Dec 26th - Post Christmas

I am pretty bah, humbug during Christmas time. I enjoy family getting together, and of course the eating <GRIN>, but the commercialization of Christmas has gotten totally out of hand. I am grateful that Lydia was able to receive all the gifts, and more importantly the love, but I feel sad for all the children who received neither. There has to be a better way for us to do more "sharing the wealth" than government forced income redistribution. (There is a lot more to "sharing the wealth" than just handing over money or presents. Teaching the parents the value of work and to be self-supporting would go a long way to solving our nations problems.) Okay, now I'm off my soapbox.

Doug and Anthony came Tuesday afternoon and left this morning. It was good to be able to spend some time with them. They stayed in our motor home. Doug called it the "chateau on the hill". The first night they didn't have any water because I had "winterized" it and didn't want to put water back in it since the low Tuesday night was supposed to be zero, or below. I added water Wednesday so that they had all the conveniences of home. Doug said it was warm enough Tuesday night even though it did get down to at least 2 degrees. Only one bedroom slide was out and I've posted previous photos of the straw bale skirting.

We had ice on the trees until this morning. Doug and I were out back around 9 AM. The the dripping from the melting ice sounded like it was raining. The photo below doesn't even come close to showing how beautiful it has been when the sun was shining with all the ice on the trees.

This was Christmas evening after Lydia was in bed and after Santa had arrived.

Christmas morning.

Lydia is "sweeping" with her new vacuum.

Today after a hearty lunch of vegetable soup Lydia was enjoying a piece of candy that Aunt Cindy & Uncle Ed sent.

I am so blessed to be able to enjoy my family. Drew wasn't here but we did email back and forth to update one another. He recently hosted an open house for his 2nd anniversary in his home. 80-90 people attended, about a fourth of whom lived within a few blocks of him. He has spent some money on his home, and put a LOT of sweat equity into improvements, and it appears that it has paid off handsomely. Last December the house on south side of him sold for $450,000. It was remodeled and had an addition put on after we were out there. The house on the north side of him, which is in terrible condition, is now on the market for $290,000. Both houses are larger than his but the improvements in the neighborhood bode well for the value of his property. While I don't put a lot of stock in their estimates it is comforting to see that the Zillow real estate web site values his home at over twice what he paid for it.

Nothing much planned for the next couple of days. We are tentatively planning on spending 2-4 weeks somewhere along the Texas Gulf coast, maybe near Corpus Christi, starting in late January. We will see how things work out.

I hope you had an enjoyable holiday. May God bless you and yours.