Christmas!

The Christmas tree fit nicely in our living room.  By nicely I mean in circumference.  It looked a bit short in a room with a 12 ft ceiling.  Can't have that with a wife from Santa Claus!  Next year will be a different tree and we'll look to dump this one off on a sister-in-law I suppose.  It's been a good tree for the Eble's since my parents bought it while I was in grade (maybe high) school.

Holly and I are fortunate to work at companies that are shutdown from Christmas to New Years so there wasn't too much traveling (after Christmas Eve...different story) or such.  Just sitting around like bumps on a log. Holly's been going through some back issues since around mid-December so it was actually nice not to have to do anything.  Being someone that doesn't like to be cooped up too long, I volunteered to go grocery shopping.

100% of the happiness of owning an American Girl doll.  1/4 the price.  Thanks Santa (Target)!

Many thanks to Grandmom for the stockings.  One for each of us knitted by hand!

Noel wants a hippopotamus for Christmas

Old and new.

The Final Product

Following our move-in, we proceeded to watch all of our grass die during the summer drought.  Some of the landscaping as shown in a previous post (week 21 Update) was implemented based on our budget and the bushes/shrubs etc were watered through the summer.  That didn't stop at least 2 evergreens and a bush or two from dying.

The back yard as filled in by Mike was chock full of rocks and stones.  At one point Holly paid Cordelia for each rock she collected.  This fall we had the backyard re-leveled, a truck of good top soil dumped and fully reseeded.  Results were looking promising but are now under 8-10 inches of snow.  We'll see in the spring.

Next post: Christmas and snow come to Casa de Eble.

Back Patio

 

Standing in Driveway looking toward front entrance

I described which house we live in to a mother at Cordelia's gynmastics class.  Her comment "you have quite the wall there!"  Yeah it's a bit larger than we ever expected it to be.  My parents had begun calling the house "The Citadel".

Cordelia and Evie's room.

 

Master.

"Why did your blog fall off the face of the earth?"

So were the sentiments of one of Holly's cousins when we spoke just prior to Christmas.  True to my word, I'll get some additional photos and thoughts up over the next few weeks.

So here we go.  The last update was in late April.  I took photos of the finished product in mid-May but never posted them.  Not sure why but I'll get them up along with some nice winter photos.  We moved in the Friday prior to Memorial Day weekend and had no home phone / internet for most of June.  That's the only excuse I can come up with.


For now here's a few photos of something that I found a bit disturbing.  Holly and I were working from home on the Friday before Christmas break and heard a loud noise out front.  Here's what happened:

My brother-in-law Vince (former CenterGrover turned Carmel guy) tells me that my street used to be called "Bloody Olive Branch" due to the high number of accidents on some twisty sections of which we live right at the end.  I'm guessing that's the reason for the guard rail on the opposite side of the street.  This is an odd accident on my side of the street.

Judging by the tire marks, I believe he creamed the bushes and may have done a complete 360 on his way through the large rocks into the ditch.

My heart truly went out to the guy.  He said he had just had a child and I'm guessing delivering pizzas in his car was his livelihood.  All I could do was call the sheriff's office and offer him a coke.  As I thought more about the accident, our kids like to play down in that area and would have been flattened by the car.  Chilling.