We have had an exciting week so far.   By far the most fun I have had in recent days was accompanying my son,  his wife Heather and their three little boys to the office where Heather had an ultrasound.  It has been 27 years since I was at an ultrasound for a baby.  The last time I went was when I  when I was pregnant with Erin.  This time was just a bit different.  It wasn't at the hospital, it was a separate office building and needless to say I wasn't with my son last time, or with my daughter in law, or my three grandsons.  I was a lot surprised when Heather invited me along, but I'm glad she did.  We got to see this little baby moving about, waving arms and legs and listened to the heartbeat.  And oh yes.....did I mention this baby is a GIRL????!!!  To say we are excited is to put it mildly!  Heather needs some back-up in her house......and yay....for a baby girl!  No one really believed they'd have a girl after three boys, even when I kept insisting it could be done...because look at me!   I was the first girl after three boys!  So, I'm living proof it can happen!  So...PINK here we come!  It will be so nice for cousin Analiese too, when we have our get-togethers!  I mean really, Analiese can only play so many BOY games.....!

But the sweetest thing by far was when the technician gave three year old Daniel the pictures of the baby.  Holding the  pictures  he reverently and softly exclaimed....."I LOVE her already!"  And I think he voiced all our opinions at that time.
Yes, indeedy.......we love her already!!!

The drive to the lady's house was beautiful.  We drove almost to Durango and then took a right on County Road 302 that heads to the Durango airport. And there about a mile down the road we turned onto Heart Lane.  What a beautiful name for a little lane in the country.  We followed the lane to the end and knocked on a country house.  We were greeted by a small elderly lady.  Her  name was Mary and she showed us into her home and we were introduced to a woman who had over the course of her life earned many ribbons and certificates riding a horse....Dressage...I think it is.....She had quite the story to tell, she didn't start competing until she was 37, after her husband had retired from the military and they could settle down in one place.  We were there to buy some of her vintage clothes and we did, but we made a new friend, a woman who was writing her memoirs, a woman who by the looks of her photo wall in one room, had quite the history and family (one story she told us was that her grandmother was a bootlegger in the 1920's!).    We were there for an hour listening to her stories.  Listening to the echoes of her past.  Listening to the wind as it howled around the little house. 
Where do the years go in a person's life?  They just blow by, like the wind today, they just blow by and they go so fast......

  Another post..............this is definitely a RECORD!!!  BUT I just had to post these pictures....so after it snowed today, it hailed and rained again.....and what happened on the roof outside my living room window, was this.....sheets of snow hanging off the roof!  Amazing, beautiful and of course they only lasted an hour or so.  It is a reminder to keep your eyes open....all the time....for beauty is definitely in the details (as my children, now adults love to remind me!).  And they are so right!!!  Details, beauty, it's all there, but if you don't stop and look you will MISS it!!!

Yesterday California and Arizona blew through here.  The dust was so horrible that it was seeping in through any crack in the windows, doors or walls that it could come through.  We were practically choking on it.  Today we woke up to the beautiful sound of dripping.............it was raining and soaking everything down.  Now it is snowing!  It is so true here in New Mexico, if you don't like the weather, just wait a few minutes, or hours, it is bound to change! 

So, what a welcome relief today is after yesterday.... and we can only imagine the wonderful snowfall the mountains are getting.  How we need the snow in the mountains for Spring run-off to fill our rivers that feed our irrigation ditches that water our gardens and lawns in the summer.  For those of us who rely heavily on our big gardens for food for the rest of the year we are thankful.

   As I sit.........

I'm sitting at my dining room table and its full to overflowing of things.  Things to sell on Etsy.  Things to price, things to measure, things to take pictures of.  Things, everywhere......... things.  I feel at times like I'm drowning.  At times I feel overwhelmed.  Things will do that to me you know.  Then, I think, like I said to Doyle this morning, I just want to go through every room, every closet and every drawer and box up everything and throw it all away.  And so, I start......I go through a closet, I go through a drawer and I go through drawers, and what happens?  It ends up on my table.......a boatload of stuff to get rid of, throw away, send to recycle, send to thrift store, send to consignment, send somewhere................ 

I am getting the guest room/ Etsy room ready for our new house guest.  Her name is Megan.  She will move in on Sunday evening.  She will live with us for six weeks.  I want her room to be ready for her.  I don't want her to live amongst my "stuff".  I don't want her to have to deal with my crap.  So............I work hard, and I move things around.  I am making ready for a guest.  Someone who God has sent to us for a time and for a season.  That's how it is with life.  Things come and go.  People come in and out of our lives for a time.  God in His grace, sends us those we need, who need us.......I will never know all of the whys here on earth......why is he sending this person here now?  The timing isn't right, I'm too busy, I don't have room, I will have to change how I do things.....always excuses.  But.........God's timing is always perfect, always right.  And HIS GRACE is always just right for the time of NOW.

  We spent last night with the little boys at Pete and Heather's, dyeing Easter eggs.  They had a wonderful time.  While there they showed us their "fort" and their "Grace garden" they made to commemorate Easter.  It was the ending of a wonderful day and the continuation of this Holy Week, where we remember the sacrifice our dear Savior made for us by dying on the cross.  Thank goodness that is not where it ended!  Praise be to God, He didn't stay in the tomb, but rose again for us.  May you have a blessed Easter weekend!

So the little baby I wrote about last time, the baby goat, died.  He gave it a good shot, lived three days, but he just couldn't make it.  Who knows what all he had wrong with him other than the cleft palatte.  We'll never know, but like Doyle said, we did the best we could for him, he did his best, and we don't have to feel bad about it.  It's always sad though when we lose a life, even if it is just a goat kid.

In other news, I've opened my shop on Etsy.com.  If you click on the here it should take you to  my shop.  http://www.etsy.com/shop/Nalishouse  Hope to see you over there!  I specialize in vintage items, clothes, house decor, housewares and books.  I have been thinking lately about why I love and have always loved old things, and I've decided it has to do with where I grew up.  I grew up on a mission, where we regularly received in the mail.....missionary boxes.  And wow, these boxes could bring us about anything you could ever want.  I literally was one of the coolest, best dressed kids in my local high school (okay, that may not be saying too much, but still........!)   My mother never wanted any one to know we were missionaries by how we looked, and she got her wish.  In the late 60's and early 70's when I was a teen, my missionary father got me a subscription to Seventeen magazine.  Now, granted, I don't think I would subscribe to it today for my daughter, if I had a teen daughter, but back then, a lot of the articles (at least the ones I was mainly interested in) were about fashion and what the teen girls were wearing in L.A. or NYC!  And boy, did I love the latest fashions!  (Goodness, how times have changed!).  BUT....you might say, what does vintage have to do with modern?  Well, pretty much everything!  Because....what's new today, is what was new about 30 years ago!  So. whala!!!  WE got clothes that were 30 years out of style, except that they were IN style when they came around to us!  So....that pretty much sums up why I  loved vintage back then and why I love it today! As they say...."what goes around comes around!"

It was late Sunday afternoon and Doyle came walking (rather fast for Doyle) into the greenhouse carrying a bundle wrapped in an old sheet.  I instantly knew what was going on and Heather and I rushed into the greenhouse.  A little bundle of kid was almost lifeless in Doyle's arms.  All I could think of was that this kid needed warmth.  Yes, he needed a warm fire, warm milk and rubbing to get his little lifeless body moving.  Heather took over the baby goat and I started a fire.  Soon, we had him by the fire and I was making a formula supplement.  We didn't have much hope for this little guy, but after rubbing and moving about and wrapping warm old rags from the hot dryer all over him, he started coming around.  Peter fed him  his first bottle and then Doyle fed him later.  Edmund was at first very jealous of this crying little baby, but later he "helped" his Paca feed the little guy.  No one expected him to live through the night, but he is still alive on day three even with his cleft palette.  We don't know what kind of prognosis this little guy will have even if he lives, as he may not be able to eat grass.  We'll jump over that hurdle when we get to it.  He deserves a chance to live though.....he has fought very hard to get this far!

       It has been cold, snowy and wet here throughout January, but none of us is complaining!  We all know we are in drought conditions here in the southwest, so while we might want to start complaining about the cold and wet, we stop almost immediately......we NEED the moisture here and we need more than we've had the last few years.
     To break up the cold and wet days and below freezing temperatures, we've celebrated Jonathan's sixth birthday.  Six years old is getting old for a little boy and at times I can see the serious, thoughtful young man he will soon be.  Jonathan is definitely a "first born" and as such he can err on the side of being too serious and thinking too much.  There are days that I see him and want to shout to anyone who might hear...."slow down little boy, don't grow so fast!". I look at him and see the boy my grown adult sons were once. Time goes too fast and soon these days will be gone forever.  These last six years have gone in a flash and I'm afraid the next six years will go even faster.
      BUT he did have a wonderful birthday celebration, and grandparents were present as well as an Aunt, Uncle and second cousins.  And the icing on the cake was that he made quite the haul in Legos!  Happy Birthday Jonathan!  May this next year be your best one yet!

I've been absent from here a few weeks because to put it mildly, I've been busy.  I realize many people can still manage to write during the holidays, but I don't seem to be one of them.  So.....rather than beat myself up because I can't do it all, I just waited until today.  I just spent several hours uploading my photos from the past few weeks and I feel as if a big ton of bricks has been lifted off my shoulders.  I was telling Erin yesterday on the phone that I always dread the time it takes to upload photos, and I don't even edit them.  Perish the thought, if I did edit, they would never get done! 

What an enjoyable time we've had these past few weeks.  We have enjoyed spending time with family, all of our grown adult kids were home, with their spouses and all our grandkids were here.  We don't take these times for granted, knowing how expensive it is for families to travel these days and realizing that some day they may not be able to come home for Christmas.  I've been thinking of the flipside to coins lately, and anything that has two sides to it.  Someone at church was asking me about our holiday and I told her that I was tired.  But I hastened on to say, that I enjoyed the holiday, it's just that there is a flipside to it....on the one hand I am busier than ever and get very tired, but on the other hand, we are making memories that truly will last a lifetime.  The grandchildren get to  play and  the boys are getting to know their cousin Analiese and Analiese her cousins.  They played really well together and had a lot of fun!

In a nutshell here are some of my favorite things from the last few weeks....
Baking cookies with Rachel and Jody.
Finding a Christmas tree and decorating not only ours but helping our grandsons decorate theirs.
Decorating the house.
Enjoying the snow!
Dinner on Christmas Day with our friends the Drayer's and included in that day were my sister, her husband and grown adult sons and our friends, the Idzerda's. And then stopping by the Crider's to see Christopher, Megan and Analiese as they had just arrived the night before.
Having Erin and Nathan come for a few days.
Making Almond Sticks!
Having a Christmas Eve day and evening on Dec. 28 with our family and Christmas "Day" on December 29.
Singing Christmas Carols with my family....I love to sing with them!!
Seeing the darling Princess outfit and the Knight outfits Erin made for her her niece and nephews (for Christmas)....spoiling them has never been so cute!
Going to see The Hobbit.
Having fun discussions about anything and everything!
Game Day on New Year's Day here at the house.
Going to the Stanley's for dinner one evening. 
Having their daughter, Laura over for a few hours and playing a game.
A sad highlight was the funeral of our neighbor's grandson.
Friends stopping by for visits.
And to end the two weeks of celebration, we had a lovely Epihany Party at Pete and Heather's house.

So..............we are tired, but grateful for another year of celebrating the Lord's coming as a baby in a manger.  Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift!