I hope you all had a Merry Christmas! We went to spend most of Christmas day with my folks, who live a few miles away. We got up later than usual (it’s nice to have the chance to sleep in!) and had a nice big home made breakfast. Around noon we headed to my folk’s house, with a nice corn pudding dish to share at the big family meal. Almost all of my close relatives were there, and we had a nice big turkey meal with all of the trimmings, and had a nice gift exchange. The roads were tricky getting to and from the gathering, but I had my studded snow tires on my four wheel drive truck, so we were all set. It snowed off and on during the day, which I thought made it seem even MORE Christmassy.
Today is the winter solstice – the longest night, and shortest day of the year. I have to say that I’m glad to see it. This is the official first day of winter, too. I’ve always thought that the first day of winter should be earlier than it is – with the solstice marking winter half-way through, but no one asked my opinion on the matter! I find it interesting that it will continue to get colder over the next couple of months, even though we will be getting more sunshine. Seems a little bit paradoxical to me. Oh well, I’m just glad that I don’t have to be driving home in the dark for many more weeks. I don’t like driving home after work in the dark because I am tired and all of the other cars lights bother my eyes. Driving TO work in the dark doesn’t seem to bother my eyes so much; I guess it’s because I’m fairly rested in the morning.
I decided to order more food from the Angel Food Ministry this week. Because of the Holiday schedule, the pickup is a week earlier than usual, so I have to go pick it up at the local community center this Saturday. Since their basic package is supposed to feed a family of four for a whole week, I’m thinking about ordering two basic packages next month to last us longer. The food so far has been very good quality and you can’t beat the price, so I’m thinking this will help to stretch the food budget tremendously. I suggest that anyone who is looking for ways to do that check them out – there are no financial records to disclose, anyone can order.
Well today we put up our Christmas tree. It’s an artificial one. I used to really prefer the live ones, but as I have gotten older I have started to appreciate NOT having to go out and try to hunt for the perfect tree. My kids are grown and don’t participate in that “ritual” anymore, so I really like the convenience of just grabbing the box and hauling it to the living room and setting it up. This particular tree is about 7′ tall, and is pre-lit with white lights. It is really easy to put together – it is only in three parts. We used to have a tree that was a zillion parts and not pre-lit and it started to fall apart a couple of years ago so I got rid of it. I really like how easy this newer tree is to put up! Just snap the three pieces together, plug in the plugs and start to hang the decorations!
I have to say that all of the food that we’ve tried so far from the Angel Food Ministries order that we picked up a couple of weekends ago has been very good. I understand that we have to order again by this weekend to pick up the December supply the next weekend. We’re going to order the regular box and one of the fruit specials. We got some fruit from the last shipment and it was really excellent! Not a single bruise on any of the apples at all! Now I don’t usually just grab an apple and eat it, but we’ve been slicing them up and putting them on the table at supper time along with some strawberry cream cheese fruit dip and they have been disappearing very quickly! So I suspect that will happen again with the next batch of fruit! The amount of food, and the quality of food, makes the Angel Food Ministry food a bargain! I highly recommend it!