Jonathan Rocks, AGAIN!

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked for a biography of Jonathan by the school. So, I sent one. Then, last Thursday I was told he was one of the three students to win this award. Meanwhile, we had to finish up Jon's Eagle project. We were amazed-his project logged in over 150 hours and had 27 people volunteer to work on it. He also saved the government over 3000$ by using the volunteer labor and recycled materials. (he had coordinated the making of picnic tables for the Umatilla County Forest Dept). I can't find all the photos for that, so I am not posting them at this time!

THEN it was Monday night and we hauled Jon off to the Athena Chamber of Commerce Awards dinner. It was great fun and we learned a lot about the area.

Jon, and two other Seniors were honored with the award of Youth Citizen of the Year. Cool, huh?

The Icing is NOT on the Cake!

This week of January has been full of weather! MLK Day was pretty tame, but there wasn't any school. Tuesday night it started to snow, by Wednesday it was nice and wet and fun. So, school was cancelled (there was quite a bit of it!). I made my yearly edition of Frank the Flower (see The Pushcart War) and by the time I finished around 930am, the snow was grainy and not as good as it could be. Then, the weather deteriorated! We got rain and freezing rain! Today was the first day I could take good photos. And as you can tell, Frank is now doing the Limbo and the path of grass where I rolled the snowballs is now ice!

our sidewalk is a narrow skating rink. But, that doesn't matter, the whole YARD is a skating rink! and although this picture of the car was from Thursday, it is pretty amazing. Notice, it has TWO layers of ice. There was water in the middle!

The birds have been a lot of fun. They were rather chilled yesterday (the first two photos) when the freezing rain was coming down on them, but they gamely went after the seed. Today, I scattered seed on the ice lawn and the birds were perching on the antlers of Steve's deer. It was hilarious watching the birds skate across the lawn to get the seeds.



These last four photos were by Jonathan-Jack the Frost is pretty cute; the grill on the front of the Bronco is totally cool; I love the foot hovering above the iced grass; and the dove is just precious! Cold, but precious!

Cuppy Cakes!

Mom sent me a lovely cup cake decorating book for Christmas. So, since the SR class was providing the cakes for the cake raffles during the games--I made cuppy cakes!

My first ones were snowmen. They are so cute and very easy. I did spend way too much for the cookies to make the hats, but everything else was pretty inexpensive.
Are they not just CUTE?

Then, I decided to try the ducks. They are featured on the cover of the book (What's new, Cupcake?). I thought it would be a fun cupcake since the Oregon Ducks won the Rose Bowl and there are a LOT of duck fans in our little town! However, my ducks, as you can see, are definitely not the same as the ones on the cover of the book. I knew they would be a tad different, but they were more than a tad! I regret to say, I do not think ducks are in my future.
Jon called these the 'ugly ducklings' as they were not good enough to go to the raffle! The smooth one was the first one I made, the rough one was using a textured look also featured in the book. I'll save them for Jon and Steve to eat!

TREE, finally!

Up on the ranch, looking for trees and turkeys.
They found a tree! I was told over the phone it was a little over 10 feet tall. I believed them.

It took a bit getting it into the house and it needed several inches cut off. I think they removed about 15 to get it into the addition.

Later, Steve cut off another 30 inches (see measuring device-) to get it into the living room. The living room is 9 and one half feet tall.

The first tree is the 2011 tree. The second one is 2010. Notice, the 2011 tree still needs a tad trimmed from the top to fit the star atop? This year's tree was definitely full of character!

Before we decorated it, KiLa decided it was a wonderful place to play. After it was trimmed (so to speak), we managed to keep him from everything cept the water in the stand. I was also pleased to see the lego train being placed around the tree. It is neat to see how lego bricks and trains can bring people together, even if everyone is 'grown up' now! Jon took lots of other tree photos, but I cannot find them anywhere. Hence, the reason it has taken me so long to put this 'Tree' Blog up!!!

The Second Weekend in December~

When Jon went out to thaw out the car for school he found these amazing frost patterns on the Explorer window. So, technically, this is the first picture of the ones in the blog below!!!

Steve got a hold of Jon's camera Saturday and was taking squirrel pictures. We have all decided this is one really cold looking critter!

This photo is one of Jo's favorites. (of course!) You can't really see the candles, but it says '87'. They didn't want to stay up on the cake. Rod, had a GREAT day even if it was a couple of days' past his real birthday. He partied so hard on Saturday, he was too worn out to go to church on Sunday! He went to the basket ball game Saturday evening and they announced his bday over the intercom--totally made his day!

Moses likes sitting on the boxes of lights and decorations. He prefers the high places. And I'm sure the fact that we wanted him to move was a huge reason for his choice of placement!

Jon finally was able to go outside and get some night shots of the snow on top of two days or more of ice crystals. He took so many pictures, but feels these were some of the best ones. I love the 'red' lilac tree! The upright tree is our pear tree, it looks sort of like a candelabra! And the one with the ice on the light is very cool. Since the first pictures Jon took of the Christmas lights, Steve has put the 'big' lights in sequence. Most of the lights around the house have a 1, 2, 3 pattern--they may all be different colors, but they all match! On the very front we have all white ones with a star above the top floor window and on the far side it is red, white, and blue! He still wants to put up more!!!!!

Freezing Fog!

Last night freezing fog came in and left us some amazing decor. Everything seemed to be touched by the fragile beauty of crystal and it was beautiful to see.

Godfrey was dressed in winter attire, but the addition of ice made him look more magical! I hung my 'evergreen snowflake' on the fence last night and WOW!!!!!

I really need to get this night shade out of the garden, but it looks so pretty. Even covered in ice the deadly berries appear gentled.

I was on a search for a spider web. You know, the geometrical shapes you find everywhere. Well, what I did find were what I thought were icicles. But, when I touched one, they were SPIDERWEB strands covered in ice! Amazing, huh?

The Oregon Grape (which never blooms), my rosebush in the corner of the yard, and the worn out sunflower blooms are all in festive array~

Poor Scooter, this dragonfly is freezing out there!!!!

One of my favorite trees in the yard! It's actually growing fairly well, considering I've managed to kill so many of my bigger plants.

I did find a few webs, but not ones which had distinct dimensions. The first is in an abandoned bird basket and the second seemed to attract a great bit of debris over the last month or two!

The wind chimes on the little house were not chiming, but they didn't need to! As Christmas bells, they were just fine the way they were! The blue lights on the fence are actually my neighbor's~I wish she had lit them, but since it was daytime, they were off.

As I peeked over the fence, I noticed Tex's garden (she has Texas roots, her last name is Burleson) had gilded iris leaves in it. Some of my chamomile was changed into winter beauty with the addition of webs, making my container gardens lovely again.

The color of springtime is in the flowers, the color of winter is in the imagination.

~Terri Guillemets