January 2011

So, January was an interesting month with bouts of spring and winter. The following pics are from the storm we had during week 2 of the month.

where our drive meets the road

The back deck

looking across the pond toward the barn

Shortly after the snow from this storm began to melt, I had to put more hay in the barn -

the hay bales that need to get into the barn

Note the distance from the bale to the barn

it's on the way ....

Finally there :)

Note, these bales of hay are 800 + lbs and I roll them by myself

By the third and fourth weeks, it became much nicer, more like spring.  In fact, January 29th it hit 68 degrees! :)  Unfortunately behind the warm weather was a storm system of epic proportion. (more on that in a later post)

Storm Prep

Cherilyn and I went out to cut wood for the wood furnace.  We also picked up 2 loads of slab wood from the local mill.  I had to cut down all this wood to sizes that would work in the furnace.  In addition to gathering wood, we had to put hay out for the horses and fill up the watering barrels and make sure all the water heaters were working. We also had to prepare extra water for us and the animals in case we lost power. We had lots of work to do.


The kids did help, about as much as they were capable of but they had more fun enjoying the nice weather before the storm.

Brittney and the dogs

the kids had friends over to enjoy the afternoon

January also brought Krystene's 20th birthday - wow I can still remember that joyous day 20 years ago! :) I decided I wanted to make part of her gift a little more personal. Last year she gave me a 6 pack of Jones soda with a personalized label on each bottle for Father's Day.  I decided that I wanted to do something with one of the bottles so it could be saved as more than just an empty bottle.  I still have a sand art bottle Krystene made for me when she was about 7 years old and I thought it would be neat to do some sand art in the soda bottle.  I made 2, one was kind of a practice bottle.

 

So, I tried my hand at sand art.  It was kind of fun, I just might have to do this again sometime. Check out this neat site I found when looking for ideas on what and how to do sand art. SAND ART


At church, Cherilyn and I both had to speak.  Interestingly enough, we did not speak on the same Sunday.  We spoke a week apart.  I think we both enjoyed speaking.  We also had our monthly temple trip, we went to St. Louis. In February we are going to go to Albuquerque. Finally, we were asked to teach the local Institute class. For those of you not familiar with what that is, it's a class for those single and married who are between the ages of 18 and 30.  We will teach a class one night a week beginning in February.

All in all it was a pretty productive month.