Thanksgiving with Family

We had a nice Thanksgiving, with Dusty's family here in Montrose. Dusty's son, Joe, and his wife, Jen, came down from Grand Junction with their three kids and we all gathered at Dusty's sister's (Vonnie) house. There were 15 of us and it was a nice, low-key holiday. Lots of good food and conversation!!

I had the idea of taking some family pictures. I didn't know if everyone would agree to it, but they did and I'm so glad! We got some good pictures! Here are the best of the bunch!

My little family....Dusty, James and me!

Joe and Jen with their three....Jack, Juliana and JT

John and Vonnie with their three.....Ryan, Katie and Devon

Vonnie and Dusty with their mom, Stella.

All of the boys from the Ryan and McChesney families.

All of the girls from the Ryan and McChesney families.

And here are all of us together. I was quite pleased with this picture, in particular! It's so hard to get a good picture of so many people, but somehow we did it!!


With Thanksgiving behind us, we head into a busy time of year. Hanukkah starts this week. As is always the case, we will be melding the two religions of our (Dusty's and mine) upbringing. As we light the Hanukkah candles, we'll also be decorating the outside of our house for Christmas! Unfortunately, this year the eight days of Hanukkah will be over long before we really get into preparing for Christmas. I always love to take pictures of the lit Hanukkah menorah in front of our decorated Christmas tree, as it always speaks of what the Ryan family is all about. But, alas, that won't be happening this year. Perhaps next!

We have several traditions that we enjoy at this time of year.....sharing Hanukkah with families who are unfamiliar with the holiday, going to the Christmas tree farm, decorating the house (inside and out!), baking, going for a ride in the evening (complete with quilts and hot cider or hot chocolate!) to enjoy the beautiful Christmas lights in our area and other holiday-type activities!

I hope you'll enjoy your holiday season as much as we do! Find the time to spend with your families and give them an extra dose of love. It's the BEST gift that can be given!!

How Can You Not Believe??

.....that it's going to be a good week ahead, when your Sunday evening sunset looks like this??????

After last night's beautiful sunset, we woke up this morning to snow! We're not supposed to get very much, nor is it cold enough yet to really mess up the roads. Just pretty, hearlding in the winter!

We had a pretty lazy weekend. Not much going on really. We spent some time entertaining Lacey, outside. She will play frisbee or ball 24/7, if we would play with her! How she LOVES to play!! Here she is catching her frisbee on the yard....


She's just as happy to curl up on her bed. I came out of the bedroom to see this in the livingroom the other night!

Dusty said she told him that she was cold! So he helped her out, covering her with his fleece jacket. Maybe we need to get her her own blanket. She DOES have her own sleeping bag when we go camping! I'm not sure who is sillier, our dog or my husband!!

Have a wonderful week!!!

Oops! I Missed Posting About Halloween!!!

I'm not sure why it just occurred to me, a week later, that I hadn't posted anything about our Halloween weekend! Must be old age setting in! Maybe it's because I also post pictures on Facebook and so sometimes I forget to do a posting here right away!

Anyway, before we move on to Thanksgiving, I guess I'd better post something about our Halloween! I was proud of myself, having James' pirate costume completely finished a week BEFORE Halloween. I don't think that's ever happened before!! He was so pleased with it and, a week later, is still talking about how great it is! Guess I hit the mark on this one! Through all of the trials of trying to get it done (I am so NOT a seamstress!!!), it's my son's appreciation that makes me want to continue to make his costumes. James just loves the process so much, as much as he seems to love being able to say that his Mom makes these things just for him! It's his appreciation and gratitude that keeps me going! It's hard to believe that this was the eighth costume I'd made for him. Where did that time go?

James' Halloween weekend started on Friday afternoon, when his class had a Halloween party. One of the other mothers lead the party and I assisted. All of the kids had a lot of fun, wearing their costumes, playing games and eating yummy Halloween treats! The energy level was HIGH, to say the least!!

All weekend long, we continued to decorate that outside of our house. Oh, we had a mini cemetary, cobwebs everywhere, a huge bat hanging from the tree, and a broom-riding witch/cowboy! We helped James decorate (reaching the areas that he couldn't), but he was in control and had a blast!! It did look pretty awesome when he was done!

On Saturday night, was his school's Halloween Carnival. I volunteered to work in the ticket booth, so Dusty escorted James to the Carnival. They had a very good turn out and everybody seemed to be having fun! Many ghosts and goblins showed up, including a few Cleopatra's, at least one pirate :), and many others that I can't remember. I think my favorites were "Thing 1 and Thing 2" from Dr. Suess fame!! They were GREAT, winning one of the levels of costume contests!! Too funny!! There were many games, and munchies. It's always fun to see all of the kids dressed up and really enjoying themselves!!

Then on Sunday night, came the trick-or-treating! With the jack-o-lantern lit, the kids started to arrive. James, completely decked out as a pirate, had as much fun greeting the kids (and, yes, scaring them if they were old enough and it was "appropriate"!) as he had when it was his turn to go out door-to-door! We had one of the boys from his class come over and I took James out with his buddy(and his family) while Dad stayed home to greet the little ones. It worked out well and now James can see what fun it is to actually stay at home and "work" the other side of things. He just had such a great time decorating and passing out candy, that this transition will be great for him! He can still dress up and have fun without going out trick-or-treating! We'll see what he decides to do next year, but now we're more ready to move on to the next level!

Here are some of the pictures I took over the weekend........

Class fun on Friday afternoon


James with his "book buddy" (His class of 4th graders gets together to read with a class of 1st graders!)


The making of a grubby pirate. James did all of his own makeup this year!


Our broom-riding witch/cowboy!


Taken from the street, here is our yard, complete with cobwebs, bat, witch and cemetary in the back.


Our gate archway covered in cobwebs.



James also carved our jack-o-lantern all by himself this year!


Pirate James visiting our haunted cemetary, keeping the skeleton's under control!


Oh, please don't stab ME with that sword, Mr. Scary Pirate!! :)


So now we are heading deeper into Autumn, cleaning up the garden for the year and taking care of the last of the "garden goodies"! Dusty brought in the last of the tomatos on Halloween day! He said, "If anyone tried to tell me that I'd be brining in the best of my tomato harvest on October 31st, I'd have told them that they were crazy!!" None the less, here it is!!!!

This weekend were making tomato sauce and juice, and dicing up some to freeze for cooking!

Before long, we'll be decorating the house, inside and out, for Christmas! Where has the year gone?