A few Christmas traditions

But first, a blurry picture of a piece of Thanksgiving pie. Pie that's now a slightly distant memory for that got any of it.

One of our family's traditions is to put up the Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. Usually this means I set up the tree, and put lights on it, and then we wait days or weeks for the kids to clean their room before we put ornaments on the tree.

A couple of years ago, Sears had a sale in January where they were getting rid of their 6 foot tall trees for $5. I bought two of them. We have hundreds of ornaments for the tree, more than enough to fill both trees. Sometimes we end up helping the kids put ornaments on, but this year, we just handed them the ornaments one at a time, and let them put the ornaments where ever they wanted to. The kids seemed to enjoy it, and did a pretty good job.

We also hang stockings, every year one or two seem to disappear. Last year, I got a 'mass quantity' sized Christmas stocking. This year we've lost a few more stockings somehow, and we haven't yet replaced them, so just the obscenely large one is up right now.

Another tradition we have is to send out Christmas cards. We've tired keeping in touch with family and old friends, sometimes we don't do such a good job. Sometimes it's kind of hard to keep up with where everyone is. Lately we've done a picture of the family with the card, we haven't taken a picture yet this year. The kids have been helping with a little family message the last couple of years, we haven't talked about creating this one yet, either.

The last couple of years, we've done Christmas cookies for neighbors. (And cards.) The kids kind of like going out delivering plates of cookies. I haven't started cookies yet this year, cookies are a lot of work, I haven't decided if I've got the time and energy for it yet this year.

Thanksgiving Dinner by the numbers

(In no particular order)

51 - rolls - Emma ate most of them
25 - pound turkey - Tara's Mom
11 - Adults
11 - Kids
10 - pounds of potatoes
7 - Kinds of pie - Apple, Berry, Pumpkin, Butternut Squash, Banana Cream, Chocolate, and a sugar free chocolate/banana cream
6 - cups of gravy
5 - Dishwasher loads
4 - hour nap - for me anyway - before 5 hours of late night work
2 - plates of leftovers for latecomers on Friday
2 - spoonfuls of horseradish in the potatoes. I don't think anyone really minded or noticed. Except for me.

(OK, so it was a particular order)

That's not a cough to truck has, but it is on it's deathbed.

I've shared the fist sized hole in the muffler before. I've tried taping the thing twice with metallic duct tape. The first time, the tape fell off, but it was quieter for about a mile. I tried a second time, and really wrapped the thing up nice so the tape wouldn't fall off. I taped all the way around the muffler and thought I had it done up, and drove off. After a mile, it started sputtering and complaining again. Turned out that the exhaust pressure blew a hole right through the tape. (But the wrap job around the hole stayed...)

I got an inspection on the truck recently. It didn't pass. The follwoing is needed for the truck to be road worthy again:

• 2 back tires
• Windshield
• Serpentine Belt
• Fix the oil pan leak
• New muffler
• and they didn't say it this year, but there is a suspension arm that is wearing out
• I also put the truck in four wheel drive yesterday before the 'blizzard' started, and some very loud sound happened just before it engaged, then it slipped out, and then back in again. Not a good sign.

So, I don't want to spend the money on all of that, really. The truck has over 235000 miles on it. The registration on the truck expires on Tuesday. I'll be parking it in the driveway Tuesday night.


That begs the question - "What do I do with the truck?" I have several options I on the table right now: (In no particular order)

• Create a greenhouse of out it - in the driveway
• Bury it in the front yard up to the bed - put a lawn chair and BBQ in the bed
• Start 'Car-henge' by burying it standing up
• Demolition Derby
• Sell it
  
• Watch "Red" to see what they did with a truck. I hear that's really the way to go, but I don't know what my parents are talking about yet, because I haven't seen the movie.

Any other options?

The Great Utah Blizzard of 2010

We had a so called blizzard last night. On Monday night, the National Weather Service started in on a blizzard warning, and called the thing a storm unlike one we have seen here in many years. Or something like that.

People reacted 'with caution'. Or over-reacted. The storm came in, snowed for about an hour, and basically blew out after that. As you can see from the picture above, I spent a very long time digging out from this storm. I'm exhausted from all the work.

It did give me an excuse to tell my 'delivering newspapers in a blizzard' story from when I was eleven. I told it several times leading up to the storm.