I'm slowly decorating our house for Christmas.  Seems like I can't get into the mood to do it. I have done our kitchen and our window sills.  Still need to venture outside, after I find the outdoor decorations in the garage.  Going out there is like the Bermuda Triangle!

I stopped at the Goodwill in Marietta, which is my favorite store! Thankfully, I found a couple of things for Emily for Christmas.  The hard part, she was with me.  So.....she is now convinced that the toy vanity is for someone else.  But, it was such a good deal, 99cents and it's in great shape.  Also found the Cat In The Hat game.  Money is scarce for Christmas this year, but I feel that is going to be a blessing!  We're going to focus on the simple things, and not over do the gift part.  It's easy to get caught up in the "greed" of the holiday.  I noticed that Emily was starting to want everything she saw on tv and in the stores.  This Christmas will be a bit of a lesson for us all.  Getting back to the real reason our family celebrates Christmas. 

I found myself worrying the other day as I was driving.  I felt terrible thinking that we would be able to do very little this year, but I realized the worrying was not going to make it any better, or easier.  I've quit worrying now about it (at least not as much) and am putting it into God's hands.  There are a lot worse things going on in this world than lack of toys!  And by the looks of our house right now, my daughter has never lacked! :-) So, now I'm thankful for finding gently used toys that is within our means to buy.  

I'm just about finished with the Christmas shopping, just need to wrap it all up.  Again, I'm keeping it simple this year.  I found some cute soup mugs, and thought that putting them with some soup mixes would be a nice gift idea. 

We had snow yesterday!  As Emily and I were driving to the farm market, we drove in some really heavy snow!! It was so pretty, and really made it seem like Christmas time.  Loved it!  And it was enough to put a skiff on the ground.  It's been very cold here in the Ohio Valley, we had 15 this morning.  Our cows are still staying outside, but with plenty of good hay and shelter.  Our problem, we are milking 60 cows, and our barn holds 50.  We can easily double some of the younger heifers up in the stalls during milking time, but can't do that during the winter.  So, we dried 5 cows off yesterday, and need to figure out which 5 should be dried off tomorrow.  We have one cow due in January, she'll be the first of the calving season.  February- April we'll be busy with babies!  So, as soon as we dry the cows off, and separate them from the milk herd, we'll be keeping the girls in the nice, cozy barn.  We have a lot of sawdust stored for bedding and the hay has been brought in from the fields.  So, we're ready to tuck in for the winter. 

Now, I need to go and get our tree set up, so that when milking is done for the evening, we can put on some Christmas music and decorate! 

Hope everyone is having fun during this Holiday Season!!!