Welcome 2014!

Things have settled down a bit for us at home.  Normal, every day life is actually pretty sweet.  Larry has been setting up his workshop and fixing stuff around the house, he's worked on the "closet from hell" full of his 10,000+ autographed pictures and some mementos from the 70's that I've just held on for him to go through and throw away if he wanted.  We bought a couple of bookcases and he put them together so we'd have more storage space.  And now I just about have that closet space back!

I think we've got Larry pretty much set to start college on Tuesday and we went out to our pastor's house today for the two of them to talk about some prospective weekend work he may have for Larry.  God has been really, really good about placing the right people in our life at the right time! 

On the way home from our pastor's house, we saw this old Army truck, Larry called it a "deuce and a half", parked on the side of the road so we stopped to check it out. 

It's almost identical to the ones Larry drove in the early 70's but he said this one was probably from World War II.  It looks like it even has the original paint, too.  Pretty cool.

Those of you who have been reading my blog a while probably know we have tons of trees in our yard.  Hickory, oak and walnut trees with all their many bazillion leaves every year.  Larry got out there and raked them and the two of us bagged them all up Monday morning!  17 huge leaf and lawn size bags!  

I took this picture after Larry had already grabbed two bags to take to the curb.  It is SO nice to see the backyard again!  We're going to sod the backyard in the spring and plant a few veggies.

We saw in the new year last night with fireworks, sparklers and sparkling white grape juice.  Wild and crazy folks we are!  And I cooked the traditional New Year's must-haves today, collard greens and black-eyed peas with ham hocks, and I roasted two Cornish hens and made wild rice to go with them for our New Year's dinner.  I baked Larry's favorite cake, German chocolate, last night and it was out of this world!!  I have never made homemade coconut pecan frosting before and I am so happy with the way it turned out!

We took our beautiful Christmas tree down today and I was a little sad about it.  But it's New Year's Day and it's time.  Time to write this new 365-page book of ours and see what happens next!  I can't wait.