We wish you a Merry Christmas dance

Here's Mackenzie having a wonderful Christmas time!

Feeding Baby Jesus

Mackenzie is only 1 1/2 years old and wanted to make sure she fed the Baby Jesus from our nativity scene and using her sippy cup is the way to go for her. This is priceless!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!
Things are real different for us this year. We are living in a condo and have had to downsize our Christmas decorating. With our granddaughter and her parents coming to stay with us for the occasion I really had to try and making sure we have room to move around so our tree is pretty tiny. Although I did put the tree up on a 2 foot stand so that we could put a LOT of presents under it-so feel free to send presents. :) I found a nativity scene that I could put up on the wall! Enjoy the photos of the quilts, I found flannel to back them so they are cosy and we need them now with the COLD weather we are experiencing. With the family being here for the next week through Christmas I will most likely not be blogging so I wanted to make sure that I wish you a very Merry Christmas!

Mother in Law's birthday party

While we were in Phoenix, my Mother in Law had her 89th birthday. I posted this photo to show her with the family she is living with. She is living with my son Jonathan's mother in law and her 7 adopted children! She is an amazing woman and is so wonderful to my Mother in Law. The kids are great also. We are blessed!

Baby Boy!!

I will be a grandma to a baby boy in April. My oldest son and his wife are so excited. This will be their first and will be my 2nd grandbaby. God is good.

Well, I'm back in Alaska for awhile again. Obviously, it is cooler than Phoenix but not too bad yet. Yesterday morning while on the phone with my daughter in law in Florida a moose walked across the back yard and bent ove to grab some tasty yellow grass. :) There isn't any snow on the ground yet, actually, there was a little but with the warmer weather it has all melted. We need the snow-cause it is DARK out there. It is 9am and I am now able to see things outside. It will start to get dark about 4pm or so now. We are loosing daylight by between 3-5 minutes a day until the 21st of December now.

I am getting ready for Christmas as all of you are and will be working on a couple of quilts to have around the house for the family. My daughter, her hubby and my grandbaby girl will be coming up from Seattle for Christmas. I found this wonderful devotional book we will be using for this time of the year!! It is called "Why the Nativity" by David Jeremiah. I love listening to him so I know the book is going to be good to be sharing with the family.

Little doll

I feel blessed!!

Little dancer

Mackenzie will promptly start dancing whenever she hears music. In this video, you can tell that she isn't allowed to touch the computer--but this was grandma's so she thought it was ok. :)

TWINS?

My neice got married in Seattle. My nephew and his wife and little one came up from Texas for the special occasion. Their little one is named Makenzie and our little one is named Mackenzie and they both showed up at the wedding wearing the same outfit-it wasn't planned! They both looked darling.
Mackenzie with her cousin Shawna! She enjoyed all the attention she got from everyone.

Grand baby Mackenzie

Here she is taking a walk with mom, stopping often to examine the leaves and "dandylions".
Cousin, Timmy helping Mackenzie walk safely with her mom. :)
I think my dolly is hungry. :)

new blogger template

I've been trying out this new template and I think I have a real problem figuring this all out-cause it's taking me awhile to get started again. I don't like what happened to my blog when I went to this new format so I was discouraged and haven't posted anything for awhile. I'm going to attempt again and see what happens.
I've been in Phoenix since the middle of October and in Seattle for a week also. We were sooooo busy in Phoenix and so I didn't blog. I took a lot of photos of my grand daughter while in Seattle so I will be posting some of them as soon as I get brave enough to post and have it in a presentable form.

Son and His Wife

Here is my son, Jonathan and his wife, Jami. Aren't they the cutest couple? They were getting ready to go out the door to catch a flight to New York this past week, so I took this photo just before we headed to the airport. They are back and we are hoping to have some time with them before we head back north to Alaska.

Birthday party!

Here are 2 of my sisters and my beautiful mother on her birthday. Her birthday is October 12 and 5 of her children went out to lunch at Benihanas to celebrate. She has 9 children. I'm next to the oldest by one year. I didn't take photos of the evening celebration at her home with the cake.






















Our chef did a few tricks and showed off his artistic abilities by forming a clown with the food. The food was REAL good.























Here we are, all full and happy.

Out of town

Just want to let you know that I'm out of town for a month. We are in Phoenix-Hey, the weather is fabulous right now!!!!!! Since I will be very busy, I probably won't be blogging. Will update when I get back to Alaska. God bless

Christmas quilt

I am so excited about this quilt. I will be hand quilting with gold thread. I am so pleased with the yellow flannel backing!!

Pizza time

Friday night has been pizza night in our family for many years, about 17 years or so. I have made the pizza from scratch many many times. We have also bought from the chain stores and even bought the frozen ones when in a bind-YIKES!!
I use honey to sweeten the dough and wheat germ to add to the white flour. I have experimented over the years with different recipes for the sauce and have a few that we like.
Tonight I made one pepperoni and the other 1/2 of Canadian Bacon and the other 1/2 vegetarian. I had peppers, broccoli, onions and canned mushrooms available. The fresh tomatoes were added after baking.

I always prebake the crust at 425 for about 5 minutes then top them. I then do my best to transfer them onto a baking stone. This gives a beautiful crispy crust to the pizza.

You can see the nice color to the bottom of the pizza. As you can tell the stones are WELL seasoned and have made my pizza baking a success.
























My youngest son, Jordan was the one who pushed for the Friday night pizza since he was 3 years old. We have hardly ever had anything different on Friday nights. Here he is anxiously awaiting the first bite!!

Birthday Party!

My birthday was Sept 6th and my cousin
Glennora made this sweet cake for me. It
was adorable and tasted good. She does a
fabulous job decorating cakes. She has a
wonderful talent from God to whip out a
beautiful work of art in no time at all.

Hatcher Pass/Independence Mine area hike

I think I really like this photo!!!!! You can see the snow line, so you can tell we were up high in elevation for our hike.

Independence Mine Hike

Jim and I took a hike today, Sat. 22, around Independence Mine, which is a closed down mine about an hour drive from Anchorage. As you can see, it was a beautiful day. It was a little nippy but pleasant. The snow is creeping down the mountain sides. We saw TONS of berries. The photo of the berries doesn't show up very good so I will try and get a different photo posted.
As you can see, I climbed up a steep rock!!!

Mackenzie

I couldn't pass this picture up again. Just a reminder: you can double click on the photo and get a larger photo!!!!

PARTY TIME!!!

Here we are at the celebration dinner at Morton's. We celebrated James' graduation and Jim and my 33rd year marriage!! We had a fabulous time and had fabulous food.

James and CJ

Here is our oldest son, James and his lovely wife, CJ. This photo was taken after the great occasion of his graduation from Florida Atlantic University with a Master's degree in taxation!

Mackenzie's FIRST BIRTHDAY

Here is our grandbaby Mackenzie at her one year old birthday party that I put on for her. She had a party the week before with all her friends that her mom and dad put together with some friends. Then a week before that her grandparents from Illinois (Toomey's) had a party for her in Colorado. This is one party girl!!

A funniest moment came when she unwrapped her first gift: she was delighted with the small piece of paper she had ripped off the present!! She was as happy as can be walking around with it.

By the way, she is walking all over and I must say she is doing a great job. She falls often, but then, off she stands up and goes on. It is very entertaining.
















Here Mackenzie is posing with a cute little monkey that her aunt Mandy brought back from Brazil for her. She thinks it's pretty cool.

Bathing beauty

Mackenzie and her Dad

Mackenzie and her Mom

Mackenzie and her Dad!

Back in Alaska

We got back to Alaska on July 18th. We thank God for the safety for the LONG trip. It is a spectacularly beautiful trip.

I'm finally getting time to be on the computer. We have been sooooo busy since getting back. We are settling in to Anchorage for awhile. We will be heading off to Florida for a week to celebrate our oldest son's graduation from grad school with a master's degree in taxation!!

We will get back and settle in for a few days then off to Phoenix for a month again to try and get a few more things done. At least this is the plan for now-time will tell what will happen. The Lord has a will for us and we seek it and want it.

Baby Mackenzie