Merry Christmas

Time really does start moving faster the older you get. As a kid I remember the time from Halloween to Christmas to be an eternity. Halloween was the first celebration starting the holiday season, in my book. Then you had to endure Thanksgiving which was just a day for the older members of the family to get together and chat while dragging their kids along. Then it seemed like time stopped while we waited for Christmas.
Now Halloween is barely over and Christmas is here!
I started this a week ago so now the new year 2009 is here! I keep busy with little things and that just makes time fly. This last week since Christmas has been really cold. The last three days have been -15F or colder for the over day high temp. Last nights low was -33F and we are the lucky ones around here. Down the road a couple of miles it hasn't been above -30F for 3 days. We've already burned all the wood I had stock piled. As soon as it warms a little I'll have to go out and cut down some of the dead trees around our place. I'm glad I had the furnace guy here in October. It is a comfort to know the furnace is working when it is so cold out.
Tomorrow Mary and I are going to look at new hybrid cars. Both of our cars have 150K miles on them and are starting to act up a little. Mary's family from Finland is coming over next summer and we are going to need 2 cars to get everybody around so we decided to trade the Golf in on either a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid. We don't drive very much any more but both the Golf and Forester have broken down this winter when we needed them so it just makes sense to me to get one reliable car. There are quite a few Priuses around Willow and everybody I have talked to seems pleased with them. Most of the driving we do is less then 5 miles one way. We do go to Wasilla about once a week and that is about 60 miles round trip.
I think Mary is going to pick up a new sewing machine tomorrow too. She does an awful lot of sewing and has worn out or broken 2 machines since she stopped working. I told her a few years ago to get the best sewing machine she thought she needed but shen has never taken me up on on. Now she has a sewing buddy and they both work on the same project some times so when Mary's sewing machine craps out now it effects both of them.
We had a bit of a situation come up over Christmas. Normally we call my mom when us Alaskans get together on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day so we all get to talk with her. This year things were kind of different so I first tried calling on Christmas Eve and didn't get any answer. We tried a few times on Christmas and still no answer. We thought maybe Tom had taken her to his new farm to celebrate out there so we tried calling Tom and couldn't connect with him. So we decided to wait until Monday and if we couldn't get through we would go straight to the boss, Nancy. Monday we called and got through to Ma and of course she said she hadn't been anywhere and then told us all about her new kitten. Tom finally emailed me and gave me his new contact information and a little info on his new farm. The place sounds really neat. It was built in 1878 and he has 8 horses on it. Last I heard he only had 2 horses. It is located very close to the ski area that I learned to downhill ski at about 45 years ago. Anyhow Tom said that my uncle John had taken Ma for Christmas.
Well, I have to bundle up and go put the goats to bed. I close the barn up a little early when its so cold because the heater in the shop is just barely keeping the temp stable and with the door open for the goats it has to work that much hardy because their pen cools down so much. So off I go into the -28F night air.