Winter Reprieve

I did more than play on the Wii this week.

Monday, we went to Huntsville with our friends.
Tuesday, Suzette came over for lunch and the afternoon.
Wednesday, Cathy came over after we got back from haircuts and stayed the afternoon.
Thursday...it was just Ben and me, Jake and Chan went home with Cathy.  Matt picked them up after work.
Friday, we went hiking with Heather and her boys!  Now I remember why I started setting aside one day a week to hang out with all of our available friends at once!
But, it was a nice reprieve from the recent rash of being home and freezing.  We could spare the week to goof off.

Here are some pics from Friday.

Ft. Bluff in Eva, overlooking the Florette valley

Heather and G, not near the edge!
Sweet Griffin wanted to clean up the trash on the trail.
We had to promise him a trail cleaning day.  : )

People have been enjoying the view for years!
I find it amusing about myself that names and dates carved into the rock is fascinating, but only if it's from earlier than the year I was born and other graffiti annoys the crap out of me.

Heather is pointing out where Daddy works.

Carson and Chandler spitting over the edge of the cliff.

I have no idea why my pics are so tiny, I am telling it to display in extra large.  Grrrr

Fie-are

Matt and Jake felled a...large sapling for firewood over the weekend.

They were successful in subduing the small tree, bashing and otherwise managing to get it into stove-sized chunks.

The 2 hours of chopping, hauling and stacking allowed us nearly 30 minutes of pure heated bliss from the wood stove before the fuel ran out.

Jake has been cutting more wood each day since and we have been able to partially heat with the wood stove, which has been nice, especially in the evening when we can get a good hot fire going and heat up the main part of the house. It's lovely to FINALLY be rid of the chill without gaining the worry that we will have to sell a kid to pay the electric bill!

Back Online

My Gateway died a few days back, it was very frustrating and I was pretty unsure when we would get around to replacing it. Well...Matt's dad gave us his old laptop, which was having some issues with Norton Antivirus and needed to be wiped clean, repartitioned and set back up with a new operating system. We had not done anything with it because it still played dvd's without any trouble and it really is a PITA to set up a new system, plus we were unsure if that would really fix it, or if it was really done for.

Well, faced with the cost of replacing the laptop-even though we knew for MONTHS it was on the way out-suddenly the time investment was minimal annoyance! Matt installed Windows XP and repartitioned the hard drives on Monday night, I installed drivers for the modem Tuesday and pulled the hard drive out of the Gateway and set it up as a slave drive.

I spent most all of today downloading and installing drivers for the digital media reader, the antivirus-AVG this time-video drivers, wireless connection and so on. It seems to be working just fine! I hate to say anything for sure yet, but I have been happy with it so far. Here's hoping for another 15 months (until Jake's braces are paid for) before I have to try to budget in its replacement!

Pics!

Matt and I drove and froze our way around Cullman last Sunday, stopping for lunch at Arby's and enjoying our time together. We stopped at the Grotto and walked the long and frozen path to the chapel at the cemetery and took pictures of the stained glass.

This one was especially confusing-eyeballs around tombstones? And a daisy with petals missing? I admit, I am not educated in Catholic symbolism.

Catoma Falls.

This was a creek we stopped to take pictures of the icicles. I liked the watercolor effect of the bare trees reflected in the water.

We drove around near the railroad tracks, getting some sunset shots of a few 'industrial' grubby areas.

Sandhill Cranes

Today we had a belated welcome back for the sandhill cranes. We went a couple weeks ago when they first arrived and the trails were flooded. Happily, today we got to see all we wanted.
We spent a couple hours at Wheeler.

After the cranes, we had a late lunch with our friends and spent a very chilly hour at the park before nabbing some groceries and heading home just ahead of the sunset. It felt like a longer day than it was, I will be glad for later sunsets! We had a great time and 'didda's' sunny smile more than made up for the chilly weather.

Contented Days

We are not religious and even if we were, Jesus was born in March. Christians took the date away from the pagans, it's not based on anything more than an easy transition during a takeover of a culture. All of the traditions of the holiday are taken from another culture and somehow that ends up meaning we feel obligated to spend money.

Matt and I have always been uneasy about Christmas, both coming from divorced parents, in the beginning of our lives together, it was a gauntlet to run and no matter what, someone was pissed off or slighted. My mother, his mother, my father, his father, then our grandparents/extended families and the whole holiday was spent running around, feeling guilty because we could not afford gifts for everyone-several years we did not even buy for each other. We had to leave before food was served sometimes to make it to the next dinner so that host would not feel bad, we ate leftovers sometimes because someone lost the coin toss when a lunch started at noon here and at 1 an hour away.

Then came the aftermath of finding a place for everything the kids got from people who did not really know them or who used the chance to pass along 'last years' model of a toy repackaged as 'new' so they could give 'this years' model to their own child. Hey, we were poor, best to be grateful we were even thought of, I guess.

As soon as we could afford to, we started leaving town for the holidays. It was easier to have everyone mad equally than have one or two upset at their perceived slight at our eclipsed visits. Matt's mom caught on the quickest and by our second holiday flee, she foot the bill for our hotel for a night as our gift. My father moved his dinner back to the Sunday before the holiday and things have become much less stressed.

We did not flee the village this year, we decided instead to make the holiday our own in some way. We celebrated Solstice on Monday with friends. When Matt came home Wednesday the 23rd, he patched the leak in the roof and then we erected the metal pole, aired grievances and had feats of strength as laid out in Seinfeld's 'Festivus' episode. Then we went inside and opened all our gifts and had pasta.

Today is Christmas Eve and I took the few decorations down and the stuff off the tree other than the lights. Last night I made a HUGE crock pot full of Russian stew using my cool new food processor. I think we will still be eating it in the new year...

Next year, Ben, the baby, will be 11, and we will all sit down between now and then to decide what we want to do with the time Matt will have off for the holiday, but this is the last year I am spending money on a made-up holiday, a manufactured obligation. I have reached my peace with it, I think we all have. It's not a celebration of our religion, our 'family' is no longer a unit and it's not good usage of our money to just spend on new things when some 'old' things, like the van, are not paid for.



The Spreadin' of the Roofin' Patch

The one-legged dance of joy

Solstice

We enjoyed our Solstice eve with friends up on Monte Sano.
We had chili and sat around the big bonfire for a little while, with various folks walking to the fire now and then to drop in lists of things they wish to leave behind in the new year or wishes they hope are granted.

It was a very enjoyable evening, a calm and relaxing time, not a bad way to end the shortest day.

When I was 17, I worked out in the Beaverhead/Wisdom Ranger District one summer and the lady who headed up our group said that she set aside the Solstice to remember people who have moved through her life. As I drifted off to sleep last night, I tried to remember some of the more important folks who passed through and what they left me knowing.

Happy New Year!