Last of 2014

Happy New Year!! Well, in a few hours anyway. We are headed out soon but wanted to do a quick post. We have had the craziest weather as of late and have moved from rain to very cold. We have been in the 30's through the night and most of the morning, though we are reaching 50 still in the day, it seems quite cold to us. Today, as most of you know, is my birthday. Last night we went on a date and left the girls with Nana for the night. It is one of my days for the chores so Nana invited me over to eat breakfast after I was done - presumably to pick up the girls - and she had the table all set up in a cute surprise party for me. It was sweet and the girls really thought it was fun! My favorite gift was K's card - "To Mom, From your doters. I love you more than inything." I will be sad when she can spell correctly!

Just for fun, this is what it looks like from our porch, looking down over our driveway.  The tiny brown things at the bottom right are some of our horses and the area off to the left is the arena.

Bike rides are a bonus now that we have working 'bikes' and our favorite spot is the Sundial Bridge, which connects to the River Trail.

All of the trees have lost their leaves.  It looks dead, but if we cold only see the life forming inside there, oh, how we would rejoice!

We have so much run-off from the rain that the river is brown.

K made a Toothless outfit for Emily...complete with wings, broken side of the tail and face mask.

On one of those days when I was about to have a breakdown from being inside too long, we took off on a hike, regardless of the cold.  It was cold!  Still in the 30's when we started and windy.  If we had clothes, it would not be a problem, but seeing as we have been in socal for so long, we do not have jackets for this.  We were good for a while, but Em got cold and we headed back, though we got three miles out of them.

We found a frozen mountain lion paw print and decided the ice crystals crossing through it made it cool enough to post.

The trail is still set up for rain, though we don't have that anymore.  :-)

Em got so cold we dressed her like a Ninja and played pretend the whole way back.  They actually did have a good time!

We then decided to check out the skating rink and let the girls have a go at it.  It was not even real ice!  What a crock!  It was some sort of a plastic and you could not push off so all you could do was walk and fall.  I hated it.  But, K was having such a fun time that I stayed with her and pretended I thought it was great.  What else are mom's for?  We didn't let Em try...for obvious medical reasons.

As a consolation prize, the girls got to feed the birds at Turtle Bay...pretty fun consolation prize!

Another year comes to a close.  Another year of health in our books, sold to me.  I pray next year brings rhythm and joy, peace and health.  God is good and will always be good, regardless of what happens; I just hope we can put ourselves aside long enough to experience this truth.

May God bless your New Year!! Now I am off to muck the stalls!  :-)