Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2023

Greetings from South Dakota! Kevin has been busy at the school fixing things & moving snow from around the school, around the house & around town.  I've been busy at the Post Office helping Santa get all the Christmas presents delivered. The mail didn’t move for days due to I-90 being closed due to a little dab of snow that was blowing around all over the midwest causing a blizzard. Snow around our place was 0 to 8 feet deep due to drifting.

The perfect gift for those (me) that
like to have picnics.

We had a restful Christmas Day at home due to the Sheriff saying to stay home. There were reports of black ice on the roads & no travel was advised along with wind gusts predicted of up to 65 mph making snow drifts.  A time or 2 the Sheriff put it like this “stay off the freaking roads”. We decided that was a good enough reason for us to just stay home instead of taking our camper out & going camping as we had originally planned. We had just came out of a blizzard that left traveling through families & truckers stranded in town for a couple nights. A shelter was set up in the Rec Center that accommodated about 40 people one night & about 60 people the next night. Santa was able to make it to the shelter for a quick little visit & give out goodies.

Our Christmas special cooking project was trying our hand at making an old-fashioned gingerbread cake to use up some molasses we had in the pantry.  Kevin remembers having a sweet bread when he was a boy, so he searched for a recipe online. The recipe he chose turned out pretty tasty with a serving of snow cream & chocolate syrup. We talked that we might make another cake using the same recipe someday soon to use up the rest of that molasses before it goes bad. 

We’ve done a lot of camping & exploring this year, going out every chance we got on the weekends & holidays.  In the spring & early summer we were able to have a few little campfires to roast hotdogs & make smores, then the weather turned too dry during the rest of the summer for lighting up.

Toney

We enjoyed having the Grandkids visit during the summer.  Austin, the oldest, is all set to graduate high school in the spring.  He is working at KFC & seems to like it pretty good.  He has a girlfriend & they have plans to move out on their own after graduation & take courses at a community college. The middle teen & tween boys are playing all the sports. The girls are doing cheerleading & dance.  The babies are growing so unbelievably fast.  We welcomed our 9th Grandbaby in October.  He was a little feller, weighing just under 5 pounds.  He had a little trouble at the very 1st wanting to start breathing & taking in oxygen, though he is healthy & fine now.  I went to North Carolina to be with the family & help out during the week of delivery & recovery.

Kevin got the garden all cleaned up just before the cold weather & snow set in. We were able to keep the deer out of the garden this season by putting up a netting fence around the entire garden area.  We planted a couple rows of sweet tators this year that produced a good crop.  We put the tators & onions downstairs where it’s dry & cooler.  They seem to be keeping good down there. We put the carrots in the crisper in the refrigerator & they are doing good in there. We like to make french fries with the carrots & sweet tators.  Mmmmmm!  We put squash & pumpkin in the freezer.  I made a couple pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving & we have a squash casserole recipe that is good

Kevin got a deer during hunting season. We ground most that meat for making sloppy joes & such. He took a shot at a deer with his bow to fill his archery tag but didn’t get it yet. Kevin did a little bird hunting too & brought in some doves, grouse & a rabbit or 2.  We went fishing quite a bit & have fish in the freezer that we’re still eating on. Kevin went on a little camping trip in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming & did some fishing over there. It seems a lot of our activities involves food of some sort.

                                                                                       

 We look forward to seeing what 2023 

has in store for us, Karen & Kevin.

These are some of the things that's been going on in my neck of the woods, how about you?