Thursday, December 29, 2011

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Sledding North Dakota Style

Well sometimes when there isn't enough snow on the hillsides, you have to resort to North Dakota Style sledding, meaning you hook the sled up behind a truck, or snowmobile, and you pull them around on the sled, or if you don't have a hill!

In this case no snow on the ground, but there is a nice thick sheet of ice on Coffee Lake, and so I started pulling Rebekah on the sled behind my trusty JD lawn tractor, with it's chains on of course to provide the traction we needed

In these pictures, you see Rebekah in the blue pattern coat and her two second cousins, Jacob in the blue coat and Joshua in the dark coat. Who came over at my request to spent sometime outside enjoying the sledding and each others company.


As you can see they are able to ham it up, and because we aren't moving terribly fast, not a lot to worry about for falling off. Which they did do a few times, and with three of them in the long sled, it was still pretty full!

As you can also see, they had a blast!


Afterwords we retreated to the house where Joshua and Rebekah, watched some episodes of Phenias and Ferb off of Netflix. 

Below, Jacob joined Crystalie, Ricki and I in a game of Scrabble, Jacob's first game with us as his own player, he had some help from Auntie Crystalie, but he did really well and came in third, ahead of me...

We also enjoyed a supper of grilled hot dogs and bratwurst and also some veggies and french fries, along with a great jello salad that Kay brought over when she came to pick the boys up. Brother-in-law Mitch was still trucking into the evening hours and wasn't able to join us but I am sure he will hear all about it!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

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More Visitors and Fun!


Ricki and Grant and Rebekah, and I surprised Crystalie for Christmas, when they drove back from Washington, to spent Christmas with us! We didn't tell Crystalie they were coming and they got here on Monday the 19th around 7:15pm and they got into the house, before she knew it was them that pulled into our yard in the dark! Needless to say there were a few tears shed, but very happy ones! 

The last few days have been spent, with Crystalie, Ricki and Rebekah visiting a number of Crystalie's friends for tea and coffee, and lots of goodies. They also have spent time with Great Grandma, and we had Great grandpa over for supper on Wednesday night. Rebekah and I have enjoyed sometime outside, and she has been playing a lot outside, trying to slide on the hillside with what little snow we have.

The other night I got home and took the lawn tractor down to the frozen lake and I pulled her around with it on a sled behind the tractor. The lake had just spots with snow on it and the ice of course made the sledding pretty good, the trick was to make big turns and let the centrifugal force get her going a little faster on the smooth ice. We had a blast, even though she banged her elbow pretty good onetime when she tipped over.

Friday night, we went into Brainerd to see the Sertoma Winter Wonderland, a huge Christmas light display, that you drive through, which we enjoyed listening to the excitement Rebekah expressed as we came up on each display of lights! Then we headed to Subway for a lighter supper and then visited the light display on Bay Lake at Kneiff Acres. Which is a very whimsical light display with cut out characters we all know, and lots of lighted animals and Christmas trees.

Today being Christmas Eve day and I am home all day, the plan is to spent more time out on the ice and doing some sledding. Plus a few odd jobs, and to watch some Vikings football.

Merry Christmas to All, from Coffee Lake Farm!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

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Coit Family Christmas

We celebrated our 2011 Coit Family Christmas this year relatively close by at Grandview Lodge.
My daughter Jennifer reserved a large 5 bedroom group cottage for us to  stay in this last Friday and Saturday nights. It was great with lots of room, and a nice living room with a pool table and Foosball table, along with a large screen tv of course, and a great kitchen to prepare some of our food!

Above you see all but one of my family, missing is my brother Richard, who's oldest was graduating
from U of Nebraska, this last weekend so they were unable to attend.
From left to right--in the back
Bill, Valerie, Me, Neal, and Jeff
my parents Bill and Joyce in front of us.

This photo is the Coit side of our immediate family,
l-r--Eric and Raquel and their son Miles in my lap.
Then Chris and Misty and their two daughters Livia in Crystalie's arm and Addy next to me
Jennifer and Matias on the far right.
Our family is growing and it was wonderful to spent time with all of them!
We enjoyed lots of great food, time to swim, play lots of games, and of course party some together with all the other family members in attendance!
We were blessed by good travel weather and great weather all weekend!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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Mr Miles, visits Coffee Lake Farm


Yes, that's right we had some company last night, and got to see the speedy Mr Miles, crawling all over the floor, and of course he was as happy as ever!

He of course checked out a lot of the corners, and also everything, he could pull himself up on but there were no bumps and he definitely is getting stronger.

I have a cold, and Miles has some ear infection medicine he is on, but overall we had lots of fun, and I had him giggling away, while we played with blocks. He seemed to enjoy the word Boom, whenever he would knock down my pile of blocks he would let out a giggle and laugh!

Oh yeah his Mom and Dad were here and we had a very nice supper, and even enjoyed a game of Scrabble, after Miles went down for the night. We celebrated an early Christmas with Raquel and Eric, as we will not see them over the Christmas Holiday or New Years Day, when we celebrate with the rest of the family. All in all it was a very joyous evening, and so much fun to spend time with Miles and his Mom and Dad!



Sunday, December 11, 2011

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Christmas decorating!

We started our holiday decorating today, so that meant a load of boxes moved form the studio barn, to the house in the back of my pickup. After that we both worked on various area's of the house, I mostly worked on the Christmas tree below, while watching the Viking Football game.


Below is a picture of a new piece, a lighted sprig, that is adorned with Christmas ornaments.

Our little hutch below is now the home to a few Santa's and some other cool stuff!


Below a carpenters tray filled with juniper and brightly colored ornaments.

The stockings are hung on the fireplace in our bedroom!

The makeshift hutch we have in our bedroom was transformed by Crystalie to a new home for
part of her Snowman collection.

The top of one our dressers also became the home of my golfing Santa Collection.

Believe me, Crystalie is not done yet, but we started at around 10:00am this morning and finally quit by around 5:45 pm. It all looks wonderful dear, and I know there will be some other additions to be completed in the next day or so!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

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Road trip for Firewood!

Well, Smarkle and I headed over to my daughter Jennifer's home, this morning to help her and Matias clean up some dead trees in their yard.

I got over there about 10:30 am, and Smarkle got out and played with Joya, their dog and then I started cutting up the trees and Jennifer and Matias, loaded the wood into my trailer. We spent a little over an hour cutting up 4 different trees and I had a nice full trailer load of pine and popple pieces.

Jennifer prepared a sandwich for some lunch, and we had a nice visit. In the meantime the dogs began to settle down some, and were getting tired out. Thanks for the wood and help, Jennifer and Matias!

I headed back home and then proceeded to unload the pile and do some wood stove maintenance. Which included cleaning out the ashes, checking the blower fan, and cleaning out the air tube that goes into the bottom of the firebox. I also cleaned out the flues in the top of the stove to allow the best transfer of the heat to the water around them.

The woodpile looks really good again, as I have more wood now than I did two weeks ago. It helps to keep working on the woodpile, while there is no snow on the ground here. It maybe a brown Christmas in Northern Minnesota as the forecast isn't calling for any snowstorms that I know of yet!



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300th posting

Yes, I have reached one milestone with posting on this blog, over 300 times I have typed out a message of what is going on in our busy lives.

I started on Dec 13th last year and I am closing in on the one year anniversary. I do enjoy being able to share with those who follow my blog or read it from time to time, about life on Coffee Lake Farm.

It is not that hard for me to find something to share, since we are two of the busiest people I know. In the winter things slow down some, but at the same time, we both have projects to work on and enjoy a few more live games of scrabble.

Of course the holiday season is here and it seems we will have many things going on over the next weeks, before years end!



Tuesday, December 6, 2011

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A warm bed!

Needless to say I think we all enjoy a warm bed on a cold December night.

We have always had an electric blanket on our bed to help keep the chill off the coolness of our bedroom, which does not have a lot of heated forced air getting to it. But last night Crystalie awoke to a flashing control box, and needless to say it no longer worked.

Well, I went to Kohls today and purchased an electric heated mattress pad for our bed. They have been around for a few years, but no need to buy one until now. The packaging on these even advertise you can save money at night by turning your furnace down and still keep toasty warm in your heated bed. Good Marketing there!

So this unit above is what ours looks like, and please note the two controllers, one for my side and one for Crystalie's side. Which I think I am going to love as Crystalie can not stand getting to warm, and occasionally she has a warm flash and then is throwing her covers off.

This is going to be the first night and I am sure there will be a little adjustment process, but the other thing is the  heat will be below our bodies not above it like the blanket was...meaning it should be toastier!

Monday, December 5, 2011

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A trip to the big city!

This last Sunday, we got up and drove to the cities, to see Livia and Addy perform in the ballet school they attend, to see their production of "The Nutcracker Suite' .

It was a real treat to see all their hardwork, and the performance, since I never really new the full story of the Nutcracker Suite. It was very well done and they had a lot of dancing and activity in the first half of the story, and just a little bit at the very end of the second act.

They did great and the performance was well attended and they had a second performance at 4 in the afternoon.

I am sorry but we were not allowed to shoot any video or photos of the production due to copyright issues.

Good Job Girls!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

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The weekend is here!

Yes another weekend, and I have a project list of certain things to do this weekend.

I have been busy the last couple of evenings posting Wooden Nichols items on Etsy.com, which is a vintage, collectible and handcrafted site for selling items on. Warning...it could be come an addictive site if you like looking at all kinds of items, because it seems they have pages and pages of it!

So when you get there look for Wooden Nichols Market to see all the new listings.

I plan to fix my trailer lights, hopefully and the new part will allow my driver side lights to work on the trailer.

I also plan to haul recyclables to the collection point, cleaning out some more of my shop. After that I am off to cut up some wood at Colette's house, as she has some oak trees that fell over this fall. I also have to install a new thermostat for her, in the newly refinished basement.

So as you can see it will be a busy day, but we have no snow and the temps will be around 30 degrees and there will be lots of days in the future when it won't be so nice outside to do anything!