Finding The Good

After my lamenting on the cold icy weather in my recent blog post, I began to realize how much "good" abounds in our life.  I enjoy following Heather Lende's blog, http://www.heatherlende.com , reading her updates regularly, as she always seems to find the good in every situation, even while living in the harsh winters in Haines, Alaska! 

I have so much to be grateful for each day!  Even when we recently had an invasion of skunks under our house, I decided to be thankful to have a house, we are not homeless!

A perennial bright spot this time of year is the annual blooming of our Christmas cactus plants!

I am always amazed when those awesome blooms begin popping out after the green plant has spent all Spring, Summer, and part of Fall outside on our deck.  A couple of years a wayward bunny rabbit has managed to sneak up on our deck and nibble away on the green foliage of the Christmas cactus plants, but somehow they always manage to come back to their full glory by now!

I cherish my Saddlebag women friends and yesterday was our annual Christmas party.  For several years we have had a tradition of wearing a specific article of attire to the Christmas party, such as wigs, hats, boas, etc.  Well this year our hostess decided it would be a pajama party!  What fun!  Twenty nine women showed up and all except one was wearing their pajamas/nightshirts/slippers/robes!

                            Circle of friends!

 That's Diane (with the red hat/green boa), our hostess for the party, sharing her lovely log home with all of us.

We gathered on Diane's front porch and I snapped this group photo of my pajama-clad friends, some of whom I have known for almost thirty years!  Wonderful friends!

Where's the Sun?

I miss the sunshine!  Today is fifth day in a row with gray skies and very damp air!  Today is the fifth day in a row we have a fire going constantly in our wood stove. Today is the fifth day in a row that the temperature outside barely gets up to the freezing mark.  This is Texas.  We are not use to this kind of weather.  Winter weather usually comes for a couple of days, then goes away elsewhere while we enjoy mild temperatures again. 

 This is our pond covered in ice, well it is really just a low spot now that use to be a pond before nature filled it in over the years with silt and trees.

The handle of our push mower at the edge of our carport!

 

 The Nandina bush covered in Christmas lights--and ice!

I guess My Sweetie won't be grilling anything today!

 And the large elm tree in our backyard is dying and losing its large limbs one at a time.

 The large cedars that surround our humble abode are laden with ice.

 And there are real icicles on our icicle lights!!

We do feel very grateful that we were spared the even worst conditions that our neighboring towns to our west and north received.  Unfortunately most Texans are not prepared for this kind of weather because we don't experience it very often.  We don't own snow plows, snow blowers, or road chemicals/salt in abundance since they are rarely needed.  We figure any ice or snow will be gone in a couple of days when the sun comes out and melts it away.

So in the meantime we just make the best of things and keep warm and don't get out unless we absolutely have to.

One incidental about this cold/icy weather is that my brother Wendall, who lives in Indiana,  came to Texas for Thanksgiving with our family and planned to stay at my Mom's house for a few days to do some maintenance projects for her.  Well he was scheduled to catch a bus back home this past Saturday morning however he is still at my Mom's because the interstate highways heading north from Dallas to Oklahoma City and then on to St. Louis are iced over and closed temporarily.  He is hoping to maybe head home today or tomorrow.  We'll see.  The temps are supposed to get above freezing this afternoon for a few hours.  Now if the sun will just come out also, we will all be much happier!

 Wendall looks a lot like my Dad, and he is very talented in building and construction, just like my Dad was.

Give Mom's great-grandkids a tree to climb and they are happy!