The Merriest of Christmases

 This is the second Christmas in a row that we have spent with one of our kids and family. Last year we were in Pennsylvania with Jessica and her family, this year it is home with Forrest! A start of a tradition? Probably not, but we will enjoy it for now!

Each Christmas Somer buys matching PJs for her, Forrest and Lily. This year, because we were together, we "got" to participate!

We spent the entire Christmas day in our PJ's. Opening presents in the morning, followed by a day of Christmas movies. A nap or two might have been snuck in during the day. 

Yes, even the dogs got gifts. Dog toys and treats. There were a few scuffles as they often wanted the same toy. 

What did we get? I cannot list them all, just the highlights. Lily got keyboard that she played all day long. It was not as annoying as it might sound as it was just background noise as we went about our day preparing Christmas supper (prime ribs and crab legs) and watching movies. 

Shockingly, I received several alcohol related gifts. Not one, but two cocktail smoker kits as Barb and Somer were on the same wavelength but not in communication when it came to gift selection. Forrest and Somer were on the same wavelength with each other.  Both had gold on their minds; Somer when she got him a really nice gold chain. Forrest had two gold wedding bands commissioned by a local artist out of some gold they had. They turned out beautifully! 

What did I get Barb. My favorite item some of you are going to think is pretty weird. Let me begin by telling you about elk teeth. Did you know that elk have two teeth that are actually made of ivory? They are remnants of prehistoric days when elk actually had tusks. I had pulled the two ivories from Barb's elk and had the same artist make a pendant out of them. She loved it!

The next morning, Barb had all signs of Christmas tucked away in their totes and the tree was out the door. It was time to complete the final preparations for our trip and more packing.

The deer decimated the alfalfa bale I put out last month, so it was time for another one, and to fill the feeder. 

Earlier in the week we had some special overnight guests! Farmer Bob and DeAnne stopped by for an overnight stay on their way to their daughter's house in Denver for Christmas. It was a quick, yet enjoyable visit. 

There was one bummer this week though when Barb was filling the wood box while Forrest and I were out hunting. (We ended the muzzleloader season without filling my tag by the way). She was getting wood off the top of row of the outside woodshed when one dropped....right on her foot. Toe to be precise. Second toe in from her baby toe to be preciser (new word there). She said it hurt like hell, a couple hour later totally black and blue. Definitely broke. Do you think she would go to the doctor? Not my stubborn one, no, she just toughed it out. I took a picture of her gnarly grotesque toe. I do not know if it will make the censor, if there is a picture of a disgusting toe following this sentence, she allowed it, if not, she did not....

(She did not, and I actually got in trouble for even considering posting it!)

She could not wear a shoe for several days, but now almost 5 days later she can wear shoes but still limps around. 

So, we are all packed, we leave in an hour or so. Where are we headed? First destination Pennsylvania, via 10 days in Kentucky visiting several (okay, more than several) distilleries along the way!

One Last Hurrah!

 Forrest, Somer and Lily have now been here for almost 3 months now. If you were to have asked me 3 months ago if I wanted one of our kids and their family staying with us for that long I probably would have cringed. Don't get me wrong, we love them all deeply but living that closely with someone for that long when you are used to a somewhat solitary lifestyle can cringe-inducing. 

It is going great though! Daily routines go something like this; Barb and I get up anywhere from 4:30 to 5:30 and spend a quiet morning listening to the news and catching up on blogs. Forrest will come in between 8:30 and 9, Somer shortly after that. Ms. Lily has moved into our upstairs loft area and comes down about 9:30 or so has breakfast and goes back upstairs to do her schoolwork. 

Early on we had activities planned throughout the week but with the colder weather those have slowed down a bit. One of our biggest fears of having them stay this here in the winter was the cold weather freezing up their rig. The weather has cooperated with their rig though fighting through some pretty low temperatures without freezing up. When we had our 5th wheel, we would freeze up with any temperatures under 20° F. Although we had the "Arctic package" we had one waterline that would freeze.

Forrest and Somer have hit single digits and have not frozen so far! How long are they staying? Well, we are leaving on our Great Winter Adventure in less than 7 days, and they will still be here! In fact, they are moving into the house and as of right now they do not have a departure date. Such is the life of nomadic RV'ers.

Speaking of planned activities, one of them this week was to bake Christmas cookies! Barb, Somer and Lily spent almost the entire day last Sunday baking. 

Somer was the baker and Lily was the.... decorator?

We are up to our ears in Christmas cookies! Oh, so delicious!

The weather this week was pretty mild for this time of year, so mild in fact we got the concrete poured for our garage pad! The 3-person team which is usually Kevin, Barb and me, added a fourth with Forrest, making things a little easier. We needed it to as it was a big pour; a 24x48 pad. 

Starting at 7:30am, we did not finish until 7:30pm. It was not 12 hours of constant work, the first 4 hours were constant, then we had to wait for it to harden before doing more work, wait another hour, do more work, another hour, more work..... ending with us putting the blankets on around 7:30 that night. Now, it needs to harden for a week, things dry slower in the winter. 

Nice to have that done! Now we can start work on it when we return in the spring. 

We spent much of the week packing the camper, but we did get out for one last hurrah with Dan, Bonnie, Kevin and Cheryl. We went to The Alpine Inn in Hill City. If you are even in the area, this is a must stop! Several of us also stopped at Miner Brewing Co. which was actually one last hurrah, as they permanently closed on the 22nd.  

The weather actually got up to 55 degrees on Saturday. Kevin came over in the morning spending 3 hours making summer sausage out of his elk meat scraps. Once those chores were done, we needed to get outside and do some ice fishing! As you can see, the ice was melting, so it was a little sloppy. The fish must have been taking the day off as only one small trout was caught, but Lily was the one who caught it!

Setting the alarm for 5am on Sunday I got the summer sausage on the smoker. It typically takes 5-6 hours to get the internal temp up to 160. I needed to get it done early as we were leaving at 10:30 to head to Spearfish for one last hurrah with Ryan and Alana's where we watched the Viking game while the dogs played. 

As you know, Alana is a huge Vikings fan so Barb bought the jersey of every team that is playing the Vikings and tries to sneak it on Sophie sometime during the game. Alana in turn tries to sneak a Vikings jersey on Zoey. Both were successful this trip!

Loki was away at training and Dakota said that she didn't want to go, so she stayed home and relaxed, so it was a little mellower than usual. It was a great visit and game though, and the Vikings won!

Our next post will be after Christmas, so we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas wherever you are. We hope it is filled with joy and happiness!

Finally, one last picture of Jack, Zoey and Dakota hanging out on the couch....

Winner Winner!

A comment by a reader this week reminded me of my time working at J.C.Penney's in the early 80's. The store was in Rosedale mall in Minnesota and my job was to catch shoplifters. Wild times back then, but what the commentor talked about was how Christmas music played nonstop from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Her comment brought flashbacks of not only the music, but the crowds. Oh my god, the crowds in the malls from Thanksgiving to Christmas, wall to wall people in a shopping frenzy to find gifts for their loved ones. My, how times have changed. 

There is talk that malls are on a comeback with the Gen Z'ers. I highly doubt it. I also saw another segment where malls were turned into apartments with some stores scattered among them. I think that is a more realistic use of the space. 

With Barb's elk in the freezer, we have turned our sights to filling my muzzleloader tag. We are hoping to get a mule deer to top off the freezer which means we have to look off our property. Our method is to drive the remote forest service roads trying to spot on and then put the sneak on it. 

Barb and Forrest are alternating driving while I keep a look out. We have seen some beautiful country, but not a mule deer that we want to harvest. While Barb and I were out last time something exciting did happen though. We were well into our hunt, about 40 miles from home and had just passed through the town of Dewey (population 10) when "wham!", we hit something. Barb stopped and we got out to take a look. All we heard was a hiss coming from the rear driver's side tire. We were 20 miles from the nearest town with any facilities so we booked it to see if we could make it before the tire went entirely flat. We did not. We made it about 5 miles. Not a problem, we would just change the tire. That is when we discovered that we did not have the socket necessary to remove the spare from the back of the jeep. Luckily, we had cell service and were able to get a hold of Forrest and have him start our way with the tools we needed. 

Over the next hour and a half, we sat on the side of the road and waited. Two cars went by in that time, one stopped, one did not. Unfortunately, the one who did stop, did not have the tool we needed either. When Forrest did arrive, we had the tire changed and were on our way in about 15 minutes. 

What was in the tire? I am not quite sure yet. It was obvious where the tire was punctured, but as I pulled in it, it just kept growing and I was not able to get it out. Looks like a job for the tire shop.

But that was not our only exciting event for the week! We got out ice fishing a couple of times. Once with just Forrest and I and the next time with everybody. The ice was just barely thick enough at 4-5", it was a little sketchy here and there with the ice cracking and popping. We did not fish right next to each other fearing that our combined weight might just be a little too much for the ice. We did have fun though managing to stay dry and catch a few panfish and trout!

Somer caught the most fish, no one fell, but the cracking ice did have a few people nervous. I know you southerners think we are nuts, and we just might be, but that's what we do! You know what else we do in the Midwest? Make lefsa! Some of you non-Midwesterners, or non-Scandinavians will probably have to look up exactly what lefse is so here is your definition. 

Friends Vicki and Merrell hosted a lefse making party with Vicki doing all the prep work. All we had to do was flatten, cook, drink (which is a requirement while making lefse) and of course eat them! 

Somer and Forrest joined us. Lily stayed home saying she "did not want to listen to old people yap all afternoon". Those were her exact words!

Of course there was lots of snacks, appetizers and no lefse party is complete without a Fireball keg!

Then there was Wednesday bingo which is where the title of this post came from. We had a winner at our table this week! It was the last card of the night called "Cover All" where you need to cover every dot on your card. It is also a progressive jackpot which was up to $1,200 this week if the winner wins by the 56th number called. Otherwise, they win the daily pot of $258. Somer was 2 numbers away from covering her entire card as they called the 50th number. On the 54th number they called one of her remaining numbers and she screamed stopping the entire round while the announcer asked if she had bingo. We all watched in anticipation as they called the 55th and 56th number without calling her remaining spot. So much for the progressive jackpot. On the 58th number they finally called it and she screamed again and started dancing around. 

When the announcer came over to verify her card, Barb snuck this video. Priceless!

A bit of more fun we had this week was working on the foundation for our new garage. With a couple days of warm weather (50 degrees) forecasted, we thought maybe we could get the concrete poured this week. Barb and Forrest laid out and tied rebar while I worked on building a 3' wall on one side.

Unfortunately, the weather turned, and it also snowed so we did not get to pour, but we are ready!

There was more winning on Friday morning when Barb and I attended the grand opening celebration for a new liquor store in Rapid City. Not a big deal you say? It is when they are offering some hard-to-get bourbons for your collection. We left the house at 4:30am in anticipation of this great event. When we arrived, we discovered that we were not the only ones with this in mind. 

When we arrived at 5:45am we were probably 40th in line awaiting the 7:00 opening. The 75-minute wait would not have been a big deal except for the fact that it was only 10 degrees! (-12c). But there was a food truck and a guy pouring bourbon hot chocolate to those waiting in line. 

The store had about 100 allocated (hard to get) bottles waiting for the anxious customers awaiting their opening. Barb and I created a priority list of when we wanted when it was our turn, but at number 40, would any of them still be available?!?! Talking to the other people in line, we learned that the first person got in line about 2:30am. 

We chatted with the people around us about all thing's bourbon, what we already had in our collections and what we hoped to get. We even made some new friends! (That we will probably never see again) The husband/wife couple (Jason and Kristi) behind us were a hoot providing lots of laughs. We took a selfie with Kristi. The guy behind them was a mailman who was supposed to have been at work already. He laughed and said, "I guess everyone's mail will be 40 minutes late today!"

7:00 finally came and the line started moving. As you walk into the store, the allocated bottles were on a table. You have to make your selection quick as the person behind you might reach ahead and steal your selection. Was it worth it? It was worth it for the fun factor in itself, but I was able to score the #1 bottle on my list, a Knob Creek 18 year! Barb went totally off script and picked a bottle "because it was pretty". It was a bottle of Caribou Crossing with a caribou figurine on top. A guy a few behind us was none too happy with Barb's selection as that was his #1 bottle. I guess he should have gotten there 10 minutes earlier!

The last bit of fun we had was last night when we were invited to a preholiday get together. Friends Bob and Barb hosted in their new house. Dan and Bonnie were also there as well as Alan and Elizabeth. Good food, lots of laughs and not a single picture!

I will leave you with a couple of trail cam pictures. I have taken down all my cameras except for the one on the hay bale. This first picture was unedited, it is just crazy what great pictures it takes!

The bucks are still coming around, but mostly at night.

As you can see, the guy above has part of his right antler missing. No doubt from a fight like the one below...

That's it for this week. I just realized that there is not one dog picture of video in this post at all. Sorry Harry, I will try to do better next time!