January in Brookfield

It's sort of become my tradition to spend New Year's morning making olie bollen while I watch the Rose Parade. I love those olie bollen, but I don't love the fact that the house smells like hot oil for the next three days.  But I guess I sort of forget that part of it over the course of the year, and I heat up the old fryer again every January 1. We usually share the bounty with the Brassers, and this year they came over to watch some football and to eat some olie bollen.

Lew is celebrating an MSU win!

It was very cold in January, and so it was a great time to stay inside and work on jigsaw puzzles.  I  tried to schedule my puzzle-making in between my babysitting days, so that involved a few late nights in order to finish a puzzle. I've done several since Christmas--some more fun than others.  But the most frustrating one was one I had bought at a rummage sale that some people from church had last summer. It was such a nice picture of an Amish buggy going down a country road. But what a disappointment to find that there were 3 missing pieces!

No more rummage sale puzzles for me!

I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but if I did it would be the same one every year---to get organized and get rid of stuff that we don't need! Well, I did undertake one small organizational task--my cookbook shelf. I had WAY too many cookbooks, and I realized that there are a lot of them that I never really use.  So, a bunch of them went to Half Price Books for a little bit of cash. And some of them really just needed to be tossed out.  Like this Calvin Christian School Cook Book from 1986. (And, yes, I am a very messy cook--and I inherited that trait from my mother.)

The torn pages? Muffin loved to pull this

book off the shelf and chew on it.

(maybe because of the food spilled on it??)

The muffin section was Muffin's favorite. :)

Bob tries very hard to keep our bird-feeders filled during the cold, snowy weather, but it's kind of hard to do. These guys seem to know exactly when he fills it, and then they stop by to help themselves. 

This year for the first time our church was a remote site for Calvin's January Series. So for 15 days, we had the opportunity to hear some great lectures. We had a pretty good turn-out most days, and I think people really enjoyed it. And there was another Calvin event in January---the broadcast of the big Calvin-Hope game! Milwaukee area alumni and friends watch it at TGI Friday's at Miller Park. We had a good turn-out for that as well, and the Calvin fans were happy for a win!

The Calvin-Hope game also gave our little Hope a bit of fame.  Rachel sent this picture to Calvin, and it has been used a couple times on Calvin's Facebook page. Could there be a cuter Calvin fan?

"My name is Hope, but I root for Calvin!"

I also made a quick trip to Michigan in January, during one of the times when Adam had to be out of town. I was very fortunate to hit good weather both ways! That's something that you can't count on in January...or February, or maybe even March. So I was very thankful for that. It was a short visit, so only a couple of pictures to show for it. 

In this picture, Hope was enjoying her musical crib toy and she was talking and making all kinds of cute noises.  And I got a really cute video of it.  Too bad that I don't know how to put the video on the blog. :(

I can't end this January post without including a penguin report. For the past few years Bob has made a guest appearance in the 1st grade class as a penguin!  They have a unit on penguins every year, and this is sort of the culmination---dare I say highlight?--of their penguin unit. He reads them a couple stories about penguins and they ask him some questions, etc. And I must say, he's really perfected that penguin "waddle!"