Snow and Christmas Decorations

We got so much snow on Dec 7 and 8! Here are some pictures:

Note the tricycle handlebars:


The chairs were overflowing with snow:


The snow on the table was very impressive:


Ryan came home from work and shoveled the driveway for about an hour. There was a lot of snow to move. As he was coming in, he shut the garage door, and there was an awful sound. The broom had somehow leaned into the groove of the door, and it forced one side of the door to stay where it was, while the other side kept going down. Ugh. It looked awful. So crooked and twisted. Ryan worked on it, and banged on it, and rewound the cable that lifts the door, and did all sorts of stuff to it. And voila! It worked again. Hurray! He's so awesome! He tells me we will still need to replace it, but it isn't as vital as I was expecting it to be.

Here are some of our Christmas decorations. We have lights downstairs, in Katie's room, and in the front room. Then outside, Ryan put some lights above the garage, around our front window and door, and on our tree in the front yard. I haven't gotten a picture of the outside lights because it is so cold! Once the sun sets, I'm not very excited about being outside. It has been below zero most of the week at night.



These are the stockings that I have decorated: (very reminiscent of the ones my mother made for us when I was growing up)



I have a wonderful friend named Jenet that let Ryan and I come decorate gingerbread houses for her Christmas present to us. She makes the gingerbread (she made 52 kits this year!), then invites friends and families to come over and decorate them with all the candy and chocolate she has piled around her kitchen. It is really fun. This was Ryan's first year to come, and I think he had lots of fun.

This is my house:


This is Ryan's house. I think he has lots of fun, original ideas. I really liked the window decorations here:




His front piece was broken, so he made a neat design with it. You can't even tell where it was broken, can you? He made a candycane "tree" and a nice river/lake/waterfall thing.