Walking around Creve Coeur Lake

Our crazy St Louis weather means that we went for a walk on a beautiful day and the waterfall was still completely frozen!!!  I love this fall

I ran around the lake, Ben and Maggie walked and took pictures

Rare pictures of me and my kiddos-I love them both dearly

Crazy St Louis weather!!!!!

We've had quite an interesting Winter, the temperatures seem to go up and down each week and we've had snow that has been impressive!!!  We had a good snowfall at the beginning of February, and of course almost everything shut down completely.  Since Covid, there are more people working from home and the schools now have experience with remote learning, so they just shut down when there's a rumor of bad weather!!!!

We have another full-time job keeping the birds fed these days!!!!

Digging the cars out is always interesting

We had a lot of rain and some snow today, we always have a lake in the back yard since our neighbor blocked the drain of rainwater.  Luckily, it drains pretty quickly.

Christmas Day 2021

 Christmas Day was a low key affair.  We didn't buy much of anything (as usual).  Ben had brought some gifts back from Spain

Maggie was unimpressed with the magnetic Spanish word game until I pointed out that she could just do English words (that did NOT impress Ben!!!)

Ben brought us all ducks from the Madrid Duck Store

I made tamales for Christmas dinner.  We had dinner at Ben's since we have no family room furniture right now

It was a pretty good Christmas Day

Christmas Eve 2021

Ben got back from Madrid yesterday.  He got stuck in London for 24 hours as he missed his connection, due (mostly) to Covid precautions at the airport.  He came over first thing in the morning, It's like he's never been away

  

Ben had his phone stolen while he was in Madrid, so he got a replacement for Christmas

It was a nice afternoon, so we went for a walk in Forest Park

Great picture of Ben and Maggie

Sam and Maggie

Portrait mode on Ben's new phone!!!!

My phone takes pretty good photos too!!!!

Christmas decorating

I had to decorate two abodes this year.  We have been looking after Ben's condo as well as our house for the past few months.  I got some of the Jim Shore decorations out and did the mantel, plus added the stockings.  I don't think I even did this last year.

Sam and Maggie found a great tree at Lowe's this year.  I'm so close to getting an artificial one as I'm getting tired of real trees that shed needles everywhere and aren't that great for hanging ornaments

Cleo decided she was going to sleep under the tree!!!!

Just an excuse for another fern.....

I got a little tree topper tree for Ben

I got a centerpiece for Ben's table

Thanksgiving trip to Little Rock

Sam, Maggie and I drove down to Little Rock for Thanksgiving.  I hadn't seen Milly and Rich for 2 years-Covid again.  We had a nice relaxing time, didn't go anywhere just in case.  I made all of the Thanksgiving dinner (including turkey) and took it all with us.  It really did make it an easy trip

Sam's Thanksgiving dinner plate

We went for a walk down by the river, it was a beautiful day

Maggie posing on the hay bale

I love these trees

Ben goes to Lithuania

Ben and Greta had been planning on seeing each other ever since he decided to go to Spain.  He went to see her for 4 days.  I think he was a bit shocked at the cold after being in Madrid!!!!!

He says he's a fan of the "pink soup"!!!!

Ben got to meet Greta's mum

Ben and Greta