New Year's Eve in the Country!

After spending most of the day in bed I am finally feeling better.

Dean and Sherry invited us to go with them to Hamilton to meet up with Sherry's parents and with Roy and Ruth Ann and you know I had to not be well to turn that visit down. But I did.

I simply could not push on anymore. So I stayed in bed. Nearly all day.

It was late this afternoon when I decided a nice hot shower to wash all the germs away would be in order. Louis Dean and I donned our mud boots - mine are Coach - Goodwill treasure - and made our way down to their house. It was not easy. Plus Louis Dean had to turn on the water at a source to fill our camper reservoir. That was an adventure. I can't even go into all the confusion over that. Okay...he went down and turned it on.....he thought. He walked back up through the mud and discovered he had turned it the wrong way. So he walked back down there - through the mud - and turned it the other way. It filled up. In the meantime I took my hot shower and walked back up to the camper. The water was running out of the hose from the reservoir. So he had to turn the water on again and I had to hook the hose up.....this sounds simple but it was all very confusing.

At last Louis Dean was able to take his hot shower but his phone was dying.

Every time we tried to talk to each other on the phone - the geese were honking so loudly we couldn't even hear one another.

Finally! We were bathed and back at the camper.

I looked up and saw this beautiful pink and blue sky through the bathroom window.

Then I got up and went out to the sun deck and saw this.

It's a spectacular light show that God gives us free of charge.

I don't see the sunrises or the sunsets from our home in Irving.

It's just the way our house sits.

And when I try to get a photo - there's so many telephone poles and wires that it's not a pretty picture.

We are loving it here. 

This is Day #3.....we arrived on Friday night. Spent all day Saturday and Sunday and here we are on New Year's Eve.

After we got back from our showers, we settled in the front room and visited while I decorated my perpetual tree that lives in the corner.

I completely undressed it and started all over.

When I was doing my after Christmas shopping at Hobby Lobby, I found some country style garlands for 66% off and knew right away that they would be perfect for a Country Style Tree!

I reused the cotton bolls I had picked two years ago - I totally missed the cotton harvest this year - as well as the burlap garland.

Tiny metal milk pails are stuffed with cotton bolls and shiny aluminum farm animals hang from the branches.

Faux fur trees add to the country charm.

Perfect for an all year round country tree!

Here it is as we sat with our wine in the glow of the tree lights.

Remember back in the summer when we turned the AC on and it was like - well, I won't say.

Granted - it was over 100 degrees and the room was not completely closed in.

Tonight Louis Dean said why don't we try turning on the heater? (It's an AC/Heat unit)

So that's where we sat with our sparkling wine and a bologna and cheese sandwich.

We decided to celebrate the new year early so we could go on to bed.....

and that's where he is now.

I missed visiting with Ruth Ann but she called me a little while ago and we had a nice phone chat.

Both of us are hoping that we get to see more of each other in 2019.

I'm sure many of you are making plans for the new year and I think that's such a good idea.

How can we reach our goals if we have not set any?

I am doing some deep thinking about my life.

At 70, I am trying my dead level best to grow old gracefully.

70 doesn't look the way it used to. 

I still have goals and dreams and thoughts about what I want to be when I grow up.

Am I there yet? I hope not. I want to grow and learn and be.

I want to finish writing my book.

I want to spend quality time with Louis Dean - meaning we sit and talk and stupor over our coffee in the mornings. We come together in the afternoons to go over our ideas about what we want to do....where we want to go.

I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, a grandmother, an aunt, a cousin, a friend....but first and foremost....I am a wife. I'm thinking this is my priority in 2019. 

Louis Dean is 82....I want to embrace and treasure every minute we have together.

Okay. I did not mean to go off the deep end here so I think I will close my thoughts for this New Year's Eve. 

It's not even 10:00 and as I am going to bed - I bid all my friends and family a very happy and prosperous new year!!