Christmas and New Year

Christmas was a quiet affair. We volunteered at the food bank on Christmas Eve. We enjoyed that and of course it was nice to give back.  We started Christmas morning at home with our gifts. As usual grandparents were very generous and I got Sidney a dash robot as her big gift.  The cat got her a drinking bird and stormy got her pajamas. The fish got her Newtons cradle (the thing with 5 balls that go back and forth). 

Example of re-use....

After breakfast we relaxed and made green bean casserole before going over to some friends for lunch. After that we went and visited with Kirk for a while. He is stilling doing fine. No changes one way or another. 

The day after Christmas we took care of business around the house and got ready to head to my parents in Colorado Springs?  We left on Tuesday and drove straight through. It isn't a hard drive but nearly 900 miles so I was pretty wiped out.  It was Stormy's first road trip and I think she was confused but she did good.  She liked my parents house.  She can run down one set of stairs to the basement and up another in a big circle.  She liked the yard and the fact that there were squirrels.  She was very proud that she chased one up a tree. 

Grandma made chili for dinner and although it was tasty, it was insanely hot.  After dinner we figured out the problem because she has made it before and it wasn't deadly.  She needed to add garlic and she has some in a jar in the fridge.  In the same bin and same shaped bottle, she also has horse radish.  Let's just say several tablespoons of horse radish goes a long ways....

Wednesday was just a hang around the house day.  I took Stormy for a walk and Sidney to the playground.  We also picked up some crab legs and brussel sprouts for dinner.  My dad steamed the crab and I roasted the sprouts. 

We met their church pastor on Thursday. We had never met Father Chris and enjoyed getting to know him and his wife a bit.  We also met Twix, their rescue dog from San Antonio. They had him for only two days when we visited. He was very sweet. 

Friday was our busiest day.  We picked up Andrew, my step sister, Kate's son and went to the wolf rescue. We have been there before. Sidney really likes it. We had the regular tour and the wolves were quite vocal this time. I do wonder what their future is as most of their wolves are getting old and they haven't gotten any new ones in a while. I guess that is good in some ways in that wolves aren't being injured, etc. The wolf debate is far from over however.  

After we got back from the wolves we walked Andrew home.  We got to see Kate's 18 chickens.  She has some funny looking birds.  She gets 6 to 10 eggs a day.  We carried home 6 in our pockets, kind of. One of the ones in Sidney's pocket didn't make it.... you can imagine.  We later got a dozen more to bring home.  Small ones, big ones and brown ones. Sidney was very happy. We even had breakfast for dinner that night.

We spent our last day also hanging around the house.  My other step sister Davetta came over.  It was nice to see her and that means we only didn't see Julie this trip.  I went out to pick up dog doo before we left and was lucky enough to find squirrel jerky.  There was a dead, dehydrated flat squirrel in the side yard.

Sunday was the long drive home.  Google maps lead me on a crazy backwoods route but it was shorter than the route up there and good roads so it worked.  That was New Year's Day.  Sidney got to go to school the next day but I had the day off. A rare treat that she had to work and I didn't. 

We have had two swim meets. Sidney did really well in the 100 free at one cutting a good amount of time off.  All the other events have been hit or miss.  We have also been back to the food bank.  This time we sorted frozen meat.  That was interesting. 

Sidney also had her piano festival. She is learning some lessons the hard way. She has not been practicing well and did not earn a superior ribbon this year. Hopefully she will learn from that.  

Work has been crazy.  I had hoped things would settle some but that seems to be a dream....

I went for a run in the park one morning in January when our temperatures were near freezing.  In several places I found ice sculptures like these.  They were not every where. Only where it seemed there could be wind and shade and at the base of only some plants. It had drizzled some the day and night before. I was fascinated by the shapes and forms. 

Finally Sidney loves science.  They are doing a lot of anatomy and physiology this year. They dissected frogs a few weeks ago.  She was terribly excited because she got to put her finger in its mouth.