Christmas in Wisconsin Pt 2

Casey and I arrived at my parents and completely surprised everyone. I didn't have a lot of presents to give but had a great time watching the littlest nephews open theirs. We had a wonderful dinner prepared by my Mom, and there was too much food as usual! Casey was a perfect little girl, she got along really well with Karin's dogs Lucy and Santo.

After eating we went for our traditional walk down the road. I stayed overnight at my parents and was sorry to have to get up early in the morning and head back to TN.

Christmas in Wisconsin Pt. 1

My niece is a nurse, my sister is a nurse, and my nephew works retail- so they all have to work their share of weekends. The only time my family could all get together for Christmas was on December 29th. After talking to my Mom on Christmas, I got a severe case of homesickness, so I somehow talked Harry into letting me drive up to Wisconsin to surprise my family. I decided to drive up on the 28th, have Christmas with them on the 29th, and since my parents had to go out of town on the 30th, I'd leave then to come home. In retrospect it wasn't such a great idea. I should have stayed for a few days at least! But it was nice to see everyone, and they were surprised!

I took Casey with me so Harry wouldn't have so many dogs to deal with at home. I was really worried about the dogs getting loose and Harry not being able to catch them by himself. Puppy got loose a few times when we lived in Wisconsin, and we literally had to chase him until he got tired, which was over an hour. My biggest fear is that one of our dogs will get hit by a car. Building a penned dog area is high on our construction priority list!

Casey was good in the car, although she likes to ride in the front seat instead of staying in the back of the jeep where she belongs. The 11 hour drive to Wisconsin was fairly uneventful.

Christmas in Tennessee

We had a nice little Christmas, even though it was just "us". We had a two-inch cedar for a tree, and Harry had a stocking I made up- even put an orange in it like my Mom used to do for my sisters and me. The dogs each got a toy and a chew bone, they all had fun unwrapping them. I bought Harry an expensive toaster, but it was guaranteed to toast the bread evenly on both sides... guess what, it didn't!

This is Winter?

So far, winter has been very mild, at least compared to Wisconsin! We haven't had any snow yet, whereas our old house got 14 inches of snow the week after we moved. We've had a few nights down in the teens, but during the day it is either light jacket of flannel shirt weather.
It feels great.

On the way to town there is a farmer that decorates his pasture for Christmas- Hay bale snowman, sleigh, and reindeer. It's so cute!

ANOTHER dog.....

We had three dogs, but then an alert went out on the Anatolian Shepherd Dog email list about a dog in a shelter that was going to be put to sleep that day. As always, I forwarded it on to Harry, especially as the dog looked a lot like my first (non-family) dog Jake, who died of cancer in 2003. I was surprised when Harry said "We'll take her, we can't let her die!".

So two days after arriving in Tennessee, I drove 2 hours to Chattanooga to meet another driver to pick up our new dog, Casey. She turned out to be a very sweet girl that we immediately fell in love with. Better still, our other dogs immediately accepted her, and she seems to be very, very happy to be a part of our little family.

Boxes, boxes, everywhere...

Our new house is half the size of our old house, so now we have boxes everywhere, and I mean everywhere. We have little paths between them so we can move around. It's a very slow process to get things sorted and put away, each time we try to move a box there's no where to put it.

Harry very nicely set up an area in the second bedroom for my plants. He lined the floor with plastic (what, he think's I'll spill? ha ha) and set up shelves. I added a small electric heater to keep it warm in there. We will be setting up a greenhouse for the plants as soon as possible.