Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Much of this I have posted on Facebook, but I feel perhaps it bears posting in here as well, just for posterity's sake.   Ellen knows the gal who is the fill-in editor at the local newspaper, The Buffalo Reflex.  She gave Ellen the questionnaire to fill out for this little blurb they have every week. This came out last week.   Ellen actually got her picture in the paper twice last week.  Here is a closeup of the second one: Only Ellen, who was not scheduled to be on a float in the Buffalo Christmas parade, could end up with her picture in the paper for being on a float in the Buffalo Christmas parade.  We were standing there watching the parade when the OMB (Old Missouri Bank) float went by.  Her coworker there in the green sweater hollered at her to climb on, so off she ran and clambered onto the float.  Gary and I, when it was over, then had to follow the tail end of the parade over to the factory parking lot where it started so we could p...

 The days after Christmas always seem to be a bit of a let down.  After almost 2 months of buildup, it's suddenly finished; leftovers are in various packets in the fridge, Christmas cards need to be trashed or stored for repurposing and some of the toys probably are already broken.   The tree is in the front room hollering to be taken down; though I have enjoyed seeing it set up and lit up this year. Ellen and I went to town yesterday because I wanted to see what sort of after-Christmas sales I could take advantage of.  As it turned out; not any really.  We got to Walmart at about 10 AM, and all the nice ribbons were gone.  If I had needed it; there was plenty of wrapping paper left, but I have quite a bit of that at home already.  We rarely use wrapping paper; mostly we just bung things into gift bags, top it with tissue and voila.  I save most of the tissue, all that hasn't been torn.  And we all save our gift bags and boxes and give them b...

 It is a bit after 7:00 AM.  We are getting ready to rev things up for Christmas.  Gary is off helping Gail do chores.  She gets a free ham from her work, so she fixes the main course at her house.  When he comes back we will do gifts.  After I finish this blog post I will head to the kitchen to do a few kitchen-y things.  Devil the eggs for one.  We also have to make the frosting for the Yule Log/Buche.  All of it is low carb, of course.  And aside from rolling it up, a buche is the easiest dessert to make.   Ellen is in her room doing her "get up" routine.  It is currently 45 degrees outside, and dripping a bit of rain.  It was 53 when we got up, but this weather front is passing over us and the arctic vortex, or whatever term they are calling it now, is following behind it, so the temps are already dropping.  Today is Monday.  The next 3 days after today they are calling for snow.  Ugh.  I wish ...

 Smudge in the window.   Christmas Eve when I was a kid always meant opening presents.  We always opened them that evening.  So did my sister's family.  (Just bear with that idea for a bit.  Haha...I don't want to go off on a rabbit trail here.)  Her mom and family always did a big get together on Christmas Eve evening.   Anyway.  Here is where I run up against it when it comes to Christmas memories.  I do not have any overwhelming memory of specific gifts really.  I seem to remember something about getting this toy called the Sunshine Family.  It was big back in the 70s.  I really wanted them.   I remember there was a family of 3 with a traveling van or something like that.  I was thrilled. I must have been 7 or 8 maybe.  I don't remember. I think I remember birthday presents more than Christmas.  Birthdays always marked milestones.  When we kids turned 10 my dad always got us a new...

 Isn't he cute?  This is the real thing from back in the 60s.  I regret greatly that when my mother stored her Christmas decorations back in the day she used cardboard.  I am not sure how many of these she had originally, but rats in the attic of our storage building destroyed all but the two elves that I now have. At the moment for some reason my Google picture account from my phone isn't jiving with the laptop to show the other elf.  He is solid red. I should write a story about the elderly elf and his survival in the attic.  Haha...  If I were to make it true to life it would, unfortunately, be a horror story.  Imagine watching all your friends being made into rat's nests.  Ugh! At the very least I am glad Ellen has been able to enjoy them and has this small Christmas connection to her maternal grandmother.   To continue on with Christmas memories though...  Fetching and decorating the Christmas tree is my prevailing memory ...

 The picture is just for attention; it's of the sunrise just outside of our back door.  But the cedar trees remind me of the evergreens we had back in California.  We had so many trees on our property, but there were only maybe a handful of deciduous  trees; mostly alder.  The bulk of the trees there are Douglas Fir and that what we used as our Christmas tree.  Though, as I have written about on here several years ago, we didn't use trees from our own property.  My dad would take us up into the mountains there to get our Christmas tree.  We had to get a permit from the Forest Service to cut a tree, of course, but we never saw any forest service official or anything out there monitoring it.  We would often find perfectly good trees that had been cut and then abandoned for a supposedly better tree.  We would take those home, too, sometimes.  We'd "plant" them outside in front of the house.   I remember we would decorate the ...

On Facebook I follow a guy from church, Dan B.  He and his family have a business near town, a gift shop mostly, but they prefer to focus on antique pieces and old timey ways of doing things.  He restores and then sells cast iron cookware, old clocks...etc.  They carry locally made soaps, jams, jellies, honey, candles, and candle wax buttons, hand thrown pottery...all the fun, old-fashioned, or unique gifts you could ever want for Christmas.  In spring they sell seeds, bedding flowers and vegetable plants, flower baskets, potting soil, straw...you get the drift here. Every business day morning he tries to post an update on Facebook as to what they have in stock and what he has been doing.  He has over 6000 followers I believe, which surprised him a bit, I think.  This December he has been putting in a blurb about his Christmas memories of back in the day when he was a little shaver. It has been interesting following his memories and has put me in mind of re...

 For the most part Bella is an outside dog.  She has a snug wooden dog house, lots of hay she scratches out the door so she doesn't have to lay on it, and lots of things to bark at as they pass by; wild animals or stray cats for the most part. But when it is too terribly cold, or when I just don't have time for a long walk I bring her in the house to vary her day, and mine too, of course.   Rarely does she ever lay on the floor like this, unless I've kept her in overnight, then she curls up on a bed of old towels in the bathroom. Her normal routine when she comes into the house is to make a bee-line for the cat's dishes, then inspect the kitchen floors to see what crumbs she might glean, if any.  After that she takes up her vigil at one or the other of the windows. She will just stand and stare outside for awhile at each window in turn.  I can tell when she actually sees something because she will wag her tail.   On one particular  morning la...

My husband has all but accused me of being the above when it comes to Christmas trees. Here, in my own words, is my story: One of my favorite Christmas pastimes as a kid was going to get the tree. Depending on weather conditions and time we would either get one from the National Forest Service land a mile or two from our place, or we’d pack up and go for a long drive into the mountains. We lived in the Pacific Northwest, on the rugged North Coast of Humboldt County. Dad would pack up the old Ford truck, a couple of us kids would pile in and off we would go, further inland, higher up into the wild. Up, up we would go until we’d break through the coastal fog layer into the sun, the fog a roiling gray sea below. And still up we would go. Eventually we’d get to Willow Creek, a town whose fame has something to do with the Bigfoot legend. I remember every year we’d see the town’s life-sized wooden statue of the furry creature, and we’d speculate on the possibility of seeing him fo...

We had a great Christmas. Ellen made out like a bandit, as usual. She was funny this year. For some reason she didn't champ at the bit to open her presents; she'd just ask me which ones were hers, then she'd look at them and then leave them alone. Christmas morning, Gary came straight into the house from the barn with us. He told her we were going to open our present. Ellen held up her hands and said: (and I quote verbatim) "But wait, we need to eat breakfast first." So we delayed the gift opening for an hour; per a 3 year old's wishes. Go figure! So far the gifts she plays with the most are a little toy cell phone from my mother and the little pup-type tent that Gary got for her. We have it set up in her bedroom. We had Christmas dinner here, as usual. I got out my pickled okra and let everyone try it. They all liked it. Gary said when I first told him I was going to make some pickled okra this past summer, he thought I was wasting my time and supp...

Today we got our annual yeast rolls from the School of Metaphysics. The guy made me laugh to myself when he noted; "You have your stove outside in a building without walls. Why?" Apparently he'd never heard of an outdoor wood furnace. I never had either 'til I came here. I told him we heated the house with it, that there are pipes underground. Ellen is excited about Christmas, but she really isn't clamoring to open her presents yet. She asks which ones are hers every day, then she just walks away, apparently reassured that they are there waiting for her. I hope she continues like that every Christmas, but I won't hold my breath. On Sunday night we went to the church Christmas program. The kids did a great job as usual. Afterwards the kids gave out the presents they'd gotten each other. (Having exchanged names a couple of weeks ago.) Ellen got a little box of toys from her Sunday School teacher and a cute FurReal baby chipanzee from her cousin W...

Much has been said; mostly by my mom, that Ellen never takes a bad picture and that she is such a smiley girl. Here is proof that it's not always so. Ha! This was up at her Great Grandpa's place last Sunday. I came home and took the picture I featured below when we got back home. Her aunt wanted to take pictures of her in her Christmas riggings, so I left her dressed up when went there. Ellen was not impressed. She let us know in no uncertain terms that she wasn't in to a photo shoot at the time. Maybe it was because there weren't any presents for her under the tree.