2009 Starts With Bang... I'm Dead

So remember the post yesterday of the glum faced Husband standing upright.... you know like a vacuum cleaner? If you can't remember have a quick look. Ok. So you've had a look and now you remember. Well here he is today. He can't stand up. Not only can he not stand up he cannot walk. He is now an invalid.

For the last two weeks Hubby has been fighting a problem with his back. He has a slipped disc and is supposed to have an appointment with a surgeon in April. This was fine until while horking hay on the 27th he hurt his back and decided that taking it easy might be the ticket. His back started to improve over the next few days and then he sneezed on New years Eve Day and really did it in. But he was still mobile. Last night his aching back died... and I mean died. He went upstairs and lay down before supper and when he got up to go to the bathroom his hips would not support him and he couldn't walk. Problem is he would not listen to his body and so proceeded to get half way down the stairs before his back totally died. I managed to get him to the bathroom with the help of my great grandfathers cane but that is where the buck stopped. He colapsed on the floor, flat on his stomach with his pants still around his knees. This was terrible as the Daughters would need therapy if they caught sight of his nether regions. I managed to get his pants and gaunchies off and his PJ bottoms on him with much laughter and groans of pain. Then with comments of how he was feeling very snake like today he slithered on his belly as far as the computer chair. Tootsie our small Shi-Tzu decided that this was some kind of game and proceeded to lick Hubby's face thoroughly. When he got to the computer chair he managed to get to his hands and knees. Then very carefully and very slowly he crawled to the bedroom. He has been there ever since.

Robaxacet is our friend and we are happy to have it come and stay with us for the next while. But Robaxacet can only help Hubby. I am now the sole farmer in the house. This is not necessarily a good thing since only five years ago I had surgery for a slipped disc myself. I know my limitations. Horking hay day after day in - 40 temps is not conducive to good health in my back either. Meanwhile Honeydew the runnawy llama is now caught but at the rodeo grounds where she is not welcome to stay. I have to get her home and I can't back a trailer for love or money. How this is going to happen I haven't quite gotten my mind around yet.

Then there is Dad, my Dad, who is requiring support too. Hubby and I bought him an electric recliner with a lift to help support him with his back and heart problems. The chair arrived at the local Sears outlet yesterday and so I have to figure out how to get that to their home without doing myself in. This should be interesting..... Stay tuned.....

Glum Faces

I might hate Christmas but I love Christmas break. With Hubby a teacher and the Daughters still in school the school year dictates how we live. Today is the first day of school after a two week Christmas vacation and no one is happy.
The morning started with the cat biting me when he decided to wake the girls up early. Something that is certainly not welcome. Then waking the girls at 7 a.m. was not pleasant. Daughter #2 got saucy with her Dad and had to be reprimanded and I had to make lunches. This is never a good thing. I hate making lunches.

With the school dictating our year, we find that celebrating New Year's on Jan 1st with the rest of the world does not fire us up. We are more likely to have a celebration at the end of June than we are at the end of January. Our year begins in September, the Tuesday after Labour Day weekend. Our most wonderful vacation is summer vacation when we can give up the misery of waking early and making lunches and can fully particpate in life. We also enjoy spring break. Christmas is just a much needed rest after a fall of exhausting work, colds and stomach ailments, report cards, homework, and those dreaded lunches.... still it is a break and I for one am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So to all the teachers out there wo are heading back to school and to the kids who are their children and especially to the Mom's of those kids, the wives of those husbands..... we salute you! Just remember there are only 112 days of school left. Yeah!

Movies Galore

We are into the movie time of Christmas vacation. I love watching movies and with the temperatures making it unbearable to go out for any length of time, we have taken to glueing ourselves in front of the TV. In the last few days we have watched lots of movies. Hubby can only take movies so much before he starts to get a little on the loonie side so while it has been a marathon of movies it hasn't been our best marathon by any stretch of the imagination.

We watched 88 Minutes last night with Al Pacino. It was a fast paced murder mystery that I would say was high on tension and well done but the plot was nothing extraordinary. Before that we watched Raising Helen which was a light hearted transition movie. On a scale of 1 - 10 it rated about 6. Typical story of a person who goes through life changes and realizes that she likes the changes in the end.

We watched Dutchess which is a period piece with Kiera Knightly. Quite well done based on a true story. Before that was Grease 2 Bleck! But it passed the time and you need a good mix of things to entertain you. Before that was Pirates of the Caribean.... we've seen it about 30 times now. Before that was Vanity Fair with Reece Weatherspoon. Well done period piece again. How did those women back then ever put up with their slavery to men? Beats me. Then it was Girls Just Want To Have Fun which made me feel old because Helen Hunt was about fourteen years old in it as was Sarah Jessica Parker. Very corny movie super for teens. Before that was Hilary Duff in Raise Your Voice. The girls liked that one since it was a typical teeny bopper movie. Before that was Prince Caspian which strayed from the booksomewhat. I would think that it would make C.S. Lewis turn over in his grave but I liked it all the same. I'm a complete fan of the Narnia series of books. So today we are going to watch Leatherheads which is a story about Football in the thirties....

If you have suggestions for movies that you have watched let me know as I would love to get your opinion on good movies. Just leave your opinion in the comments area of this post.

Holy Sheep! It's cold!

I look out my kitchen window and cringe at the mercury dropping. It is a whopping -37 this morning and then I go to my living room window and look out at my poor sheep and alpacas who are suffering in these bitter temperatures. Hubby went out a few days ago and built the alpacas a windbreak with square bails of hail. They seem to quite like it. But they are cold. They are very cold. Even with those wonderfully warm blankets of wool covering their bodies they must still suffer from the cold. We feed them twice a day but sometimes food doesn't make you warm. The sheep are not interested in the barn at all which is what I figured. It will come in handy down the road in spring when we are lambing.

I'm sure humankind was not meant for these kind of temperatures. Like lizards we should know our place and stay in warmer climates. I could definitely relate to a lizard on a rock in some tropical locale with my back roasting in the sun. Open my lips and stick out my tongue and grab a bite as it flies by. Nourishment, warmth and relaxation all combine to make the perfect life. I'm sure my alpacas were trying to tell me the same thing this morning as I fed them their daily quota of clover.

I wonder if it is these extreme cold temperatures which we have to endure each year that makes spinners and weavers so in love with their woolies. I can't imagine how spinners and weavers in the southern climes can manage to justify their fixation on fleece when they don't have cold temps to use as an excuse. "Darling I need to knit myself a new alpaca bikini." just doesn't sound as good as, "Dear, think how lovely that alpaca hat with the ear flaps will feel when the temperature dips to -40 next winter."

I also want to know if Murphy came to visit your house this festive season too. I mean the kids have been off from school for two weeks and I am wondering why the week they finished school the temperatures dipped below -20 and stayed there the whole time they have been off from school. Monday the schedule gets back to normal and the kids will be back in school. I just checked the forecast and the temperatures are supposed to start rising again... back up to minus single digits. So the poor teachers are going to get wired kids that have not been out through the door for two weeks and have had lots of Christmas chocolate. Murphy is certainly not their best friend either.

The one thing I can safely say is.... thank God the days are getting longer. Hopefully January will pass quickly and the temps will come around to something a little happier.

By the way.... what do you think of the blue and yellow of my blog for these frigid days of winter?

Happy hibernating to all..... I'm off to work on my alpaca sox to keep my toesies warm.

A Nice Break

Well It has been a week since I last posted anything here and I'm starting to feel like I'm having DTs. Christmas has always been a trying time at best and to be honest I'm glad it is over. All the entertaining is done. And while I love to cook for my guests I always feel like a bulldozer has run over me when I'm finished.

By the way Happy New Year to all those who read this. Last night I entertained my last guests for the season. Eight of the Candian Rangers came to my house for supper on their way through to FSJ on a recce for a snowmobile trip that will happen in late January. Eight burly men with my family of four meant a very tight squeeze in my very tiny little house. It all went off well. I served Lake Trout in white wine and sauted veggies with the good old standard of mashed spuds for the main course. With Raisin, Cranberry, Bread Pudding with Bailey's in it for dessert, no belly felt empty afterwords. I think they enjoyed it and were most appreciative that they didn't have to eat sandwiches from a package that they got at a service station since there were no restaurants open on New Year's Eve in our little town. They were out the door by 9 p.m. which meant that my family was able to ring in the New Year with just ourselves. How perfect is that!

There has been a lot of entertaining here over the last week like most people, I'm sure. We had a open house on the 29th that started at 9 a.m. and ended at midnight. We entertained many of our friends that day. Hubby and I enjoyed our 17th anniversary in the last week too. While we didn't do anything spectacular (we will plan something great later in the spring) we did have a good day. Entertainment wise though, the day that stood out as the best was the 27th when a close friend of mine and her DH came for dinner and we had a lovely time with them. Before that there were wonderful gifts under the tree, though Hubby's still haven't arrived in the mail..... but that's a whole other post. Christmas dinner was held at my parents house as my father was not well enough to come to my house. We cooked the turkey and lugged the great big thing in to their house while they cooked the vegetables.

Hubby is off with the Canadian Rangers for FSJ today and I'm not sure if he will be back tonight but I'm taking the leftovers to the parents house to spend the afternoon with them. We have a couple of evenings out with friends at their house over the next few days and then we will celebrate Old Christmas Day on the 6th. That rounds out the festive season quite nicely. The tree will come down on the 6th as it always does. We will hang our antique stockings on the 5th so that we will have them to open before school. Then when everyone is home in the evening we will have Christmas carols on the stereo, a nice cooked pork roast with dessert for dinner, open our gifts and take down the tree and decorations. The house is put back to rights and Christmas is forgotten for another year. I actually have come to enjoy Old Christmas Day better than the 25th of December. It is much more peaceful. Probably because there is no pressure and no expectation. I always save some Christmas presents for that day and of course we open tiny stockings that have nothing other than sweets in them. The shopping is done before Christmas so no rushing in stores when you really don't want to be there.

We started this family tradition about two years ago when the daughters discovered that Santa had forgotten to remove the boxes with the bills still attached that their gifts had come in. "How could that be when Santa made the gifts at the North Pole?"

Let me tell you it is very difficult to watch the magic of Christmas crumble on your child's face when they find the boxes and receipts for the gifts Santa had supposedly brought. The truth came out and while Daughter #1 was ready for the truth at 11 yrs of age.... Daughter #2 was not at 9 yrs of age. Christmas had been ruined pretty much, and so we decided to make Old Christmas day magic, celebrating it as a more special day than the 25th, remembering that Santa was not what Christmas was truely about but the Baby Jesus and nobody really knows what day He was born on. Old Christmas day is also the same as Ukranian Christmas. I think it stems from the orthodox tradition. It is most commonly known as the 12th day of Christmas.

What ever your traditions are, I hope that you have enjoyed the celebrations and from my family to you, ALL THE BEST FOR 2009!

Christmas Family Greetings

The great big fist of winter has hit
Time to get out the scarves, hats and mits.
I find this year I don’t have as much time,
To figure out Christmas poems that rhyme.

But I’ll do my best to give you a clue,
About all that has happened and all that we do.
The first big thing I have to say,
Is I became ‘redundent’ and lost all my pay.

The College disappeared and so did my job,
It didn’t surprise me I didn’t even sob.
Businesses are closing in our little town,
But new ones are opening so I just won’t frown.

I’ve started my own called ‘Ye Olde Batt’
I’m milling wool, so how about that!
I’ve bought myself sheep and alpacas too,
Well you all know me, I need something to do.

So I am a shepherd with my very own flocks,
We give vaccines, clip nails and shear off their locks.
When I studied Philosophy at good old MUN,
I never thought I’d be having such fun.

The kids are impressed and Mike too, I think,
I do have to say that he didn’t even blink.
I want 2 alpacas, is what I first said,
But then they’re so cute, it just went to my head.

We have 16 animals, I’m breeding them now,
And Mike keeps on smiling, but he wants a sow.
I exclaimed, “You want a great ugly pig?
They’re smelly and gross and nasty and big!”

You’ll have to wait till I write next year’s poem,
or follow this blog as I grumble and moan,
I’m sure if he wants, we’ll have one next year,
Then our small farm will be really in gear.

Even Leah has gotten in on the farm,
“A horse,” she says, “A horse in the barn!”
She took up riding, on Rosie the mare,
with lessons each week, she hasn’t a care.

She has a good teacher and just loves to ride,
She sits on that horse with the greatest of pride.
Her school work too is good we can say,
We enter the teens this year and I pray!

Both of my girls give me wonderful pride,
They’re lovely and polite I cannot deny.
I worry the teen years will be a bad shock
But so far so good, my daughters just ‘rock’!

Shellsea too keeps on doing so well,
Her marks are tremendous, her art is just swell.
She wrote a story that gave me such pride,
Her talent is growing and can’t be denied.

So from this farm as the year passes by,
This Season of Light with God, is a joy,
We wish you all now, the gifts He bestows,
Joy, peace, and hope, with blessings that grow.

Merry Christmas with love from the Nichols Family

Ta Da

Here are the final results of all our renovations.

Ok so I like the red floor and especially with the new rug.



I added a little conversation area in the corner with the Christmas villiage above it in the window.



The computer is tucked nicely into the corner.



We always decorate the rail of the steps... it makes us feel like Christmas is all around us.



And finally the new table fits perfectly under the steps with the kitchen close by.
Perfect! I'm all done. How perfect is that?