The Jolley's in Upstate New York

Mother Nature delivered a beautiful snow storm just in time for our P-Day!  And that meant that we could get some lovely photos of some of our favorite places in the snow.  We started out our day and headed to Clinton to grab my favorite little farm.  The snow plows were out all over the place. As we were heading down the road I saw a flag, hanging on the side of a barn and, of course, I had to grab a photo. As you can see, the snow was heavy in the trees, making everything magical.  When I say heavy, though, it was actually light and fluffy snow and so deep in some places.  As we came into the town of Clinton, I remembered the gazebo in the town square.  Last time we saw it, it was decorated for Christmas.  I told Mike that if it was still decorated that we would need to stop and get a shot. Every little town in Upstate New York has a town square and they all have gazebos in the center.  Just like in the Hallmark movies. Isn't it cute?  Now ...

Well, life didn't go so well this week.  That sickness that kept me home from church last Sunday, pretty much lasted the entire week.  With the exception of Wednesday and Saturday, I spent most of the week sleeping off a crummy cold and coughing my head off. Poor Mike, he sure got in a lot of scripture study and working on the computer to consolidate the info on our new ward so visiting will be easier for us. He took such good care of me and we are so thankful that he didn't catch the crummy cold too. Wednesday we did go to Walmart to walk and to buy ice cream for District Council.  We have two elders celebrating birthdays this week and last Wednesday was the day to celebrate.  Sister Park, our new Senior Sister made a delicious chocolate cake and we brought the ice cream.  After we learned together, we ate lunch and had cake and ice cream.  It was great. We ran home, I rested some, and then we went off to Oneida to pick up one of our Young Women for the YW...

There is a kind of cold here that we aren't used to.  We can't seem to get warm.  The cold goes right through you.  And our little 150+ year old home doesn't help.  We are either roasting or freezing.  There doesn't seem to be a comfortable spot.  I am constantly putting a jacket on and then taking it off.  The weather is beautiful though.  It has been warm (so they say) on some days but they keep telling us winter will hit again. Normally it's supposed to be in the negatives right now so the teens and twenties are a bit of a heat wave.   Our week was a busy week.  We started off making cookies on Monday to deliver around to folks in our ward!  Cookies are a great "Hello, it's nice to meet you" thing.  Our District Council had been moved to Tuesday because President Gentry was doing interviews with the missionaries.  In between Districts, he took us to lunch.  He is so kind to treat us and it's always so nice to have ...

When you have one of those kinds of weeks? We had a slow week to say the least.  Not sure why but it was pretty uneventful.  On P Day, I worked on a subway art for a few minutes-I have the coolest metal sign holder that stands on an easel and holds subway art.  It's one of the few decorations I brought from home.  So I put together a January one for our living room.  It turned out cute.  I love doing graphic art on my computer. Tuesday, we had a phone appointment to work on some financial stuff for the new year.  We waited around for a phone call that came late and didn't last long-but needed to be redone a few hours later-so we ended up hanging around here for that. It was kind of a bust for the day!  We did get some good scripture study in for our weekly training and for Come Follow Me.  Look at my cute new New Testament Journaling Edition.  I love it. We have been challenged to pick a word of something we want to concentrate on this y...

 Can you believe that we are now writing 2023 on our checks or in our journals?  The time just keeps marching on.  On December 28th, we hit our 9 months or half way mark on our mission.  Everyone has told us that the second half goes by faster than the first.  That seems hard to believe because these 9 months have flown. We had a great week.   We had the chance to meet with our friends Norma and Nancy to celebrate Christmas on Monday.  We had a little gift for each of them and they had gifts for us.  They are kind and caring women.  We have grown to love them. One of the Sisters in our District had talked about how her family always has a waffle bar for Christmas so we all decided that would be fun for after District Council.  We learned together first and then we made the waffles.  Holy cow.  Some of these missionaries can pound the food.  We had all kinds of toppings and whipped cream.  We sure love being with our m...

 The week was literally filled with everything Christmas-just the way it should be.  And what a week.  We had made a reservation for something called Lights on the Lake.  It's a drive through light show on the banks of Onandaga Lake and it is a Syracuse tradition.  We were excited to go and thought since we were going to be in Syracuse we would make a point of going to Costco and to see Clinton Square in Syracuse. So this picture is titled Christmas in the City! (this is Clinton Square) And it has become one of my favorite photos. It was freezing cold but the music filled the air and the ice skaters were having a grand time.  Needless to say, 17 minutes on our parking meter was plenty of time to shoot, quickly walk around the square, and get back into the car. But I got the shot and I love it.  We had gotten a call, earlier in the day, from one of our office missionaries asking if we were maybe coming to Syracuse sometime that week-they wanted to give ...

I didn't post last week because we had the chance to run away and do some celebrating with our two daughters who graduated with their Master's Degrees.  We had special permission from our Area Presidency to be with them for their special day.  It was awesome! These girls have worked so hard for the past few years to graduate from BYU Idaho with their Bachelor's degrees and now from The University of Southern Mississippi, both with a Master's in Child and Family Science.  Way to go ladies! After graduation in Hattiesburg Mississippi, we headed for New Orleans for two days.  We had such a great time eating Beignet's in Jackson Square, taking a river boat cruise up the Mississippi, visiting a battlefield, walking through the Roosevelt, A Waldorf Astoria Hotel to see the Christmas lights, and the Ritz Carlton to see their gingerbread Trolly Car.   We went on a little swamp cruise in the Bayou to see gators.  We saw lots of gators. And some turtles! One thing on...