Here's How the New Year Starts...

...not with a bang, but a whimper (sorry, T. S. Eliot).

Happy New Year, ya'll! Hope it's good for you.

I had a great Christmas, with overlapping visits from my children and their significants. Dot and her guy, Pete, showed up the Saturday before Christmas and stayed until about 3pm Christmas Day; Dan and Carly, his lady, showed up around noon on Christmas and stayed until the Thursday after. So I had company for about a week.

Dot and Pete did a great deal of yard work. They built a firepit in place of my burnpile. Here's a picture of the firepit with a fire:

They cut up the limb that fell a couple of months ago, so we had plenty of firewood to burn. We roasted marshmallows and made smores, something I haven't done since Girl Scout Camp!

Behind the firepit in the picture you can see my old shed. We cleaned that out. I can't list everything we found in there, but a partial list of contents includes old mason jars, a half-full bottle of whiskey (we dumped it out), and assorted tools (a circular saw, a hand planer, a hand lathe, a grease gun), plus enough flammable liquids to worry me. So, all I have to do to turn this into a chicken coop is rebuild the roof and put in a new floor. And Pete reinforced the open part of the shed so that the roof isn't sagging anymore.

Dan and Carly and I couldn't really get out in the yard because it rained all day Wednesday. But we read and knitted and watched movies; then they made two excellent pizzas and we played two games of Scrabble.

I think their visits were the highlights of Christmas for me. We had fun at my mom's and ate too much good food, but I enjoyed my time with my children. They've only been to my house once since I bought it, but I've been to their house in Austin many, many times. So, they owe me a few more visits!

The new year started ominously--the bathroom shower started dripping and I couldn't get the garage door down with the remote (I used the rake handle). But, on an optimistic note, Bluebirds have moved into the birdhouse on my front porch! I watched them move in today.

I hope the Bluebird of Happiness, Prosperity and Peace lands on your porch, too!