Life on the farm

Now normally I’m not that fond of Monday’s, but for this week I can honestly say that I love it! See I took a vacation day today and Daryl also has the day off. And then to top that – both boys are also home with their girlfriends. Yup, it is indeed a really good day!

I originally took the day off because I didn’t know if we were going to be able to have our family Christmas Sunday night and if that wasn’t going to work, well Monday was next in line. But we did have a late Christmas at our house on Sunday, so Monday morning was spent getting stuff organized and then later on Kyle and Kelcie headed to Des Moines and William and Jude went to her parents house. So the afternoon was pretty much free for Daryl and I. And guess how we spent the rest of the day? If you guessed with a traveling salesperson – you were correct! I was upstairs cleaning and then I heard the door bell ring. Now Daryl and I were just talking this morning that the FedEx guy was going to go through withdrawals at our house now that Christmas is over – but I knew that William was waiting for one more gift. So when the door bell rang I didn’t think much of it until I kept hearing a conversation in our kitchen – and much longer than I was sure that the FedEx guy wanted to have. So down the steps I go to investigate. And in our kitchen stood a guy with a large bag that had pictures in it. This salesman was traveling the area trying to sell farm pictures. Having someone travel around selling farm pictures is almost as common as the gate guy driving around selling gates. I’m guessing that some people haven’t really heard of either one of these things – but for us on the farm it’s not that uncommon. So now the dance begins. How much does he want for the picture? Well, it’s been about 30 years since we bought a picture of the farm and the picture he was trying to sell was actually even a good one. Sometimes when they want you to buy a picture the house is cut out or it’s the worst year for crops in that decade and your farm is surrounded by brown corn, you know.. bad things on a picture. But I had to hand it to him. The picture looked good! Well he wasn’t someone who just started to sell these pictures because it took a lot to have him tell me just actually how much he wanted for it. But little did he know that I also watch the Pawn Stars on TV and I’ve seen how the Old Man and Rick operate, so I know how this whole thing works! So after quite a bit of haggling and Daryl even left the room at one point, we did come to an agreement for price. I don’t know if he was so happy with it or not, but it was a fair price and I was OK with it. And just as I was heading back upstairs I could hear the door bell again. I thought, just what does this guy want now? And then just as I was coming back down the stairs I saw it was the FedEx guy.

And what a great day!

Mom’s Christmas was starting at noon for anyone who could make it for dinner, so around 11:00 I headed over to see what I could help with. She had pretty much everything under control and to be honest I might have just been more in the way than I was helping! It didn’t take long and then all of our family started to roll in. At first we try to catch the door and help because people are coming in with presents and food and kids. And with two new babies in our family this year – that’s always fun! Needless to say when those families came, well the babies are usually snatched by someone right away. It’s kind of funny how that works isn’t it? There was a lot of conversation about just how many of our family actually were at Mom’s this year and the amount was around 50.  What a great turnout! All the grandchildren were there and we were missing only one great grandchild.

The little kids get their gifts first and then off they go to play!

This is the first year that her Christmas wasn’t scheduled right on Christmas and I’m thinking she kind of scored! Tons of food and tons of fun! After eating literally a couple of times and getting way too many gifts, we did the White Elephant exchange. If you’re not familiar with this exchange, what you do is you bring a gift and into a pile it goes. First you draw numbers then we have to discuss the rules. Seriously sometimes the rules take a long time to discuss because they kind of change year to year. And did they change this year? You bet! But I think this was the best year for the rules that we used. This years rules were that we started with the number above Ma and then kept going until we got around to Ma again. Everyone can either pick a gift from the pile in the middle or steal someone else’s gift, but the gift can only be stolen twice. Now there’s a lot of funny business going on within each family and there are game plans discussed I think before they come to Christmas. But that’s what makes the game fun! And how did our family turn out? Well let’s just say it wasn’t our first rodeo either 🙂 (Thanks Jude!) With Ma being the last one, her rules were a little different. She could take anyone’s gift in the room, no matter how many times it was stolen. And did she steal someone’s gift – You bet! Well the game eventually was over and out the food comes again to eat again before we all headed back home. Her house got picked up and dishes were done and soon her house didn’t look like 50 people invaded it for the day!

Ma and the boys

Then back home our family went to have our Christmas. It was around 7:30 and we all went to put on sweat pants and t shirts. We said that we wanted to get more comfortable, but I’m thinking it’s because we all probably ate too much at Ma’s! We exchanged gifts within our family and opened up Santa’s gifts for the boys. Santa gifts are still kept a secret in our family.   Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I call our kids ‘the boys’ ??

Opening gifts at our house

At the end of the night and with Kyle’s new stereo playing some retro music in the background – I headed to the bathtub to soak for a little while. When I finally crawled into bed and pulled up the covers to go to sleep,  I was going over the details of the day in my mind. Now I know that I had this dumb grin on my face just thinking on how well it all turned out. I think getting ready for Christmas is pretty much like football teams getting ready for the Superbowl. You rally your team when the season begins, you help each other when one of your team looses faith in the final goal, there are some days when you’re sore and tired and not sure you can keep going on, and then the final day is here! You look back at all the preparation that you did and no matter on the outcome on the final day – it’s all OK. It was just getting there with your team that made it all worth while.

Merry Christmas!

Daryl and William took off early this morning to head to Chicago to pick up Kyle who was flying in from Korea and also to pick up his friend who was flying in from New York. And while they were gone all I wanted to do was to keep my head on straight and plunge forward. I had a lot to do today and needed to get everything done on my list. No backing out on today’s stuff – it’s crunch time baby!!

First things first, I made my list. Then put some laundry in the washer and started to work on the dishes. Now I really wish I would have counted how many times the dish washer was used today. I was putting dirty dishes into it and the inside was still warm most of the day! Thank goodness for dishwashers right? Well I worked most of the day in the kitchen and one of the things that I did was trying to figure out just how in the world to make these two huge turkey breasts that I had. My roaster book (which should be the law) said that it should only take about 2 1/2 hours each. OK, I’ll put one in and then when that one is done – in will go the second one. Well let’s just say that the old roaster book lied! It ended up taking around 5 hours to get to the correct temperature. At first I was really worried that I might be getting it too dry – but then I wasn’t so worried about that and I just wanted them cooked. I also made a couple of batches of candy for some platters that I’ll need and made a couple pumpkin rolls for William. The next thing to make was some breakfast bake to put in the refrigerator for the morning. Now to make some beef jerky. I knew that I would need quite a bit, so I had made a 6 x batch. Now any odor of pine from our Christmas tree is so gone and we’ve got all our cats and the neighbor cats just hanging around our front porch tonight. The smell of beef jerky brings them in for miles. I made a mad dash to bring back recycling and then off to the grocery store for those last minute items. The kid who was helping me with loading my groceries into my car must not have realized that I only gave myself 45 minutes to get to town and back. Yea, he was just chatting away and so I ended up helping him load my groceries in the car to move him along. I’m guessing that he wasn’t so impressed with my ‘helping’. Back home to finish up a couple of things and then to get the floor steamed. I haven’t used our floor steamer for awhile and let’s just say that maybe I should use it more often. Chores got done and a couple of more gifts wrapped. Now it’s almost midnight and I’m off to finish the last of the gifts for tomorrow’s Christmas at Ma’s. Daryl and the kids should be home around 1:30 in the morning so I need to get busy so I’m done by the time they get home!

The photo of the day is one that William sent from the airport. His caption was “Look who I found” Love it!

The boys at the airpot

I’ve been working on decorating the Christmas tree these past couple of days and tonight I finally had a chance to get out the ornaments and start hanging them up. I did get most of them hung but I still needed some garland or something. This tree is kind of lacking in some excitement. The reason I haven’t hung any garland is because I keep thinking what the tree would look like with popcorn garland strung instead. OK, I know that this is a big job and honestly I feel like I’m about two weeks behind now! But I’m just saying it would look pretty cool with the popcorn. So while I was working on the tree and hanging the ornaments, I was wondering just what actually makes the tree the best Christmas tree ? Is it the popcorn garland or the height of the tree? I don’t think so. I’m thinking it’s when you look at the tree and you see all the mix matched ornaments – you remember the Christmas’s from the past. Yup, that’s what I think. So as I’m looking at the tree and I see the brass ornaments that we got when we were first married and some more the boys had got when they were born, I see a couple of home made ornaments that we were given, or the ones that the kids made when they were in grade school. But are you wondering which one is my favorite? Well my favorite is a little star that I macramed when I was a lot younger. I think I must have been around 16? and was really into macrame. Not only at the time was I working on the large lamp’s that hung from the ceiling – but I also made a couple of the little stars for Christmas. Now who would have thought that after all these years that this would bring back so many memories for me? Well, when your’e 16 I’m guessing that it wasn’t something that I was thinking about. Boys maybe – but Christmas memories 35 years from then? Yea, I’m thinking not!   But I can almost see myself sitting in my parents back parlor with the macrame board on my lap just working away.  Kinda cool that something so simple can make you smile isn’t it? What a great tradition a Christmas tree is.