Sugar Cookies Too!

We here in Wellsville, thought Echo's sugar cookie extravaganza was brilliant and so on Saturday morning everyone in the house had to participate in the making, baking, decorating and delivery of Christmas cookies. Each person filled a plateful of yummy cookies - we were out of traditional holiday food coloring and so the final product was yellow, silver, and hot pink, but they were tasty nonetheless. I delivered mine to two good friends Marty Cannon, who I went to Europe and Chicago with and Nancy Maughan. Darren surprised Mark Anderson who he worked with in scouts for a long time, Ryan, our neighbor, made a plateful for Brady Anderson, in appreciation for being the carpool driver... Brady said he was going to keep this on the "DL" and hid them in his room. Land made his for his friend Kohner's mom and his brother and sister - and Kohner. Land spent A LOT of time with Kohner and his family when he had his broken leg and Carol prepared him much good food. On Land's note he wrote - Thanks for the magnificent times. We thought that was a bit weird, so he scratched out times and replaced it with dinners. Chase brought his Christmas gift to his violin teacher who he has not seen in a couple of years. When she saw him at the door she gave him the biggest hug, and started to cry. She invited everyone in for refreshment. Chase was invited to play violin at her church on Christmas Eve. He actually said thanks for having us make cookies. It was a great day! Thanks to Echo for the idea!

I didn't notice it at first, but look at the flour facial hair that Land has sprouted - he's a silly kid, that one

Stormwater and Newborn Kits

Darren and I went to a Wellsville City Council meeting because they were discussing and adopting a new stormwater management plan. If they failed to adopt a plan they would be fined 30,000 dollars a day or the mayor would go to jail. Since Darren had written the stormwater plan for Summit County he thought he could help. Our first action taken was to clean the stormwater drain that is at the end of our street. It had about 10" of compacted dirt on it with dried sunflowers and other various "native plants" that had taken up residency. We were shoveling and sweeping and burning the weeds and another neighbor came down with a tractor and helped clear the debris... and that led to some of the children coming to help keep the weeds burning and others asking what in the world we were doing it wasn't even our property or our responsibility. We had decided before that we would just do it to help out the community and not start griping about the owner of the weedfest. We broke a sweat, but it brought a lot of neighbors out to work on a common project and learn why stormwater runoff is such a problem.

2nd - At my grandfather's Christmas gathering we worked on a humanitarian aid project by putting together newborn kits. It was fun catching up with my aunts and cousins as we filled the bags. Darren was the photojournalist. I posted a picture of my grandpa who is 89 years old with his wife Erica who I consider my grandma. He read poems to us and talked about Christ and tried to remember the words to the song "Freckles" that he used to sing to us when we were little. He promised he would sing the whole thing next year.
DeAnn