Our First Snow!

...this week we got our first "real" snowfalls...

Sam loves playing in the snow! He's proud of his snowball. :)

Yep, here's our typical winter dress code...no gloves, no hat, no zipped-up coat... We're in style! :)

Paul and the other little kids have been working hard on this "snow fort" all afternoon...

we love the winter...

Autumn...

Watching birds at the edge of our yard.

These Canada geese have been coming into our yard a lot lately...

apple harvest...

This fall, we actually got a couple buckets full of apples from the apple trees at the edge of our yard.

Okay... so they're not exactly top quality, and maybe a little bitter...

But Sam likes them! :) ...Actaully, the apples kept him entertained for about a half an hour. He took them out of the bucket, carryied them into the computer room, and lined them up in a nice row on the computer desk! :)

...And of course, Carrie's amazing photography...

I took this picture, and Carrie used her picture-editing computer program, to make it black-and-white, only she left the apple red! :) It makes for kind of a neat picture. (Don't ask me how she did it!!)

Above Rubies Retreat

Mom and I (Joanna) had a great opportunity to fly down to Oregon and go to an Above Rubies Retreat with some friends of ours that live in Oregon. (We took Baby Sam along also). We left town on Thursday and stayed over the weekend. It was an amazing retreat (a wemon's retreat) and we had a really good time.

Pictured: on the plane to Portland, Oregon. We arrived in Oregon in the evening and enjoyed the next day with our friends.

In the afternoon we got in the car and drove for about an hour and a half to the retreat place. It was a beauitful drive! ...Lots of beauitful fall-colored trees!

Here's a pictures of the beutiful lawn at the retreat center. The landscaping and building were very lovely, and we were amazed to find out that all the work was done by volunteers from a church! It was a very nice, relaxing place!

There was about 85 people at the retreat... it was a nice group... not to large. We met lots of very nice people. Nancy Cambell (the creater of the magazine for mothers and women called, Above Rubies) was the speaker. She did a good job and was very insparational!

Here is the dining building.

We had a great time at the retreat. Pictured is Sam, after falling asleep in the car on the way back to our friend's house.

Before we headed back home, we got to spend a day with our friends. The weather was beautiful, and we took a nice walk down to a river near their house.

It was hard to leave...