Not winter yet

December 18, 2006 (4:39pm)
31º F, Sunny, E wind 7 mph.

Good afternoon,

Me thinks it is time to get one of these out again before it appears I are chewing daisy roots! Actually we have been rather busy getting Christmas to arrive. The house is full of Christmas stuff, Christmas smells, and Christmas plans. Guess I am responsible for most of the stuff. Margriet sure is making it smell in here.

Margriet made three batches of cookies for church on Sunday (she was snack provider) and we didn’t bring too many home afterwards. She has been baking up a storm (wish it was a snow storm). While she was baking one of the cookie batches, the smell brought my memory back to my Aunt Mabel ’s kitchen on the farm when I was very young. Not sure what triggered it, but I felt like I was there just the same. Mabel was a good cook (on a wood stove no less) and made huge piles of food - which she expected to be gone at the end of the meal or snack. It was really nice to remember.

Two huge loaves of fruit bread came out of the oven a bit ago. Each loaf should probably have been two, but they sure smelled good while being baked. She thought she probably should have made three instead of two before baking, but ..... One will go to church with us tomorrow to chew on during Bible study. Hope there are a lot of folks there! If not I will be forced to eliminate the leftovers. Dang! I sure do have difficult tasks here!

My largest and most time consuming task has been to get all of the Christmas letters printed, addressed, and out the door. Finally - - all of them have been printed out and in the envelops. Got them to the postoffice, after buying more stamps. We have had to make a couple of extra trips to Green Bay to pickup ink for the printer. That consumed more time, and money, than planned. Sure do miss the old printer with the larger and cheaper ink tanks. This idea really got more expensive than planned for sure. Oh well - Merry Christmas. We still have a couple of packages to get out. The ones we worry about the most, those to the Netherlands, apparently made it already. That is a surprise! At least we heard that one did and was already opened in spite of written instructions to not open until Christmas. Brenda has a hard time with that. Too nosey I guess.

While the breads were rising, we went out into the woods and cut down our Christmas three. No snow really makes a difference in selecting "just the right one" too. It is easier to see the green outline against white, rather than the green of other tress without snow on them I intended to pick one from a small clearing in the thick woods just north of the house, but it has all grown up - lots of trees there now. We did manage to find one along the edge of the swamp, after staggering through some wild rose bushes. Margriet didn’t care for them too much. She did manage to laugh at me when on took by hat off as I walked by it. Sure glad I had the hat on. Don’t look too cool with a big bloody stripe on my head! The tree we cut was actually something less than the top half of a 20' tall three. We think it will look rather well. Now I have to get the decorations from the storage unit and the stand.

Had to take time out to eat an excellent liver and onions dinner my Woman prepared. She sure do know how to do that right! She made enough fried potatoes to have leftovers for me to eat for breakfast. Yum! Friday we went to Otto’s to pick up a roulade for our Christmas Day dinner. While we were at Otto’s, Margriet got a hankering for some hocks and kraut with dumplings. So we picked up some fresh kraut and hocks. Suspect that will be on the menu within the next couple of days. Sunday we picked up a bottle of cranberry wine from Algoma to go with. Don’t think we will buying too many bottles of wine at the prices now. This bottle will probably last for New Year’s too.

Sunday was the kid’s Christmas program at church. They are always fun, but I wonder if the kids have the same feelings as I did when I was their age. Wasn’t necessarily fun then. Then we had to memorize everything (or at least tried to), now they have a power-point program putting the words and music on the back wall of the sanctuary for them to read and follow. Ain’t fair. The programs were much simpler then, but maybe we were also. Anywho, it was a good time. The kids eyes popped when they saw the cookies put out for snacks after church. Now you know why we all but ran out.

The weather has been hot and windy for the past week or so. Doesn’t look like a white Christmas this year. The weatherman is predicting some rain and freezing rain this weekend, but don’t think it will turn to snow. The driveway where I turn the van around has turned to a mud hole. Almost like it were April and it is only a couple three days until the end of fall. The wind has been extremely high too. Mostly in the neighborhood of 25 mph wind with gusts in the 35 mph areal. I keep looking for more trees down, but none so far.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><