I cannot believe that Christmas is only two days away! In some ways it seems to have crept up on me this year. I have been so busy as this year I vowed to make most of the gifts I give to everyone. I am happy with the results and am about to let out a huge sigh of relief that I have been able to pull of as much as I have! I hope to share some of my gifts here on this blog later once the holiday has come and passed. I’d hate to ruin the surprise for some!

For me and my family the holidays are full of traditions and each year we look forward to repeating them. When I was a child my family would purchase my sister and I a new ornament for the Christmas tree every year and to this day I look forward to pulling them out of the box and hanging them on my tree.

I have carried on this tradition with my children and love to watch them smile as they pull out their favorites from over the years.

It is also a tradition in my family to bake far too many Christmas cookies and there are a few recipes that get made year after year. One of my favorites is a simple, yet ever so good, butter cookie that is just heaven with tea or coffee.

This year I tried a new fudge recipe and I have been having to hide what is left from me and my boys in attempts to have any left for tomorrow and Christmas day! The recipe is so incredibly easy though that whipping up another batch is almost too easy- if you know what I mean!

Growing an amaryllis in attempts that it will bloom around Christmas day has become somewhat of a tradition for myself. They are such beautiful bulbs and every year I get close to having them bloom by Christmas but they never really make it.

They are always too early or too late. This year has been the closest yet though and I am still holding out that just maybe this particular one will actually bloom on Christmas day. After-all, I still have two more days!

Merry Christmas Everyone from myself and my (growing!) family!

The amount of snow we received in such a short amount of time was just amazing. Everyday we went out and attempted to keep our driveway cleared and in doing so built up a big enough pile for my son to sled down on what used to be our front lawn. In some places the snow was so high I could stand on top of it and look onto my roof. Completely amazing! My eyes could almost not believe what they were seeing!

Our town is slowing but surely digging it’s way out of all this snow. We have been getting quite a bit of rain for the last two days now so that has helped out in the snow melting some. My husband cleared a path on our deck the other day as it was completely under snow and it now looks like I have a receding glacier out there!

I went looking through some of my pictures to compare how much snow we got and found two that illustrate it pretty well. Both are of my deck and in them you can see a bird feeder that we have perched on top of a post. Keep in mind when looking at the pictures that this post with the feeder on it stands taller than me.

The below picture was taken two days after Christmas last year. You can see the bird feeder toward the back on the right hand side. The far left is our blackberry bush.

The next picture was taken on Christmas day of this year. Once again the bird feeder is in the back on the right and the blackberry bush is on the left.

There has to be at least five feet of snow out there. By the time it finally stopped on the 26th we could no longer see most of our deck.

I woke up this morning to it snowing heavily again. It has since turned to rain but it sure has me wondering what kind of winter I am in for!

I’m afraid I will not be posting too much about my garden these next few months. Especially considering my garden is now under about 4 feet of snow! The forecast for tomorrow finally says we are to get a break from the snow but then it is suppose to return by Christmas day. So, it is looking like we may have a white Christmas for sure! We are hoping it does let up tomorrow as my husband has been trying to get home since Sunday. He is currently stuck about 30 miles away from home due to road closures. All fingers are crossed that they open the highways up tomorrow so he can get home in time for Christmas.

It has been quite a week for us! Hope everyone else is safe and cozy and ready for the holidays. I think this may be my last post until next week. I will end this post with some pictures I took today of the snow.

Below is my daughter all bundled up and ready to help shovel snow so we can find our car.

This is a picture of my son and daughter. Behind them is my neighbor’s boat which is almost entirely under a huge snow drift.

This final picture was taken hours later after we were finally able to unearth (or is it unsnow?) our car and driveway. Two kind souls with tractors were out driving up and down the road helping everyone clear their driveways. (Thank you Kevin! )

Happy Holidays everyone!