You Know It Is Winter When.........

......your hubby and son-in-law are chopping and unloading firewood
......a car (across the road) is in need of a tow truck
......the thermometer shows you how cold it really is (actually it warmed up five degrees while I was trying to get the sliding door unfrozen!)


......the view from your front window looks like this

......it's warm and cozy inside

Rena

Workday's Over

It's time to head home and this is what my trusty vehicle looks like. It's been snowing most of the day and it looks like it will continue snowing for a while.

Can't you just feel the cold dry snow falling into your coat sleeve as you brush the snow off the windshield with your hand?

So You Think You Can Fly

Just for the fun of it, watch this video of an indoor radio controlled airplane competition. Really cool!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXqEY5GASoQ

No Ordinary Day

This past Monday was the first work day of the year for MMS. After a 10 day holiday break we eagerly jumped back in to things at the hangar. All personnel on the hangar floor were busy sorting and counting - the dreaded annual inventory!

Upstairs, Karen and I sorted through the backlog of mail that had accumulated in the post office box while MMS was closed for the holidays. By noon we thought we were done with the sorting when Chuck walked in with a postal mail bin that the mail carrier had dropped off ! We thought we were done! Evidently the mail that could not fit into the post office box had been saved by our mail carrier for delivery. In all we were ready to start processing after about 4 hours of sorting. It is always so humbling to see how God uses his people to support the MMS ministry and all the individual MMS families. We feel so blessed and encouraged.

Modern Conveniences

This evening Rena and I needed to pick a few things up at the store, so we ate supper at a local restaurant. It was snowing quite heavily while we were out and the lesser traveled roads have a couple inches of snow on them. As we turned into our driveway we did something unusual for us. Rena pushed the button on a remote switch in our car, the garage door opened and we drove right in!

We built this house just over 26 years ago. It is situated on a slope which makes part of the basement exposed. A one-car garage takes up about 1/4 of the basement. It has a sectional roll-up door but I never put an opener on it. (The garage serves as a woodworking shop at times so our vehicles are accustomed to being outdoors.)

Feeling like we're getting old enough to not have to scrape frost from car windows or clear snow and ice off a vehicle every time we need to drive somewhere, we decided to do something about it. We got each other a garage door opener for Christmas.

January second we went a monster home improvement type store and picked out the appliance we'd promised each other. A helpful salesman showed us where the garage door openers were and asked us helpful questions to try to steer us to the more expensive models. One thing he asked was, "What brand of garage door opener are you replacing?" "It's an Armstrong" was my reply. He looked puzzled for an instant but quickly realized that up till then it was an arm strong garage door opener.

I had a great time installing the opener. It's been quite a while since I'd bought a Christmas gift of the "some assembly required" kind. Now, our challenge is is how to manage two cars and one really convenient garage.

How I spent January 3rd.

Christmas in Wyomissing 2008

Stephanie (daughter -in- law) with her nephew, Javin

We had a great family reunion for Christmas at my (Rena's) parents' home in eastern PA. While each of us had our challenges getting there (especially my brother Bill, Deborah and their daughter Cindy who started their trip first but ended up arriving 4:00 am Christmas Day) it was well worth the effort. The only ones who could not make it, were my nephew Billy and his wife Denise who live in Indonesia. All our family was there and Bill and his wife Deborah from Vancouver, BC. My neice Cindy from Seattle and my nephew, Andy from Gainsville, FL.

We came home with lots of great memories to cherish.

Javin, my Dad and Cindy

Dwight, Deborah and Bill, the parents of Cindy and Andy

Jen and Jason who are also the parents of Javin and Chanelle

Deborah, Mae/Mom and Rena

Chanelle and her "twin"

Tickle time - Javin, Cindy and Andy

Chanelle, Stephanie, Scott and Jen