Merry Christmas!



I hope that you had a good Christmas. We did. Mark had been lamenting about that Halloween and Thanksgiving were more Christmassy looking than Christmas was going to be because the snow had mostly melted, but Santa brought new snow with him last night, and it kept on coming down off and on all day. Although what's under the tree isn't what is really important, the presents under the tree took up about a third of the living room it seems. We thought we had plenty, but Santa's Helpers dropped off more gifts for us on Christmas Eve. The kids got lots of clothes and new toys and some books, and they are having lots of fun playing with all of it. Mark seemed happy with what he got, although he always squirrels away and saves up and spends way too much on me, so I feel bad about not being able to get him the things he really would like. One of these years I'll find a way to surprise him though.

The things that I got that I am most excited about are a keyboard (we don't have the space for an actual piano) and a violin!!! I always wanted to learn the violin but somehow never had the opportunity. I don't quite understand how I missed out on that with my grandfather being a violin maker and master of that instrument, but I have never had a violin before. Since the school I went to when I started learning an instrument didn't have string instrument instruction available, I chose flute instead, and when I could have switched I stuck with my flute. Anyway, now Mark gets to listen to me learn to play the violin. I listened to him learn the bagpipes, so that should make us even.

Knitting content around here has been limited lately. I made an attempt at encouraging the girls to learn to knit (they do some already but have not attempted any larger projects) by giving them each a couple of skeins of Lion Brand Homespun and a circular needle. My intention was that they could knit shawls. When asked what they want to do with their yarn, however, they are excited about a bunch of smaller things like hand warmers and headbands that they could make. We'll see what they actually do.

Update on the Computer

My computer is back. It still doesn't work very well. We are going to have to put a new operating system on it, and it can't seem to tolerate being connected to the internet, and isn't cooperating very will with copying files onto disks. I was able to print some of my financial information that I will need for taxes, but now it doesn't seem to want to print anymore. I've probably lost everything that I had on there. A word of advice: store your pictures on CD's or print them, or even upload them all to the internet somewhere. All hard drives crash sooner or later. They are not good for long-term storage. The same goes for any other files that you might need later on. Back everything up - that is what CD burners are for. I hope that I have learned my lesson now.

It looks like the old computer will be mostly Mark's (once it is fully functional again) and this one will be mostly mine, so I just need to figure out what programs I have on here and see if it will work with my camera and if I have a program for processing images or if I need to get one again, and then I'll be back in business with blogging. I hope.