The Banks of Red Stream

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Do you like turkeys?

Christmas Wish 2007

I write some really bad poetry, so I try to avoid writing any at all, but this Christmas Wish came to me in a fit of remorse for failing to send any cards yet this year AT ALL and for finishing my shopping only hours before the closing bell.

This is hardly great poetry, but what do you want for an extemporaneous Christmas card at 3AM Christmas morning!

Hope you have a great Christmas

Twas the Day Before Christmas…

Twas the day before Christmas
I awoke feeling late,
It was 7AM, not a minute to wait;
The dishes were piled high in the sink
The shopping not done … I needed to think.

Should I let Jim stay dreaming while I finished sweeping?
Should I go do the shopping and leaving him just sleeping

My husband was snuggled all safe in his bed
With 5 little kitty cats curled by his head.
He looked oh so peaceful and happy asleep,
But I woke him by shaking and grabbing his feet.

“Not a minute to waste” said this Grinch
“The day before Christmas is never a cinch”
You make the coffee and I’ll dig the stream
The damage the rain did was hardly a dream.

So he made the coffee and I dug the stream,
Then off to the bank we went with a scream…
The lines there were horrid, all twisty and long
The tellers were slow, not rushing the throng

By 10 we were shopping and looking around
To see if any gifts were left to be found.

The parking lots full, the wind it was strong
And store help was nowhere ever found.

We sat in the car and made us a list,
Then we went in and gave it a twist.
Bought nothing we’d planned,
Spent more than we wished,
But not so much more that we felt remiss.

By 2 we were buying last minute food.
By 3 we were back and unpacking the load.

But the floor needed vacuumed,
The walls needed washed.
Or the next morning the gifts would be lost
In the dust and the clutter left undone for weeks.
While we graded our students when the house needed tweaks.

By 4 the bath was clean by 5 we were washing
Laundry and walls, by 6 we sat talking.
It was 7 again when we said were weren’t done
And started to finish the rest of the fun

By 8 work was done and we sat down at last
To hoagies for dinner, no cooking was done

Before Chloe came 4 hours would pass.

At 12 she arrived, her mother looked beat
20 dozen cookies is really a feat!
And all in two days, with nary a stop
Now neatly on trays, she’s ready to drop.

Chloe’s excited, she’s ready to see
If Santa will come, though she hardly believes.
She shows her Mom her Ginger house
And sets out a plate
With a carrot for Rudolph before Momma leaves.

At 1 she’s awake watching out for the light
That reindeers make while they they’re taking flight.
The gifts are unwrapped, Santa can’t come
While little girls wait, Grandma’s can’t have fun.

At 1:42 she’s finally asleep
Swiftly as coursers I jump to my feet.
I dash to the car, give the clicker a beep
Open the back and gather the treats.
I dash to the bedroom, where Jim is asleep
I wrap and I tape until I am beat.

At 3 it‘ll be over since I’m really not done
As I write this to you at 2:31
Just 4 more to wrap and set under the tree
And tomorrow will be almost as it should be.

For Christmas is here, ready or not
And soon will be over even though there’s a lot
Of gifts yet to be given and gathered and shared
And folks to be thought of for whom we have cared,
But not seen on this day or even a while.
But of whom we think every day with a smile.

Not just Christmas to celebrate and fill with love
But each single day to fill like a glove
With care for our family and all of our friends,
Our children, their children and those we offend.

There is a clatter on the roof top, the house it does shake
A white light flashes outside that’s hard to mistake.
There’s no one in the Chimney
And nothing outside
But you can’t mistake the sound of that ride
For his radio blares music and above all the roar
Something is moving, I can see it soar.

I look, then I listen and then clearly hear

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL,
ALL BE OF GOOD CHEER

Far from the banks of red stream

Here are a couple of clips from this summer's train trip. These are not the fastest moving videos you'll ever see but we enjoyed the trip.

A walk along the river

Melting Snow

First Light February 13

When the dawn broke Monday morning, everything was white. The forest was covered with a thick blanket of snow. The trees were bent over with the weight of the snow. and the ground was covered by a thick blanket of snow.

First Snow of 2006

As far as we're concerned this storm was not too bad. We can drive on the driveway without shoveling. The snow will make nice snowmen, is good for sledding and best of all if the weather forecast is right it will be gone in a couple of days!

The turkeys were out foraging snow or no snow but they turned in early enough that our camera could pick them out from the branches of their usual sleeping roosts. All in all not too bad for us.

Gingerbread House Rules

We don't believe in taking Gingerbread houses too seriously. When things go wrong in the construction process as they always do we simply say "It's a gingerbread house! We can always eat our mistakes!"

This house, like all gingerbread houses had it's share of mishaps. The most serious was when the entire Santa wall fell over and hit a bowl of frosting and broke in two right through Santa's window!

Oh! NO! said the little one! Oh! NO! But we all laughed and got some more frosting glue and in a snap the wall was back in place. Not a problem and everyone laughed.

There are some rules we follow:
Rule 1:
We won't use crazy glue unless there is no other way to save the day (because we want to think we can eat the house).

Rule 2:
Everything in the house must be edible stuff, but we did make an exception for the Pez container Santa and some of the wrapped candy (see rule 3).

Rule 3:
Gingerbread house rules are made to be broken.

Rule 4:
Decorations should be done by the youngest people around.

Rule 5:
Gingerbread House rules should be made up as you go along.

We wanted the house to have some bells and whistles so we made some stained glass windows out of melted candycanes.

Had we thought this through in advance we'd have made the windows along with the walls during the baking process the

same way we make stained glass cookies, but we didn't think that part through in advance. We were far too busy deciding on an authentic American design for the structure of the house. After days of research we chose the Saltbox, in fact we chose a specific saltbox house from New England that might have been built by an ancestor, but in any case was built by a person who has exactly the same name as one of us. That seemed to be a most appropriate choice, at least to our team leader who is, by virtue of being in the 2nd Grade, our final authority.

The house we chose was very grand. As we worked out the pattern it became clear that we'd need three, count them THREE, batches of gingerbread dough to build the structure and it would need internal reinforcement or the roof would certainly collapse. In keeping with Rule 5 we redesigned the house to fit one batch of dough and just stayed with the general saltbox shape.

Rule 6:
Gingerbread house frosting takes more sugar than the recipe calls for!

We ate a lot of this stuff, mostly off our fingers. Milk is a good antidote for the taste of frosting glue. A good scrubbing gets the green off your teeth so that when you appear for public engagements you don't look like a deranged elf.

Rule 7:
Ignore what purists would tell you about just placing the cookie walls into frosting and letting them support each other! Build a foundation of sugar cube bricks inside and out and cement the walls to that.

If you need support in front, as we did, you can call them columns. Our young architectural expert knows that saltboxes don't have columns, but at the same time we all wanted the walls to stand up, not fall down (again).

Rule 8:
Decorating the Gingerbread house will take at least twice as long and a lot more frosting than you imagine it will.

We made the dough weeks in advance, made the cookies a couple days in advance and put the house together in one day, leaving the yard for another. However, our shopper left buying the candy for the last minute and almost didn't get tiny candy canes, on the other hand a lot of the candy was marked down due to the closeness to Christmas.

Taking the team leader on the shopping trip is risky. Team leaders are well known for their sweet tooth!

Rule 9:
Gingerbread houses are supposed to be over the top, so keep decorating until you are satisfied or, more likely simply exhausted!

Feel free to run the Food Network while you are working, good ideas might pop up. Our fearless team leader saw the ice cream cone Christmas trees on a cooking show and incorporated them in the project within minutes. (See Rules 3, 5 and 10)

We needed a "water feature" since this is 'The Banks of Red Stream', so a pond was constructed out of, what else!, peppermint candies.
Hereabouts the water is red.

We just kept adding whatever we had till we were done. The truck was a great idea, but of course it

needed a driver.

Rule 10:
Play Christmas music and sing and dance while working. The TV should be shut off. (see Rule 3 and 5... this is about having fun not consistency!)

Dancing can break off pieces of the decorations, but that is why you make lots of frosting glue. After all all the trees in nature aren't the same height and not all of them have pointy tops.

Rule 11:
Unless you have a very large kitchen, plan to order pizza or something.

Our poor cook had to attempt a ham dinner with all the trimmings without disturbing the builders. The cook seemed to feel that the builders' request for a ham dinner that night showed poor judgment! The builders, on the other hand, were very grateful to have fresh vegetables and protein rich food to counteract all the sugar and candy that somehow escaped into their mouths.

Rule 11:

Take a tour. Get out the camera, if you haven't already and take close ups of your creation.