had room for fresh chocolate chip cookies compliments of our hotel!

 We found a neat coffee shop called Morsels downtown the next day.  It was eclectic and right across the road from the water again.  What a coooold day!

                 We went for a drive around town and found a fun place for lunch!  Yummy!

Another drive and resting and swim in the pool/hot tub and we found another fun place for supper!  Brick oven wood-fired pizza....

             and a dessert pizza that we barely made a dent in!  It was good even a couple days later.

 There is something quiet and calming about the lake, snow, and trees.  We enjoyed the lack of schedule and extra sleep!  I would say it was a great way to end our Christmas break!

 There was another storm forecasted to hit...but it kind of fell apart and was to hit later in the day on Friday.  When we left for home...it was clear blue skies and clear...away from the lake!

 Ted and his "manly cup of coffee"!  He made me laugh because it was an itty bitty cup...of a double espresso though!  Ready or not...it is time to get ready to head back to the busy of life as school and work pick back up on Monday!

 Sweet memories as we head home to our teenagers who held down the fort while we escaped.

Let's do this!

Fun with Grammy and Grampy

 Teddy requested that we make lefse with Grampy and Grammy.  They willingly brought the recipe, iron, board, and flippers!  Yummy!

The mixture has to be just right.

                                                            Learning from Grampy!

                                  Using enough flour to roll and getting the flip just right!

He is a lefty and did it perfectly!

 We rested...we played Farkle...we drank coffee...we had a fire...we slept...we laughed...and we had an adults only date night!