Home again, home again, Jiggity Jig

Home Again.........Jiggity Jig........I am not sure what that chant from my childhood really means.  I have been feeling guilty about reading all your blogs and being a blog-slug myself on winter evenings.  So I will finish off with pictures that ended our Christmas holiday on the other side of North America and then go into some things for the beginning of 2014.  I am catching up AGAIN.  I don't know why it bothers me to get 3 weeks behind but it does. My son says I am 'anal'  but I don't know what that means. Maybe catching up is hard because I leave out some observations that were important to me.  I am listening to Ray Charles right now as he sings "It's Crying Time Again".  Maybe he is not a good choice for blogging about separating from family, AGAIN.  It may be another year or more until we see them again.  So I just switched to Enya.

Christmas morning was delightful for us to watch of course. Both girls wanted bean bag chairs for watching TV.  They take up a lot of the living room now.
Their Auntie Karen (home from teacher training at University and a week's holiday in New York City) stayed the night and helped with the Christmas Eve carol service and stocking the presents under the tree.Her boyfriend showed up the next day with the rest of the family for the turkey feast.  Our son was delighted to receive a range finder and camouflage gear for his bow hunting hobby.

On the last day we finished our third jigsaw of the holidays.   Jacklyn had the honour of adding the last piece that had been hiding under the sofa.  This one was the most difficult one we did over the holidays, due to all the different shades of white and gray.

It was callled "Following Santa's Footsteps".  

We left on the 27th knowing we would not be able to do family joys like this again for a few years, unless we win the lottery.  I had a hard time holding back the tears when we finally had to go.  We had also caught the youngest's cold.  Old Man Watching had it for 3 days before we flew out, so really wanted his own bed and space and quiet.  I started to feel it coming on the day we were leaving, so dosed myself with zinc lozenges.  That really seem to minimize the severity of any illness for me.  The two flight stop-overs going down in altitude and back up out of Winnipeg and Edmonton didn't help our ears at all, at all.  Ouch and ouch again.  

And here is the front yard with the Museum across the road, which is closed for the winter.  This is what we woke up to the next day after arriving back home on the west coast and driving inland for 6 hours.    But at least we were home.

The bad news was that our rent-to-buy fellow who had been in our house for a year and said he still was working on a down-payment at Halloween, left on New Years Eve as he bought a little house a few blocks away.  So we are back to square one and have to find another renter or preferably sell the cottage on the river.  

These nutcracker decorations disappeared from our front entrance a few days ago.  It truly means Christmas is over.

In our empty house/cottage for sale

we have a roll top desk that originally came from the Rand and Leopold Desk Co. in Burlington Iowa U.S.A.  Old Man's father picked it up at an auction after the war.  His mother, Eleanor, used it on the ranch, and then I have used it for 25 years also.  It is too big for our living quarters now.  I need to find a buyer.  It has secret compartments at the back of each drawer.  The roll top still works and the key locks it.  Come and get it, somebody please.  

Hello 2014.  I took some time to write 2014 on the top of my cheque books so that I won't forget over the next few months.  We so seldom use cheques these days.  The last time I went to order some they wanted $50 for a box of them.  So I guess when these run out that will be that, for paper transactions for me.  Another era disappears.  It makes me feel insecure to not be able to write a cheque in an emergency.