Happy New Year!

Happy 2017 everyone!

I am not ready to have this blog come to and end, so thought I better post something.

We are all doing okay here.  Christmas was good and I think Justin and Ashleigh enjoyed their Winter/Christmas Break.  Chris was off call for Christmas and on call for New Year's and his dad was here for 3 weeks.  He arrived on December 14th and left January 4th.  We were sad to see him go because we enjoy having him around so much!  While he was here, he bought us an "Instant Pot".  We ordered it off Amazon and it arrived to our door in 2 days!

This thing is better than a Slow Cooker.   For one thing, the pot that lifts out, fits in your sink and is light weight.  We made a roast in it one night and it cooked the potatoes that we added at the end of the cooking time, in 10 minutes!  And they tasted good!  We have made borscht, hard boiled eggs (which are a dream to peel), roasts, soup stock.  I can not wait to make yogurt in it!

All of our kids continue to grow fast.  Justin just turned 14 on January 5th.  We went out for sushi that night and everyone was so well behaved in the restaurant.  My heart was happy. 

It is hard to believe that our little Harvey will be 3 years old in 12 days!  Where has the time gone?  When he reaches out and puts his little arms around my neck or the dog's neck, or anyones, he says he is "taking hugs", not giving a hug, taking a hug.  So cute.  He is talking more and more each day and if we ask him to wait his turn to talk, he says "no, I talking right now".

I will try to post more pictures, but do have to be careful because the older kids are a bit particular about what pictures they want everyone to see.  I guess I should ask first.

In the picture above, we are standing against the new hot tub patio that Chris worked very hard at building, this past summer.  In September, the hot tub was ready and we enjoyed it for just around 3 months before it let us down.  We bought it used, so that's life.  We will see what our options are in the Spring when it warms up a bit and he can work on it.  It might be an easy fix or we may end up getting another used hot tub that may be newer.  The one we have is ancient. 

I hope to blog again soon!