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JANUARY 06, 2009 - WHIRLWIND OF WINTER ACTIVITIES!
I haven’t written anything because we have been busy since our trip to Sedona. On October 25th we had our annual family applebutter making. It was a third year in a row of rain. At least on the Friday before it wasn’t raining as Rod, Cleve, Don, & Roger put up once more the shelter over the pot. The wind on Saturday was very breezy so we had to put sheets of metal around the fire to keep it going. We had the 30 gallon copper kettle filled to the rim by 6 a.m. so the constantly stirring began. As the sun came up more and more people started to arrive. I think the count was 48 for lunch. It is such a neat time to see all of our cousins from Maryland and catch up on all the family news. Annabelle also made it to her very first applebutter making. It is an all day process but you should see the assembly line of canning all of this applebutter at the end of the day. Over the years it has become very efficient and fast. Everyone get to go home with finished boxes of jars of homemade applebutter which of course is the best in the country!
Next came Thanksgiving which we had at our house. We had a smaller group this year as some of the kids as they get married...we have to “share” them with the in-laws which we gladly do but they are all missed. A bit of news is that Michael is engaged to Jennifer and their wedding will be in May of 2009. Michael is my brother Don’s oldest boy. We have so much to be thankful for! We took our annual walk after dinner and try to find the place where the old barn use to stand. The geese were out walking too.
Right after Thanksgiving day Roger and I took a trip to New Bern, N.C. It was just a week of getting away. We read a lot and also had time to talk about house plans for the new house which we will probably start building in Stanardsville, VA. this coming year. New Bern has a lot of history and is such a neat town with a lot of interesting shops.
VIEW NEW BERN, NORTH CAROLINA TRIP PICS
Coming back I was already behind for Christmas stuff. We finally got up the decorations inside and out. I didn’t get cards out until the week of Christmas. I think next year I will just put our Christmas letter here on the blog and then email everyone the link. Save a lot of money. I used a black & color ink cartridge just printing out our Christmas letter—I just had to put pictures of Annabelle in the letter. She was 6 months old on Christmas day. We had our whole family home for Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Wendy made homemade "from scratch" cinnamon buns. They were delicious! We all were entertained as Annabelle tore Christmas paper from her presents and it went straight into her mouth. We had about 26 of us forChristmas dinner. It was a wonderful day. Matt, Jill and Annabelle stayed another night so we got some Nana and PopPop time with her. She is so cute!
On the 27th we went with Don & Onie, their family, Chris & Phi to DC to see the new Capitol visitors’ center. We rode the metro in. Are we country pubkins or what? You should have seen us trying to get fare cards from the Metro machines. Phi made the statement; “You must not use the metro very often”. It was a great day and it warmed up. I would recommend going to see the center. The film and tour were great.
We are going to celebrate New Years with Wendy and Greg. We are going out to eat and then go back to their place for games and watch the New Year come in. We don’t know what the year of 2009 will hold for us but we know there be changes, but this life is an adventure so we look forward to those new adventures that we will share hopefully here. Have a Happy New Year from Roger & Dotty.