Christmas Tree 2024

We got our Christmas Tree from the same place we always get it... Adams Nursery on Sheridan Drive. We got the tree a few days ago on Tuesday and then decorated it the following day so it's been up a few days now.

We've been getting slightly smaller trees over the past few years that fit better in our house and between the chairs in the front room. The trees have been looking good. We were a little surprised at Adams when there wasn't the usual large selection of trees this year. Maybe people were buying them earlier. We did find a good one and we're happy with the way it looks.

Becky put on the lights and I did most of the ornaments. We know the kids will enjoy the tree. They always love our broad and eclectic collection of ornaments.

We were expecting Katie and the kids to arrive today but Todd has been sick so they are taking their time driving up to Buffalo and should be here tomorrow.

Christmas Blue Lights

We got the blue lights up in the front room and they look amazing as usual. The kids love the images the lights make on the walls and ceiling. 

And More Snow...

Are we going to have a White Christmas this year? Probably not. We keep getting snow but in small amounts like yesterday. Just enough to cover everything for a day or so with a couple of inches of snow and then it melts away. 

This morning we woke up to another coating of snow but they say it won't last very long. I've been shoveling the sidewalk a lot this season but there has never been enough snow to make me get out the snow blower which I usually do when it gets to be six inches or more. So far this winter there has only been 1 to 2 inches at a time. I like going out and getting a little exercise shoveling the snow.

Cookie Time Again

Becky's been making Christmas cookies the past several days as is usual this time of year. This year she did something different. She did a lot of prep work earlier than usual. She made a lot of cookie dough and then put it in the freezer for later use. She did that for several kinds of cookies.

Then she took the dough out of the freezer and baked the cookies after cutting them up. This made a big difference in the amount of time she spent on cookies as it got closer and closer to Christmas.

She also didn't make quite as many different kinds of cookies this year as she has done in the past.

She was doing some of the prep work a week before Christmas

Some Beer for the Holidays

Got a couple of 12 packs of beer for the holidays. One was a selection from Resurgence Brewery and the other was a pack of non-alcoholic beers from Best Day Brewing. 

The non-alcoholic beers from Best Day are very good craft beers including a nice Kolsch, a Hazy IPA and a West Coast IPA.

The beers from the Resurgence Buffalo 12 pack included Buf IPA, Flats & Drums Pale Ale, Loganberry Wit and Sponge Candy Stout. 

I have a feeling there will be a lot of this leftover after our dinner and it's going to take me quite a while to finish it off over the winter. I just don't drink as much beer as I used to and often will have an NA instead of a regular beer or maybe one of each over the course of an evening.

Holiday Wine Stash

Becky went over to the liquor store at Wegman's today and stocked up on some wine for the holidays. We already had some on hand but she bought several more bottles including our special Koenig German wine and some of my favorite Under The Tuscan Sun.

The photo is our wine drawer when pulled out.

Snow... All Day

It has been snowing all day. When we got up this morning it was snowing and it hasn't stopped at all for any amount of time. That should be a lot of snow for a December 20th but... maybe we got an inch over the last twelve hours or so today. Nothing has accumulated. It just comes down and melts away. It's all very slushy but nothing is sticking.

I went out to shovel the snow a little and it was kind of a joke. It had been snowing all day and I wanted to clear off the steps which were covered but not much. I thought I would get rid of the little bit of snow there was on the sidewalk so that it wouldn't freeze later. It took all of about two minutes.

It's supposed to keep on snowing into the night but still not expecting much to accumulate. Very odd for this time of year.

Those Burgers

We love the burgers from Dash's and especially on some nice brioche rolls. Instead of her usual home fried potatoes she cooked up some of those sweet potato yams that she had brought home for Thanksgiving but didn't use. We've been eating a lot of them lately and they are great. Nice salad too.

New Stove Time?

Our kitchen stove is old. We bought it as a replacement for the crappy stove that was in the house when we moved here in 1997. We got this stove several years later probably around 2001 or 2002. I know our current stove is over 20 years old. So why is it probably time for a new stove? First of all we have started smelling a faint trace of gas when the oven is lit. The smell only last a minute or so but it is enough to cause concern and means that maybe when we light the stove there is a puff a gas released before it is lit. The oven does light right away and stays lit. 

One of the burners has needed to be lit by hand for several years now. We have a lighter handy in the adjacent drawer to fire up that one burner. The others work fine. There are some rust spots on various parts of the stove. It is time to get a new stove.

We also have been wanting to replace the hood over the stove for some time. The light doesn't work and the fan is erratic. We have had to set up a desk lamp next to the stove to provide enough light to see what's cooking on the stove. So when we replace the stove we will also replace the hood light and fan.

Another School Shooting

Another school mass shooting happened this week. This time it was a young girl shooting her classmates. Apparently only 3% of mass shooters in America are female. But here again there was a troubled teenager with access to guns. 

This shooting was at a Christian school. Makes the thoughts and prayers mantra sound particularly sick. The shooter also shot herself in the head following the attack on the other students in the school.

There have been 488 mass shooting cases in the United States in 2024 according to the database of the anti-gun violence group Gun Violence America (GVA). 

Shots have been fired in schools This was the 323rd school shooting this year according to the national K-12 School Shooting Database. This is our sick American society. Nowhere in the world is there another country with the gun violence of America. Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in the USA.