3 Hours to Go

In just 3 short hours, 2014 will become a memory and 2015 will greet us with all the hope and aspirations and optimism of a shiny bright new year. New Year's Eve is the time to reflect upon all the ups and downs, the highs and the lows of the passing year.  It is also a time to reflect upon all the blessings. Some blessings are quiet and constant, like the blissful contentment of warm covers and a soft bed each night.  Other blessings are more prominent such as important celebrations and family happenings. Through all the blessings, big and small, the most important is love. I hope your 2014 goes out with a whisper of thanks and gratitude and your 2015 arrives on a cloud of hope, laughter and happiness.  May your new year be shiny and bright.  Happy New Year's Eve!

I Can See!!!!!

Today my son surprised me with my Christmas Gift.  He has had a special day for us planned since before Christmas.  I have been waiting anxiously until December 30th at 11am to find out what he had in store for us.  First we went to lunch together which was awesome. I love spending time with him.  Then we went to.......the optometrist!  Yes, my son scheduled an eye exam for me.  I complain all the time about how I can't see anything.  I can barely read normal size print and the computer screen has been blurry forever.  I never knew just how bad it was until today's eye exam.  Turns out - I really can't see!  My distance vision wasn't awful but my mid-field vision was pretty bad and I needed a TON of correction for reading. The optometrist was surprised I was not already wearing glasses.  My son helped me pick out new frames

They will be ready in 10 days. I will be sporting new trifocals which I am sure will be quite lovely. As soon as I got the frames picked out.....

 I got fitted for contact lenses!  I have never worn contacts in my life.  I got a new lens with concentric circles to fix my various fields of vision.  At first everything was pretty blurry but then.... I COULD SEE!  I had the best ride home with my son.  I kept reading signs and telling him everything that I could see.  I could read who was playing on the radio. I could see the map. I could see the dial numbers. I could read the instrument panel.  I can see!!!! 

Now that is one awesome Christmas present!!!!

Doodle Baby Monday!

Look what Santa brought.....

New Double Doodle Puppies!

Aren't they adorable?

Our beautiful Double Doodle Maple is the Mommy Dog

We have 9 Apricot Double Doodle babies to love.

Great job Maple!!!

Blossom's 8 little Goldendoodle babies are now one week old

Some of her puppies have cute little blazes on their heads

She has four boys and four girls

And they all have perfect coats

So Snuggly Cute!!!

Nutmeg's puppies are getting cuter by the minute!

They are ready for solid foods this week!

I love the coloring of her 2 Caramel Boys

They are soooo sweet!

Nutmeg's two girls are such cuties too!!!!

The Chocolate Boys say, "don't forget about us!"

They have the bluest eyes

And love to snuggle!

Happy Monday!

Mathematical Conundrum

My son started an argument with me today. This is nothing unusual as he is always trying to find loopholes in logical arguments and loves to prove theories wrong. He lives for the opportunity to win an argument.  Today's contention.........."It is impossible to be twice as old as someone else." My son contends that one person can never be exactly twice as old as another person. He says it is mathematically impossible. I gave him loads of instances when it would in fact be possible.  Joe is 66, Sue is 33 - therefore Joe is twice as old as Sue.  Billy is six and Kate is twelve - therefore Billy is twice as old as Kate. You get the picture.  My son started getting down to the minute mathematical nanoseconds of time to prove that there would not even be enough time to say "I am twice as old as you" before that statement would no longer be true. I say that if "Sally" was born at precisely 12:00:00 on January 1st and one year later "Jane" was born at precisely 12:00:00 on January 1st, then when Sally and Jane had their birthdays the following year, Sally would be twice as old as Jane. The moment Sally turned two, Jane would be one year old and voila.....Sally is twice as old. My son is so adamant that he is right and I am wrong he told me to blog about it and see what everyone else thinks. So - is my son right in that time passes too quickly to precisely nail down when one person is exactly twice as old as another person or am I right in that if two people are born at the exact same time but different years - then at some point one person will be twice as old as the other??? What do you think?

Christmas Calories Don't Count

This Christmas season our house has been full of scrumptious heavenly goodness. I have so many Christmas cookies that I can have a cookie with breakfast and then another one for a mid-morning snack and then one for my dessert after lunch and then one around 3:00 in the afternoon, then more for dessert after dinner and let's not forget the late night evening cookie snack.  It is Christmas Cookie wonderland here! If that were not enough, my daughter made the most delicious pie ever.  When Mr. Yesteryear Acres and I were on vacation a few years ago we had a pie called, Banofee Pie. It is a toffee pie with bananas.  It is beyond heavenly.  Mr. Yesteryear Acres remembered how much I loved that pie and asked our daughter to make one for Christmas.  Oh my gosh!  She got it JUST right and it is sooooooo good.  It has thick gooey caramel and fresh sliced bananas.  I can't tell you how mouth-watering good that pie is.  I will dream of it every night!  To add further to our calorie collection, tonight Mr. Yesteryear Acres and I made homemade spaghetti noodles that turned out perfectly.  Oh my goodness - I am SOOOOOO glad Christmas Calories don't count!  Can the Christmas season last until January?  I still have some cookies to eat!

Miracle on Yesteryear Acres Street

Tonight we are going to do something miraculous!  We are going to quit working early and watch a Christmas movie.  Mr. Yesteryear Acres gets to choose the movie tonight and he has chosen Miracle on 34th Street.  He loves that movie.  Mr. Yesteryear Acres loves all things Christmas. He loves decorating our entire house and yard with Christmas.  He can spend hours in the Christmas section at the store.  Christmas music promptly starts playing at our house the morning of December 1st and continues until New Year's Eve.  Mr. Yesteryear Acres is always full of Christmas spirit so tonight we will start our Christmas movie marathon with Miracle on 34th Street and then move on to the Grinch Who Stole Christmas and then finish the night with The Polar Express.  We have made plans all day to have our Christmas movie night with no interruptions AND we are starting by 8:30pm.  We have our Christmas candy, we have our Christmas cookies and we are ready for the movies to begin. Now that is a Miracle on Yesteryear Acres Street!

We Wish You a Merry Christmas!

This morning we were up early to make sure our Yesteryear Acres Doodle Doggies and Puppies had a very merry start to their Christmas Day. My daughter made them Pumpkin Muffins so the doggies would have a delicious Christmas Breakfast.

Every Yesteryear Acres Doggie got a muffin and boy did they ever LOVE their morning Christmas presents!!!! 

After the doggies got their breakfast it was time to open presents. Of course, Santa remembered the doggies too! Then I got an unexpected present.....

My older daughter sent us this Christmas Card!!! 

It totally made my Christmas Day

Where we love is home,

Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. ~ Oliver Wendell Holm

MERRY CHRISTMAS from Yesteryear Acres!!!

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other ~ Burton Hills

Merry Christmas Eve!

Tonight here at Yesteryear Acres we are going to share in the beauty of the season and enjoy the many blessings in our lives.  I have stuffed Cornish Hens roasting in the oven, my daughter has made my favorite Christmas cookies for dessert and after dinner we will watch A Christmas Story as we do each and every Christmas Eve. The best and most beautiful part of Christmas doesn't come from a store.......Christmas means a little bit more.  Merry Christmas Eve - may all that you hold dear surround you in love, peace and joy.

Congressional Nomination

The mail carrier brought an extra special delivery today! In our mail, hand delivered to our door, was.........my son's Congressional Nomination!!!!  My son received an official Congressional Nomination to the United States Naval Academy. We are so proud and my son is so excited.  It is such an honor to be nominated. The letter also held another honor - in addition to the Congressional Nomination for the Naval Academy, my son was also given a Congressional Nomination to the United States Merchant Marine Academy.  This nomination was an honor we were not expecting at all.  Now my son has more thinking to do in choosing which path to take in life.  All his choices are outstanding and he is going to do amazing things with his life. Way to go son!!!!  We are SO proud of you!

What I didn't have to write

This morning - once again - my website wasn't working.  I was almost in tears as this has been sooooooo frustrating.  How can anyone see cute puppies when my site continues to be down?  I emailed (once again) the tech support team for the web server and then walked away from the computer for a while to go do something that would be more productive than watching a spinning wheel of doom.  I was thinking about writing today's blog and how once again my blog would be about my dysfunctional website when.......it started working this afternoon!  Now I don't have to write about why I can't update my site but instead can I can write.....IT IS WORKING!  I have all new pictures posted on my website and everything is up to date! Yay!
Here are this week's cuties

Nutmeg's puppies are getting a little bit bigger. 

Her chocolate boys are just so cute! 

And so are her 2 little girls

Who doesn't love Caramels!?

"Hey! Get out of my picture!"

Our New F1B Goldendoodle Babies are here!!!!!!

Our Goldendoodle Blossom is the proud mommy of our 4 little boys and 4 little girls.  Mommy and Puppies are all doing well.

Happy Monday!!!!

Time To Spare

As soon as we were done with breakfast this morning, Operation Christmas was in full effect.  We had a mission to get all the outdoor decorations done including our beautiful reindeer and Frosty the Snowman plus get all the decorations out for the house AND do the tree.  It was a tall order.  We still have a little bit left to do such as putting away all the empty boxes, but overall - we accomplished so much today. Mr. and Mrs Claus are ready, the tin soldiers are outside protecting our flag, the reindeer are in the back yard grazing and our house is covered in beautiful red bows.  Our tree is done too!

Olive "the other reindeer" was quite the helper in decorating the tree.

I think she did a really good job!

Decorating is such hard work. I think visions of sugar plums are dancing in her head.  Christmas Eve is only 3 nights away. I am not sure how it happened.....but looks like we have time to spare!  

Tomorrow.....Let the Christmas Baking Begin!

Tomorrow the Reindeer come out

Today we finally finished up most of the big projects.  We have just a few odds and ends and some cleaning to do but for the most part - we can consider our major work completed.  It is a good thing too because I am sooooo tired.  Today I was in the middle of making more coffee and I forgot that I was making coffee.  I couldn't even find a mug.  I am that tired.  I am getting a lot accomplished but I feel like I am wearing lead shoes.  Just making it through the day is taking a lot of motivation on my part.  Tonight we will take a little time off and celebrate all our hard work.  I have a Crown Roast of Pork in the oven with a wild rice and apple stuffing.  I have never made crown roast of pork before so I hope it turns out.  It looks like a massive amount of food!  I think we will be eating pork for weeks.  For dessert I made Mr. Yesteryear Acres favorite - Tapioca Pudding.  I am looking forward to sitting down and enjoying a nice long leisurely dinner.  Tomorrow....we officially start decorating for Christmas.  Time for the Reindeer to come out.  Christmas is coming!

Why did you leave me????

For the past week, my phone has seemed very depressed.  My phone kept losing its emotional and physical attachment to its SIM card.  It would run out of battery with no warning. It didn't always want to open applications and sometimes just didn't feel like fetching my mail.  Poor phone.  Try as I might, I could not cheer my phone up.  I tried to tell my phone how important it was to me.  I tried to tell my phone that I loved it.  I tried to tell my phone that life would be very hard without its assistance.  Nothing worked.  Today, with no provocation from me, my phone threw itself off my bathroom counter and onto the floor.  It landed on its side thereby shattering the glass and now my phone is completely unusable.  Dear phone, I was so good to you!  I charged you every night.  I woke to your alarm every day.  I carried you everywhere I went!  Why did you leave me?  I guess I am going to have to find a new faithful phone friend. Goodbye old phone.....I will remember our last 2 years together fondly. You were a good phone. Sniff. Sniff.

Shiny Happy Light

Last night Mr. Yesteryear Acres and I finally found a few minutes to get some Christmas shopping done and then came home and worked until 1:45am.  This morning I was up by 6:30am and back at it again. We are soooooooo close to getting our projects finished. I think we have one last huge work day tomorrow and then we might be able to sit down for a few minutes to enjoy all our hard work.  There seems to be a bright shiny happy light at the end of my endless work tunnel. Things that are happy:
Mr. Blue Argyle Goldendoodle puppy has an awesome family to love and is now spoken for

My Christmas shopping is almost done!

My kitchen is almost done!

My website company got their servers up and running and my website JUST STARTED WORKING tonight!  I am going to publish my updates! (This makes me SO happy!!!!)

I am getting an awesome Christmas present in the mail on Monday.  I am excited!

I have cleaned up and organized so many things that I feel my kitchen will stay neat and tidy for a very long time.  We did more than surface clean.  We have new shelves.  We moved the washer and dryer. We reorganized every single kitchen cabinet, emptied and cleaned all of our kitchen drawers, and our entire pantry. Everything was taken out and cleaned and re-organized. It looks awesome!

I had a Christmas Elf named Bri working today and my entire house is now dusted and vacuumed and my mountain of laundry is folded.

AND I think even though my older daughter is officially gone and on deployment - we are finally starting to feel a bit of the Christmas spirit.  We have just been working so hard, partially because the house needed it and partially because we were so sad.  Saying goodbye to her for an entire year was very difficult.  This will be a long deployment and we all deeply feel her absence. A piece of our hearts broke the day we said goodbye. Digging into the house projects has kept our minds and hearts busy.  Now that we are getting closer to finishing and got our Christmas shopping done, I think we are ready to put our tree up and enjoy the beauty of the season. My shiny happy light feels wonderful.

Hey! Let's Switch!

Mr. Yesteryear Acres is getting soooooo close to finishing the work in the kitchen.  With any luck the project will be done by the weekend.  I hope so!  I have lots of Christmas baking to do!!!  Today Mr. Yesteryear Acres wanted to build shelves and install hooks on the wall so I could hang the aprons. He didn't know how he was going to get everything done because by the time he finishes the farm chores outside, it is almost too dark to work on the shelving project.  It takes a while to set up the saw table outside and then he has to get out all the tools plus the wood needed for the project. That way he can spend the rest of the day walking back and forth from the kitchen to the saw table outside. So I decided that today we should switch jobs.  I would be the Farm Chores girl and then Mr. Yesteryear Acres would be in charge of everything inside AND put up the new shelves.  Excellent plan!  Mr. Yesteryear Acres is making quick work of the shelving project and even though I thought I would freeze to death.....I survived!  Looks like we just might make the Christmas Baking deadline after all!

One to Ten

My son has a game he loves to play that he calls "One to Ten."  The purpose of this game is to dare someone to do something.  Then each person has to think of a number in a given range.  It could be pick a number from 1-100 or 1-50 but my son always chooses the range of 1-10.  He likes to make things competitive. At the count of three, each person playing the game yells out the number that they are thinking of.  If the number matches - then the dare must be completed. For example.....Late last night my son approached me and said, "One to Ten, You have to make brownies tonight".  I said I didn't want to play.  I said I wasn't going to play.  Then my son started the countdown.......3......2......1....and we both yelled out the number 4.  ARGH!  Obviously I am bound by the laws of the game.  If you play the game 1-10 and lose - you have to do the dare.  I mean that's the law.  So guess who had to make brownies last night?  Yes.  Me.  I have lost on various dares.  Such as One to Ten, Make my Lunch.  One to Ten, I can watch a movie tonight. Don't worry though, I have won plenty challenges.  Guess who doesn't have to take out the trash?  Guess who didn't have to do the dinner dishes?  Thankfully I won on the "One to Ten - Run into the kitchen and tackle Dad yelling, "Grenade!"  I am very thankful I won that one and didn't have to complete the dare!!!! Since I am feeling lucky, I think I shall challenge him to go help Mr. Yesteryear Acres put the pantry floor back together. One to Ten...Go!

A Website AND a Blog

Puppy Picture Monday and Website Monday is here so imagine my sheer delight and joy when I tried yet again to publish my site but my webserver is still down! I am so frustrated but aside from painstakingly rebuilding my entire website page by page, there is not much I can do. So for today ....... my blog post will be my website AND my blog!  Two in One!

Nutmeg's Chocolate and Caramel Doodle puppies 

are just starting to open their eyes.

Our four chocolate doodle boys are just so cute.

Here are Nutmeg's 2 little girls

And her two caramel boys.

Nutmeg is taking really great care of her babies!

And believe it or not.....

We still have one goldendoodle boy available.  

Mr. Blue Argyle Collar Boy

We have had several interested families inquire about him so I am sure he will have a new family soon. 

He is doing great with his leash training

And is a great snuggle buddy 

He is getting the hang of house breaking

And comes right back when he is finished

"I am all done!"

"On my way back to you!"

"I am a good little puppy!"

"I am getting good at sitting on command"

"See?"

"I am also really good at naps!"

I am ready for my new home now

Happy Monday!

Metamorphosis

When I arrived home last week after saying goodbye to my daughter as she left for her deployment, I was greeted by what I can only describe as, "OH MY GOSH WHAT HAPPENED!?!"  While I was gone, Mr. Yesteryear Acres decided that he would begin various house projects. And by begin, I really mean begin, which means he started them, but they are nowhere near completion.  Everything was in disarray.  All week long we have been working on the kitchen which is being updated with new electric.  Yesterday the kitchen project turned into the pantry area project which was not on the list.  The pantry project turned into moving the washer and dryer project which was not on the list. The move the washer and dryer project turned into removing the flooring which I KNOW wasn't on the list.
This is what my pantry looks like this morning:

Mr. Yesteryear Acres is down there.  I wonder if he will ever come back. I wonder if I will ever get my kitchen back. I wonder if I will ever find my microwave again.  I asked Mr. Yesteryear Acres for a status update.  He replied, "Think of this as a metamorphosis"

Hmmmmm - this better be one beautiful butterfly when he is done!

Ready for his new home now

Our web hosting server is STILL down.  I was promised it would be up and running by Friday at the latest but that did not happen.  The new update is now that they cannot fix their servers until December 19th.  I am so frustrated.  I don't have the time to make a brand new website from scratch and just want my existing website to work.  If I could update my website, I would say....
We have one adorable Goldendoodle puppy ready for his new home now

Mr. Blue Argyle Collar Boy is waiting to give puppy hugs to his new family

He comes when he is called

Goes potty as soon as he goes outside

And has the most beautiful silky coat

He looks just like a teddy bear

Mr. Blue Argyle Collar Boy says,

"Will you be mine?"