Salsa to Cure Post Holiday Blues

As some of you know from a previous post I canned some tomatoes in August with Great. I have been waiting patiently until I was able to convert them into salsa. Once January arrived I pulled out my first quart and went to town. Fresh garlic, fresh cilantro, onions, jalapenos and celery. Now to figure out to eat it with guilt free chips...

Snowman 2013

 Today is a crazy 38 degrees with a winter storm on its way. Since the past two days have been in the lower teens I decided we should venture outside and make the most of the high temperatures. The snow was perfect so we made out first snowman EVER. The girls went wild and did a great job helping except when Ashlynn kept trying to eat the snowman.

My Christmas present (new floors)

I have had some inquiries as to why I have no pictures of my new home on the blog. I would like to stammer and explain that the new house is a mess. It seems we hit the floor running as soon as we moved in and have torn the house apart literally. We tore down a huge support wall which turned into sheer chaos quickly. We are still trying to address all of that. We also cut down some large trees, tore down half a wall going up the stairs, created a wood panel white wall , waynes coating in dining room and ripped up the flooring for the dining room, living room, kitchen , entrance way and laundry area. We have had plumbers here for days and an electrician came in to wire new lighting and fix all the electrical wire we had hanging from the support wall. Oh did I mention the trying to set the house up and unpack and clean ... Okay so enough already here are some pictures of the new floor and the tearing of the old.

 The kitchen floor half done

 The old fake wood floor in the entrance. (in the background you can see the wall half torn down)

 After the carpet was torn up we had to lay a sub floor

 The girls had so much fun playing with the wood.

 On the dining room wall you can see the new Wades (sp) coating up around the room.

My new front door with fingerprints everywhere!

Cherry Christmas

Last but not least was my mom's Christmas also at our new home. Yes that is correct if you have been counting that is four celebrations with three at our new house. But what made the holidays even more exciting then usual was the fact that we gutted the flooring and put brand new solid hickory hand scraped wood throughout the main floor. (I will post pictures of that soon). 

The girls loving Tom and watching the Ipad

Cahill Christmas

It was a exciting holiday season as not only did my dad fly in from Florida to celebrate but my brother came for both my mom's and dad's Christmas celebration.For my dad's party we had a total of 14 people celebrating, to say the least it was a packed house. My girls just loved Uncle Justin and Cahill stated later that night Uncle Justin is CRAZY!. After a very late reading book time Cahill and I reflected on what was our favorite part of the day and she said "teasing Uncle Justin" I replied "even more then opening presents?" She said "Yes!" So my girls really appreciated being able to celebrate with pappa and Justin. As usual we had a crazy time of really good food, good people and just plain fun. I am sure my new neighbors loved the screaming fireworks and rockets going off but atleast we did it early right?

 I get this look a lot. like really mom!

Christmas Day

Christmas Day was quiet and filled with a tremendous amount of family time. If you know anything about our Christmas traditions you know that Christmas Eve at the cabin with the Cherry clan is extremely loud and crazy. (in a good way) So a quiet Christmas day was exactly what we needed to unwind. We spent the morning opening gifts and the afternoon sledding and taking a long walk while pulling the kids on their sled and played babies.

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a fresh batch of homemade cinnamon rolls!

Sledding Debut

I was so excited to give the girls sleds for Christmas as Ashy was finally old enough for a sledding debut. So on Christmas day we went out and built a hill over our slide and built under it so it would be wide enough to handle saucer sleds. It was a huge hit and the girls wanted to stay out all day. Well last week we decided to pack up and head into town for a larger hill to conquer. Kurt and I squeezed our butts onto some saucer sleds and loaded the girls on our laps.  ( I think Kurt and I had as much fun as the girls sledding) But of course my courageous 2 yr old pushes me off the sled and says I can do by myself. So off she went and thank God she did not fall off the sled. The problem was once at the bottom in all her gear she could not get off of the sled. I helped her off the sled and she kept saying "fun, momma fun". So Kurt and I were not needed as the girls took turns going down the hill themself. Here are a couple of cute pics of the girls in all their glory.