Our First Real Frost and Other Thoughts

Looking outside it almost looks like an ice storm hit last night. It’s our first heavy frost of the season and the sunshine is giving it a beautiful twinkle. If it weren’t so cold out, I’d grab the camera and go take pictures. Instead, I’ll just enjoy it while it lasts inside near the wood stove.

I talked to oldest daughter dumpling last night. This year for Christmas, each of the four older kids had a donation made to Heifer International in their name instead of getting a bauble of some sort from us. While it was obvious, she wasn’t overly impressed with her gift; she did finally admit that the thought of giving a farm animal to someone needy was pretty cool. (One down, three more to hear from.)

Oldest son told me he had to work a double shirt at work on Christmas day (instead of going to someone else’s house) and again on New Years day. He works as a manager of a waffle house type place and it seems those are the two busiest days of the year.

I find that kind of sad. Seems like especially Christmas should be spent with family and friends and that some people don’t stop to think that if they are going to places like that – it means the workers there are missing out on those times. Oh well, he did say he would probably make a chunk of change in tips, so he’s not too unhappy about that.

Our Christmas is just going to be the two of us. Hopefully cutting lumber, at least that is the plan of the moment. We still have a few logs to move and have to move the sawmill itself to the platform we built, but it would be so cool to have another huge stack of lumber air-drying by Monday morning. That indeed would be a fine present for both of us.