Winter Wonderland

For anybody who must see to believe... Here are the "proofs". We got dumped with 18" of snow a week before Christmas, and it actually stayed til after New Years. Isaac changed his brakes at 10 p.m. just a few evenings before the snow dumped on us. Just in time...

I hung this on the door two days before it snowed and look what happened!!!

It Snowed.... and snowed some more...

It froze our christmas lights and burst a bunch of the bulbs

Meanwhile... we were inside nice and cozy.

Nice to have some good food with good friends... Thank goodness for Hummers. : )

Next morning... all of our neighbors shoveled themselves out by 9:00 a.m. Best shoveling job I ever did see. : )

Our poor little grill

Good Friends & Good Food

Mark was a big help one afternoon. He went grocery shopping with me and helped me make all sorts of important decisions. "I think you should buy that one Moria." He then carried ALL the groceries up the steps ALL by himself, and then helped me make dinner. We made Taco Mashed Potato Casserole, a big one for Byler kids (or not kids...) and a little one for James & Roshini & Mark, and he was quite pleased to have been making dinner for "my mom and dad".

Happy 30th Birthday! Isaac turned 30 in Dec and Jon about 2 weeks later so a bit after that Jon came over for dinner. We had Chicken Cordon Bleu, "real" mashed potatoes, and salad. Bob & Debbie stopped over later for dessert and coffee. Twas a really nice evening. Someone told Jon that he should have birthdays more often... I don't know as we necessarily need that, but I do like to have as many excuses possible to have the 4 F's. Food, Friends, Fellowship, & Fun. : ) Then again... no excuses necessary, or reasons for that matter... Just stop in!

Cheers Friends!

More good food.... : ) Fried Tilapia with Lemon Pepper & Salad with Feta Cheese. Can you tell I like food?

Name Change!!!

Since I did get married... and since I am technically not a Byler anymore... I have decided to change the name of this blog to www.mariasacra.blogspot.com sometime in the near future. I am letting you know ahead of time so that if you type in the address or click off of some one's blog/site that you will know to change my last name. I'll try to get anyone who does have a link on their site to change it, but at any rate it's still easy enough to remember. It's just me... : )

Christmas Feast

We had an extra special Christmas feast this year with an abundance of excellent music and entertainment. We have now had our meeting hall for 10 years, and I am very thankful for all of the fantastic memories I have from this place. We have had a lot of fellowship, food, & fun with the very best of friends. I'm looking forward to the next 10 years, and whatever God has in store for us.

Buddy sang a very nice rendition of "Oh Holy Night"

And you could have heard a pin drop during "Auld Lang Syne".

The famous.... Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy

The puppet show is always a big hit!

"All I want for Chwithmath is my two front teef"

We were visited by a special friend as the choir "wished" for a hippo for Christmas : )

The kids sang the Veggie Tales "8 Polish Foods of Christmas". "what's a pierogie?"

Santa and..... Not Santa.... : )

Santa lost his hat...

A Pie Is A Wonderful Thing

Last Saturday, the pumpkin made it into my oven! It finally worked out for Derek to come over and spend the night at his "uncle's" house, hehe, and in the morning, before the transmission, we baked our pie. Since neither of us had ever baked any pie much less a pumpkin pie, we didn't really know what to expect and we were in for a surprise. Derek rolled out the dough while I made the filling, and we put it in our nicely preheated oven and thought to ourselves, "that wasn't difficult at all", and were feeling rather pleased with ourselves. However, as the time ticked away and the pie really began baking, we began to notice that it was swelling up around the edges like a donut, but remained flat in the middle, and we looked at each other and said, "oh well if it looks too weird and lumpy, it's our first pie..... so long as it tastes good!" The pie got lumpier and lumpier looking and since we didn't want to burn it or under cook it and didn't have any clue how it should quite look when it was done, we called mama, (the expert) and said, "Help!" We ended up just leaving it in the oven for a bit more til all of it was lumpy, not just the edges and when we finally took it out, we were pleased to find that it deflated and went down to a normal very nice looking pie! : D We actually used some of Derek's pumpkin that he steamed and then froze and it was quite good. Our first pie turned out very tasty and we even got to share some with Dad in the hospital. : ) So, in the end we were very pleased with our pie and I believe we shall have to try our newly acquired pie making skills out sometime again in the hopefully near future. ; )

Our lumpy looking pie. Looked even worse at one point.

Pie IS a wonderful thing...

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

Yesterday was Dad's birthday, and most of us kids drove up to the hospital with some edibles. : ) This post is mostly for Teresa, since she couldn't be there. (Missed you!) For anyone who didn't realise... my dad's been in the hospital since Dec. 26th for his heart condition and on Monday he was in surgery they finally think they have got it pretty much taken care of. Hurray! I won't go into all the details of it in this post as it was supposed to be a birthday post. : ) We figured if you're gonna have a birthday in the hospital, better make it a good one. As dad said, "a good ending to his 10 day hospital stay". We made date pudding, dad's favorite dessert, and the boys brought him some hot wings. Yum! : D Anything will taste good after a 10 day salt free diet. We had to be very quiet and enter and leave in small groups as we were a little over hospital visiting regulations. We had a very nice evening together and we are VERY thankful for everybody's prayers and that Dad is finally able to come back home today, and HOPEFULLY the procedure that was done will fix it and he won't need the more complicated procedure later.

Did he like the lamp that much or just trying not to fall off the table?

????

While it was a very nice and spacious hospital room, the seating was a bit limited...

Enjoying the hot wings! : D

We made dad do what we always had to do as kids. "Show me what you got." : ) He liked his small digital photo key chain.

Thanks for the flowers Teresa! : )