Bountiful!

I love the new "bounty" in my life. I've joined "Bountiful Baskets" and am able to order a basket of fresh vegetables and fruits every week in Dillon. Not only can I pick up my basket, but I can order other items in bulk. I am lovin' it!

This is the truck that brings all this "bounty" to Dillon. It is huge! I don't know how many stops this truck makes before it gets to us, but it carries a whole lot fresh pproduce.

The volunteers are getting organized to start loading the baskets.

"Counting" is a big deal with Bountiful Baskets - making sure that everything is on site.

All the bulk items are separate from the baskets.

Busy volunteers.

My 20 pounds of lemons!

My first batch of Sliced lemons that I have dehydrated and is now ready to pulverize into powder - lemon powder which can be added as flavoring to cookies, frosting - whatever I'm cooking.

My 8 pounds of strawberries - well 7 pounds as I gave away one of them!

I don't have time to dehydrate all the 20 lbs of lemons, so I'm juicing about half of them and freezing the juice in ice cube trays that I will be able to use when I need fresh lemon juice. I'm so clever!

My strawberries are washed, hulled, sliced and ready to go into the freezer to be used for my summer baking - pies, shortcake, cream and sugar, smoothies. Yum!

This is my ice cube tray full of lemon juice ready to freeze.

And finally my fresh pineapple sliced and bagged to use for smoothies. Love those smoothies. I also did sliced apples for a pie, and mashed bananas ready to make some banana bread. Just can't bear to let any of this wonderful "bounty" go to waste. It is so delicious!

Outside My Window

"Outside My Window"  looks like springtime in the Rockies!  There are actually three moose in the above picture - you can just barely see some ears over the rocks.  Mama moose and her twins were munching on some willows behind our waterfall! 

It snowed really hard for awhile and we had more than an inch of new snow.  But the sun came out in the afternoon and it was quite warm.  Springtime.  So typical for us here.

This robin sat outside the window peering in for such a long time.  Wasn't the least bit disturbed by me moving around inside.  I laughed at her.

So I decided to work on my bounty from my Bountiful Baskets pick-up this weekend.  I had ordered an extra 25 pounds of tomatoes, and got some of those put up.  They look beautiful sitting on my counter, and I know how good they are going to be in my soups and sauces.  Today I finished up the tomatoes, made and canned applesauce, and baked 5 loaves of zucchini bread for the freezer.  Have beautiful lemons that I will use to make lemon curd, which is one of my favorite things.  Springtime snow in the Rockies is good for doing indoor work!

Photos of Phoebe in Phoenix

Walt and I headed to Phoenix for a long overdue visit to his 96-year-old mother.  Where it was warm!  So nice to have days in the 70's - delightful!  A nice change from our winter here.  And really great to spend some time with his mother.

I decided I wanted to take some pictures of Mom, so took my camera with me and, of course, we had to have her hair done before we got started.

Cutest picture of the day!

Probably my favorite picture.

Gramma and her kittie - goes everywhere with her.

Walt spent some time showing her some pictures of Ecuador he has on his laptop.  She was very interested in them - of course, she has been an avid traveler all her life.

We had a great time with her and were pleased to see how well she is doing at this stage of her life.  Go Phoebe!

Christmas With The Gang!

We arrived in Kansas early enough to be able to go and watch Sophie play basketball, which was a first for us and we were so pleased to be there for that.  She is a superb athlete.

And she's so tall and so pretty!

And then the next day we got to go watch Josh play basketball with his school's team.  What a treat for us.

Caleb was quite entranced by the Christmas tree.

And of course, there was the traditional decorating of the gingerbread house.  A fun project for all!

We did quite a lot of dog walking and occasionally one of the kids would go with us - Matthew was pretty good at giving Chico some exercise!

Allie went with us out to the arboretum so she could do a photo for us.  She's a wonderful photographer and did a great job.  Very casual, but that's what we wanted.  And it was cold and none of us wanted to be out there very long!

And one night we all bundled up super warm and climbed in Zack's trailer and went through several neighborhoods enjoying the lights and decorations and singing Christmas carols.  A good time was had by all!

It was so cute seeing Noah reading the Christmas story to Jacob.

And Noah helped out with Caleb checking out the tree and everything under it.

It was a beautiful tree, Jenny.  You did a great job.

And here's Noah again snuggled up with Chico!

And then there's alway the cookie decorating.  Emily really gets into this project!  Very serious business.

Everybody loves it.  Jacob looks pretty serious about it also.

And then there's Sophie and Jenny!  They're really serious!  And the job got done in record time - seeing as how we were on our way to church that was a good thing.

Beautiful.

Caleb was so cute during the family tradition of new jammies on Christmas Eve.  He was giving his package lots of hugs! 

And here's a shot of all the guys in their new jammies.  Oh, that was fun!  Caleb wanted nothing to do with that part of it!

He's not laughing in this picture!  Well maybe, cause Josh was tickling him at this point.

Jenny and her little Caleb.

Jenny and her guys.  This was a fun shot to get, too!

Looks like Santa has come and gone!

And this was the scene in the living room on Christmas afternoon!  But then, life happens and the Gang was on their way to Atlanta and had to have the house undecorated and back to "normal" before they left so their realtor could show the house while they were gone.

It was a great Christmas.  So loved spending time with the kids and celebrating Christmas with the Gang.  Nothing better than family at Christmas.