Christmas at the Gunzburgers

We spent Christmas this year with my parents at our house.  Mom and I started off the traditions by making reindeer ornaments from a kit.

 

They turned out pretty cute!

 

Christmas morning found the stockings stuffed full and the presents under the tree overflowing across the living room!

 

After opening stockings and eating pancakes, we opened the rest of our gifts.  First Matthew and I handed out all of the presents.

 






















Here's Matthew with his new sun hat.

 

And me with a liability sign from my brother.

 

I mostly used cloth bags this year instead of wrapping paper for the gifts.  Part of my parents' gifts included the bags that their items were wrapped in.

 

The aftermath of Christmas.

 

Bagheera was exhausted from all of the festivities.

 

Family portrait (just missing my brother!).

 

Mom and I also went for our traditional Christmas horseback ride since she brought her horse with her for their two week stay.

 

After gifts and riding we decorated cookies.  I tried using rice flour in our cut out cookie recipe for some gluten free cookies and they were delicious.

 

Lots of sugary snacks for us!

 

Finally, we had Christmas dinner that included local grass fed lamb, my mom's homegrown potatoes, broccoli fresh from our garden and homemade bread in a broccoli casserole, and lettuce salads also fresh from our garden. 

 

Matthew cutting the lamb.

Our Tree and Other Things

This weekend, among many other things, we picked out our Christmas tree and decorated it.  We set it up by the door to the screen room since this year we actually have a TV so it can't be on the entertainment center.  Matthew and I even pulled out the festive hats for the occasion.

 

Our family portrait.

 

As usual, the cats were very helpful during the decorating process.

 

Bagheera thought that we made her the perfect bed!

 

The finished product.

 

In other news, this past week has been a little chilly and one morning everything was covered in frost.

 

And here's a photo of Zia so she doesn't feel left out!  She has been very cuddly lately.

 

Finally, a video of the horses playing this morning.

This Weekend

Although it has been sitting in a box in the barn for a few weeks, we finally had some time and decent weather this weekend to bring out our new pressure washer!  The house was in desperate need of a good cleaning and it took Matthew most of Saturday to clean 3/4 of the it.  I was able to finish the rest today.

 

We did not use any chemicals because the water pressure did a great job cleaning all by itself.

 

 

 

Some parts of the house were worse than others.  I hadn't even realized how much moss had grown on the bricks around the flower beds!

 

A before and after of the front of the house.  I hope to be able to repaint the door and pillars later this week.  Then we will only have a little landscaping left to finish!

 

 

While Matthew pressure washed, I burned the brush from clearing around the front of the house and continued clearing some of the nearby woods.  In this photo I am standing by the house looking towards the driveway and the garden is on the left.

 

After all of our hard work, we drove to town to eat dinner and go contra dancing.  This time I actually remembered to bring my camera AND ask someone to take a few photos!

 

And lastly, one of our rabbits finally gave birth last night!  We have been trying different combinations of rabbits for about 8 months now with no success.  This new doe had 7 healthy babies!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we finally made it out to the Aresco's (Matthew's sister and brother-in-law's) in the Florida Panhandle.  We left Thursday morning and it took about 7 hours to drive there.  Margaret already had dinner ready when we arrived and we thoroughly enjoyed it after first taking a tour of their homestead.  You can check out the Aresco's blog for more photos because apparently I hardly took any!

 

On Friday Matt took us on a great tour of Nokuse, the 50,000 acre plantation that he manages.  We were able to see many different levels of habitat restoration as well as several types of habitat.  We weren't sure how many animals might be out due to the cool temperatures, but ended up seeing deer, a coyote, a pygmy rattlesnake, wild turkeys, lots of birds, and a fresh gopher tortoise burrow.  All very exciting for me!  We also ate lunch at a local cafe that was delicious.

 

After being cooped up in the car all day the boys were ready for something a little more fun for them!  We played some board games including candy land  in the afternoon and Matthew watched a movie with them while Margaret and I prepared dinner.

 

On Saturday morning we were supposed to finish the tour of Nokuse and then Matthew and I had planned to drive over to Tallahassee to spend the night with Max, Janet, Jessica, and Elise.  Unfortunately our plans were ruined by a stomach virus and I ended up spending all of Saturday incapacitated in the Aresco's guest room.  We left Sunday mid day when I was finally well enough to travel.  It was a good thing that we didn't visit any more family  though because Matthew came down with the virus Sunday night and spent Monday in bed at home.  At least we didn't both get it at the same time and hopefully the Aresco's are all in the clear!

Games and Chores

This past weekend we hosted another game night on Saturday.  We had a great turnout and ate lots of delicious food!  On Sunday we did a few chores including digging a trench and running a water line to the garden, continuing to organize the shop, and hanging a photo collage in the kitchen.  We will be spending next weekend in Florida at the Aresco's relaxing and don't plan on working on any house projects!

First Raised Bed

Yesterday I was finally able to install the first of many of my raised garden beds.  I partially buried the aluminum rails and then filled the area with three heaping wheel barrow loads of compost.  Hopefully that will help the plants a little!  Now we need to figure out what materials we will be using for the other 19 beds...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's an updated photo of the winter garden.  The eggplant were mostly killed off from the freeze last week but the broccoli, spinach, green peppers, lettuce, and garlic are all looking good.

 

Today's Chores

This weekend we got a late start on projects around our house because we spent most of Saturday running errands and going to a swing dance in Statesboro.  Today, however, we were able to accomplish a few things.

 

We started in the front yard by cutting down branches.  Here is a before photo:

 

We had to pull out the extra large ladder for this job!

 

After.  Much brighter and a lot less like a jungle!

 

One of our errands on Saturday took us to a nursery where all of the plants were 40% off.  We bought 12 azalea bushes to replace the ugly bushes that we removed from the front of the house.  I still need to dig out the rest of the stumps and do some drainage work before we can plant the azaleas, but we couldn't pass up the sale!

 

Matthew also cut up more firewood today.  During some of our clearing work last year we cut logs into 6' sections and piled them up in the woods.  Since it has been a little chilly here we have been using a lot of firewood and decided to finish cutting up the logs.

 

We spent the afternoon in the barn rearranging Matthew's shop and my tack/feed room.  It will be a while before we put up the boards on the walls of the tack room so we decided to go ahead and move the rest of the stuff in.  Everything fit just like it was supposed to!  Also, by moving the horses' feed bins to the barn we made room to store some firewood on our porch for easy access.

Weekend Work

This past weekend we worked on a few small projects around our house in between dancing and working on one of the rental houses.

 

On Saturday we picked up two more rabbits to add to our collection.  Rabbit production has been very slow lately so we bought another doe and buck to help speed things up.

 

The doe has black ears and a black nose.

 

The buck is all white.

 

We also added a 12 foot gate in the horses' pen in preparation for my parents' visit over Christmas.  We will be splitting the pen in half during their visit to make room for their horses and they will be using this gate.

On Sunday we burned some of the stumps left from the horses' pen.

King's Mountain

Last weekend Matthew took Friday off and we headed up to King's Mountain State Park in Blacksburg, SC for another NATRC competitive trail ride.  I took Rabi for the ride and we competed in the two day event this time.  We rode almost 16 miles on Saturday and the same on Sunday with many obstacles along the way.  It was raining when we arrived but stopped within a couple of hours and turned into a beautiful weekend.  We were even able to visit the King's Mountain National Park museum on Saturday afternoon between events.

 

Here Rabi and I are waiting to vet in on Friday night, he is still a little wet from the rain.

 

 

Vetting in with the horsemanship judge.  Rabi did really well on this ride!

 

All of the riders gathered at 7:30 am Saturday ready to head out.  I think there were 42 riders to start but a few dropped out along the way.

 

Rabi and I at one of the pulse and respiration checks the first day.  He passed with flying colors!

 

And here's a view of the trails on the second day - much drier than the first!  I ended up placing 5th in my division and Rabi placed 4th in his.  All and all a great weekend even if we didn't get home until about 10:00 pm (which felt like 11 due to the time change) on Sunday night.  Next time I will try to remember take pictures of camp and Matthew!

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