Happy Birthday Lou!

As Ann said, "Double Nickels" for Lou today.

I didn't take a picture of him today ... we had a good lunch here with the Halls and Papa, then Birthday Brownies for dessert. I wanted to do the recipe on the side of the box which sounded really yummy -- raspberry cream cheese frosting with chocolate drizzle -- but it didn't turn out. Seems it makes a difference if you use regular cream cheese or non fat cream cheese ... the latter really doesn't hold its body when you beat it together with jam and powdered sugar. It was way too runny to be frosting. So I added more powdered sugar ... and more regular cream cheese (I had about 4 oz.) -- and eventually we just spooned it over the brownies. It must have been good though, even if it looked funny, because everyone got seconds but me and Danelle, and she would have had another one if there was one left when she finished hers.

Tonight for church I "played" the keyboard (with hymns Laura Lea had prerecorded earlier this week) and Lou did the message. We didn't have as big a crowd as last year -- I think this must be the year for everyone to be "away" out of town to see family (last year we packed the place, 85 or so, and on Sunday we had over 60 people) -- but that's fine. We did the candlelight service similar to last year and it was nice.

In the morning after we see what Santa brought the granddaughters, we'll have Christmas brunch and Ben and Kelli will head off for Spokane. Supposed to snow some more tomorrow ... it is starting to really accumulate around here. The snowplies are about double this size now after nearly constant, slow and steady snowfall the past 24 hours.The snow is deep enough now so the magpies are again raiding the dogfood dish. Which I wouldn't mind nearly so much if they'd just eat it instead of throwing it all over the place.
It's been warming up though; about 19 degrees today when it's been about 5 for several days. As long as the wind is not blowing, we can handle it.

More in the morning... it's been a full week so I'll need to be doing some catching up in the next few days, I hope.