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!