I just wanted to share a little about our winter here. The snow is deep now and we can barely get up the hill of the driveway. I shared with Matthew that we might need to put the chains on so we can get up the hill. He thought that was a good idea so he’s doing that now.

Just a beautiful picture of the lake in it’s winter glory.  The kids sliding down our hill. They do this about once a day. Here the kids are roasting marshmallows. We are doing this once a week now with the graham crackers. I will buy some chocolate soon to make them a little better. Don’t mind our pictures, they aren’t turning out the best with the flash on at night. Here’s Elisabeth roasting hers…   : )  See how deep the snow got? Yikes!  Ice covered and snow covered lake…Here’s the beginning of the freeze several weeks ago or so. The icicles. They are longer than they appear… 4+ feet. Elisabeth making bread for the first time. She did a good job. It turned out wonderful. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of the final product.

Last month I found a silly sounding Christmas song that is in a foreign language. The kids loved hearing it and started dancing away. I had to get a video of them. I wasn’t planning on putting this out there publicly but it was kind of cute with dad stepping in dancing too.  : )

[vimeo 152353648 w=500 h=281] <p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/152353648″>DSC_0040</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user36589551″>Hadassah Geraci</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

This is my first time using Vimeo so I don’t use up all the memory on this blog. I hope it works.

Since buying this home and being chastised by our loving Lord, we yearn to not have a mortgage. There is a home in Kansas that we love that if we were to sell our home soon, this dream could be a reality. The home is on almost 5 acres and it’s only $39,000. It is beautiful though, see for yourself:

http://www.zillow.com

We’ve had more hits on the listing of our home since we nearly sold it a couple of months ago. Somebody seems interested. We’re hopeful that this is the Lord’s plan. We’d be far from the VA again but being able to afford better tires, normal maintenance on the vehicles, it would be worth the extra money we would have available to us each month. We want to help others and desire this for our children to see and partake of and if we were to take out a 15 year mortgage, my husband would be 72 years old by the time we paid it off! So, we might not be able to have a dairy cow… is it worth paying an extra $100,000 more so we can have a cow? We would of course have inspections done on the home, put up new wallpaper, etc… You may be wondering why the home is so cheap, it’s because of the location. Just as this home was so cheap for what we got, location. We have grown to love the down to earth, transparency of people who live far away from the big cities though so we would actually prefer it. What’s interesting is that before moving back to Washington, we looked at a home in Phillipsburg, Kansas not too far from this home just 3 years ago. Anyways, pray that we can move soon. Still waiting almost 3 years now…

Here’s a quick video that I took of Benjamin this morning at 6 months old. The color is a little off. I’ll post pictures soon.

[vimeo 154350823 w=500 h=281]
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/154350823″>DSC_0153</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user36589551″>Hadassah Geraci</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

Did you think you were going to get away with Mommy not putting up some pictures of you?You are coming up on 6 months here pretty soon. You’re starting to eat cooked egg yolk with turkey broth and butter mixed in. Yum!  Just a little cutie pie…Watching your siblings play around. Grandma sent you a candy cane too just so you could have a little lick. Mommy’s homemade cherry pie. You know, we have to use up some of the frozen cherries from last Summer. Green eggs from our green egg laying chickens. Giraffe. Leah’s thank you card to Grandma for sending her that cute giraffe a few months ago. I had to take a picture of it before we sent it off. I think it’s one of the cutest cards yet.

Opening Christmas cards from GrandmaThese are just the cards from Grandma. We also received some from our closest friends this year. It means so much to us!The snow about a week or so ago…It’s even thicker now.  The lake starting to freeze over. Now it  is almost frozen over. I went to Walmart yesterday and we saw these “Ugly Sweater Cookies” that you decorate. I don’t know why they would call them ugly sweaters. I think they are kind of cute! The kids had fun decorating them this morning instead of doing math.  : ) Elisabeth really took her time on hers. Leah did too…  Hannah’s sweater cookies.

While we don’t stay up for New Years, I cannot help but reflect on the past year. We have seen 3 of our neighbors pass away. Our little Benjamin born and my mother was able to visit us this year for 2 weeks. We had the scare of the Okanogan Complex fires too.

Looking ahead, I believe our debt will be paid off. Our first debt on Feb 1st will only have $1,300 left to it. On November 9th we had over $5,400 left to pay on it. We are going without everything that we can and we are doing okay. We put our meager savings towards it and a little other money that came in. I’m hoping towards the beginning of Fall when our second debt is paid off that the Lord will have mercy on us and move us. I’m going to start reading through the Bible again this year. I love to read it randomly but believe it’s healthy to read it through as well. Matthew reads through it almost yearly. I believe he’s read through it about 8 or 9 times since we’ve been married now. He has big plans to expand our garden this year. He and little Matthew are just itching to get busy on the garden again.

I pray that all my friends and family will have a good year, but better yet, be strong in the Lord and bear through the hard trials that are going to be ahead for some of us. Some of our closest brothers and sisters in Christ are going through their most troubled time in their marriages – dire trouble, and it appears that the marriages will be destroyed. We feel almost as devastated about it as they do. It hurts. We are praying for reconciliation and a miracle.