a wee bit more snow....

 ...the world outside is fresh and clean again.  I was glad it wasn't a pool morning!  It's a stay-at-home day, so far anyway.  Laundry, vacuuming, exercise bike, wondering in between why I can't walk better than I can, but plugging away at it.  

Yesterday, Miss Sonja K. came over for a visit.  

Kaia likes the kitty!

Camille was having some brekky and doing some homework...Kaia likes Camille, too.

In the afternoon, Paul let me know that Bill had accepted our invite for dinner, my dear sister Cheryl's husband.   I chopped some red skinned potatoes, and tossed them in avocado oil, salt and pepper, added chopped onions, and put them in the air fryer.  Paul made some really good burgers from Aldi waygu beef, with sauteed onions.  He cooked up a pound of bacon too. We had some buns in the freezer, so I buttered them and put them in the oven to toast up.  Bill brought in a bottle of wine from Boundary Breaks, down on Seneca Lake, it was too good (I managed a good sip!).  I also made a quick batch of brownies.  I'm telling you, without getting a penny to do so, that Aldi brownie mix, the cheap kind, like $1.50 a box, substitute the water for strong coffee or espresso, and they are SO good!  Also, when you have someone over, your house should smell like baking brownies, right?  

Charlotte Claire and Camille were very busy doing school work, they are both really enjoying college.  I'm getting a second hand education, again, as they study and talk about their classes.  :). 

Today seemed like a chicken soup sort of day.  We have the Ambitious Kitchen cookbook, and the chicken soup recipe is divine.  We ran out of couscous, although I suspect someone put it in a different place, because wouldn't one remember using the last of such a thing?  It didn't stop me, I am simply making a separate pan of egg noodles, whoever wants them can scoop them into their bowl of soup.  It's all done now, sitting there in the Dutch oven with the lid on, ready to eat.  So it smells wonderful in here...not brownie wonderful, but good.  

I miss the sunshine on my skin so badly it almost makes me cry.  Drama drama, I know.  But here in the northeast, it's months on end without that.  It was October for me, that's already a long long time.  I mean, yeah, you can go out on a sunny winter's day and feel it on your face, but I'm talking that basking.  That's why if per chance it's fifty and sunny in March, we're out on the deck in shorts and tank tops...sometimes with goose bumps. 

 Today it's very cold out, and our furnace isn't working well.  Paul ordered a part, and Jonathan is going to help us fix it.  Our propane bill was ouch, it's been a cold winter.  Why is it that we hate spending money on things like that, instead of being insanely thankful we have the money to spend on things like that?

 We can't take anything with us when we depart this world.  We all know this, yet we're like squirrels with acorns, socking and stockpiling.  "Give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap.  For the measure you use will be measured back to you." (Luke 6:38).   We ARE programmed to survive though, so I'm thankful that we also have some good sense.

I like it when I have  trips booked.  Norway next week, then Arizona in April, then Norway for ten days in July!  Also, five camping trips this year!   I am not as ambulatory as I had hoped I'd be, but I still have a week to prepare for the first trip.  :)  Nothing makes time fly like trying to get into shape for a deadline like an international flight!  

Ah well.  It's almost dinner time.  I was so tempted to bake some artisan bread today, but being stuck in the house with hot fresh bread, well, is it really so smart?  Maybe I'll make some when lots of people are coming over to help eat it.  It's bad enough to have those brownies out there.  

You all have a nice afternoon!