I have not started to take pack up Christmas. Oh, I want it done. I just don’t want to actually do it.

I am very tempted to just leave everything up. We’re already on the second Saturday of the year, remember? What’s 50 more?

Then I think about having to dust the Christmas tree all the year long, and I change my mind.

Christmas will be down and packed up by Monday night.

I found these great ideas at Martha Stewart Ornament Storage that I shall be trying. We have a lot of ornaments and no proper storage. These look easy. Especially the egg carton storage. lol Can’t get much easier than an egg carton. And I have a bunch of brand new cartons that won’t be getting used anytime soon, as our chickens have stopped laying for the winter. So I might as well use some of them for storage.

How about you? Does anyone else still have their Christmas decorations up?

This year, we started celebrating the Sabbath on Friday nights. Friday night to Saturday night is the Sabbath as the Bible describes. We don’t know any one else in real life that celebrates the Sabbath on Friday night. We do feel that God has lead us to this, and called us to celebrate the Sabbath on Friday night/Saturday.

This has been a process for us. We started out with just my lighting the candles and saying the blessing. We now take communion as part of our Sabbath meal. In this picture from tonights meal, you can see our little wooden communion cups.

You can also see the beautiful loaf of challah bread my daughter made. I started out making the challah earlier this year, but she has taken over. She has learned how to make 6 braided challah. Beautiful and tastes great. We use pieces of challah for the communion bread, and grape juice in our cups.

We also have a tzedakah container. Tzedakah is commonly translated as charity. At some point during our Sabbath meal, we try to put money into the tzedakah container. So far, we have taken the money out once to buy food for the food pantry.

Even though we eat supper together as a family every night, this is different. It just feels different. It’s hard to describe. We are more relaxed, we talk more over the meal, and linger longer at the table. It’s not just dinner, it’s an event. One the whole family looks forward to.

So far, we haven’t had any one over for our Sabbath meal on Friday night, but I do see us sharing this with others at some point.

Our Sabbath isn’t perfect. There are still some things I would like to work on. For example, I still haven’t memorized the candle lighting blessing. And I would like to learn to say it in Hebrew, also.

Celebrating the Sabbath on Friday night has been great experience for our family. It has brought us closer together as a family. It is really awesome to honor God together as a family.

I very highly recommend starting the Sabbath with a family meal on Friday night.

The front porch ramp.

My poor flower pots on the front porch.

The front door.

The poor, neglected bike and wagon covered in snow.

My tin man and milk can. I think all the snow makes my tin man look like a nutcracker.

I’m off to go gather some snow for snow ice cream, or maybe some snow candy like we used to make when I was a kid.

EDIT: Me all bundled up outside gathering snow. clean snow!

A stray dog showed up in our yard this week. It was a nice looking collie.

Except we don’t need another dog. The one we have is plenty.

Since all animals think our yard is a nice place to move to, I had to scare it off. Which for Country Woman, means getting out the bb gun.

Getting out the bb gun means I have to find it first.

Ok, I found the gun. Right where I thought it was. ha!

Now, to find the bb’s.

Since I haven’t had my bb gun out in at least 2 years, which would make my youngest 7 or 8 then, I kept the bb’s in a different spot than the gun.

hmmm……they weren’t where I thought I left them. So I kept searching.

Yeah, finally found them in the vicinity of where the gun was stored. How’d that happen?! I’m sure I didn’t leave them there. Maybe my husband had used the gun at some point and left the bb’s there.

O well. On to loading. um……it won’t open for me to put the bbs in. I know I’m trying to open it at the right spot. I’ll just have to read the directions. It has been at least 2 years since I’ve used my trusty bb gun, remember?

So I start looking for the directions. I open the file cabinet and look in the “Linda” file. Nope, not there. I decide it must be in the “Warranties” file. So I pull out the file that is at least 6 inches thick. (We won’t talk about how we don’t even own half the stuff in the file anymore, ok?!)

So as I’m flipping through the file, I hear one of the kids yell from the other room “The kidnapper would have killed us by now!” Then all four kids burst out laughing. Very loudly.

I finally found the instructions for the bb gun. And read them! Ah, the gun has to be cocked with the safety on before the bb chamber will open. What?! That seems stupid to me. Why can’t I load bb’s without cocking the gun?

So I am finally ready to go outside. I walk through the living room towards the front door, and one of the kids yells  “Look out! She’s got a gun! Crazy lady with a gun!“

I almost didn’t make it to the door because I was laughing so hard!

The stray has now decided to lay directly in front of the door. As in practically touching the front door.

I finally get out of the front door, and succeed in scaring the stray away. For a little while. I had to go out a second time. When the dog saw me this time, it ran away.

Wouldn’t you run if you saw a crazy Country Woman headed in your direction with a gun?!

*No, I did not hurt the dog. I just scared it away, I do not trust stray dogs around the kids. And since we live in the country we get lots of drop offs. And since we live in the country, there is no shelter to take them to. The kindest thing I can for the dog is to scare it way.

It’s been a crazy week. I’ve been feeling better, so I’ve been getting some stuff done. That’s a good thing. 🙂

Last Saturday morning, my daughter saw a mouse in the kids bathroom. So Daddy came to the rescue, and set out a glue trap. Saturday night, shortly after the kids went to bed, the mouse caught itself. So Dad set another trap just in case there was more than one mouse.

Fast forward to Sunday morning at 7:30. Zack came knocking on our door saying that there was another mouse on the trap. “OK, go back to bed” was my response.lol

2 minutes later, he came knocking again. “He said it’s a squirrel!” Thinking his big brother was trying to trick him, I said. “OK, go back to bed”. lol

Dad decided maybe he should check into the situation. So off he went. The kids had brought the trap out of the bathroom into the living room, so he didn’t have to go far.

He quickly came back and told me it wasn’t a squirrel, it was a chipmunk.

“Seriously?!”

Yes, it’s a chipmunk!

“What the gravy is a chipmunk doing in the house?!?!?!” um…yes….that was said loudly….lol    Which drew lots of laughter from the kids in the livingroom.

Who has a chipmunk in their kids bathroom at 7:30 on a Sunday morning?! Or any morning for that matter! Ha! We do!

We had had a birthday party here on Saturday for Abby who turned 12. The kids went in and out a lot, so they only thing I can come up with is it came in when they left the door open.

Because, seriously, how long can you have a chipmunk in your house and not notice it?!

So after posing for pictures (which he seemed to enjoy), the chipmunk was happy to be set free in the great outdoors. Which was done very carefully, so as not to draw the attention of the cats.

Hopefully, he now knows to stay away from the house were the crazy people glue him to a plastic tray then take pictures.

Look at this!

I finally got a new laptop!

I’m loving it!

It was hard work, though, getting a wireless network set up and getting all my info transferred from the desktop to the laptop.

Considering I’ve never had anything to do with wireless networks before, and my tech guy, aka my son, being 15, and never having anything to do with wireless networks before, this was a big job!

But we muddled through. I even managed to transfer all my files over. This morning I figured out how to sync my Google Chrome bookmarks between the desktop and the laptop. Which is of major importance!

My son-in-law come over last night and did some touch up on the wireless network. Seems that Windows 7 likes to hog the wireless network. Which was totally not a problem for me, but the others in the house weren’t so pleased that they were having a hard time.

I have had my new laptop for less than 48 hours, and I’m extremely happy with it! And now my brain can rest from all the hard work, and enjoy it!

Visit Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minuetes for Mom to see what everyone else tackled.