HAPPY HOLIDAYS

And, here we are at the end of another year. Due to things that have to be done at work, I've already written "2007" a few times. It felt strange, as it always does when that milestone is reached, but I know that it will only seem like the blink of an eye, and we'll be putting "2008" down on paper and wondering where that year went.

The past few weeks have been very busy. Mitchell's surgery was rescheduled for the following week, so he and I were off to Brandon bright and early the morning of the 12th. I was the same age as he is when I hade my gallbladder removed, but what a difference in the way we were taken care of! I checked into the hospital the night before - he had to be there two hours pre-op. My surgical scar runs from my breastbone to my belly button - he came home from the hospital with four small holes, stapled shut. I had the chance to talk to the nurses who were in the operating room, who explained to me what they had done, how long it had taken, and showed me the gallstones that had given me so much greif. My hospital stay lasted three weeks. Mitchell wasn't there three hours! They packed him into the car for a 100 mile ride home, gave me a perscription for his pain, and told me not to leave him alone for 24 hours. I fully agree that my hospital stay was too long, but surely one night in the hospital would be a good idea.

But, all's well that ends well; he is back on his feet and hopes to be working again real soon, although he discovered that he had better stick with eating little meals more often, rather than full meals three times a day.

Come to think of it, that wisdom would probably suit all of us after the feasting that has gone on here over the holidays. Glen and I are getting ready to spend a week in Mexico so I've been trying to finish up the goodies before we leave. When I realized that there were still five pies to go, I started to give them away last night. None of my clothes are going to fit if I keep that up!

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we celebrated with the traditional turkey meals, but on Boxing Day we repeated the hay ride Glen initiated last year. There were around 30 family and neighbours who came over for the ride up to the pasture on 21 where we lit a bonfire and the kids toasted marshmallows while the adults sipped coffee and Baileys. The older kids all trooped off to the dugout hill nearby and tobagganed until the sun was setting. When we got back to the house there was a gigantic pot of chili ready to serve - it was a grest day. So far Glen has been borrowing the hay rack for this excursion, but I don't think anybody is going to let him quit this annual event; he may as well buy his own. I wonder if the weatherman is always going to be so kind?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

The Prairies have finally made it through the deep freeze we've been in for the past two weeks. It has been nasty cold with significant wind chills to make a trip outside even more - shall we say "bracing"? Yesterday and today have been absolutely balmy - decent weather for washing my car except that there's been enough melting going on that I would just be trading old dirt and salt for new mud and slush.

We have received a good bit of snow in the past couple weeks. The ditches are filling up - might even be enough to close roads if the wind blew right. Glen had to clear out the yard last weekend or I would have never made it out to work on Monday morning. That's something that he didn't have to do once last winter.

His project last week was leasing a Cat (earthmover) and using it to deepen an exisiting dugout and use the dirt to build up a sort of dam across where spring snow melt usually flows toward a small creek. This will give him a decent sized pond if it fills, and take away our water worries. He and Jesse have long ago decided that they want to name our farm "Skull Ranch" (I think mostly because I don't like the sound of "skull" in a name), and now he tells me that this new body of water will be dubbed "Skull Lake". Could be a world class resort some day, he tells me. Remember folks, you heard it here first!

I've had a very disjointed week. We were to Dauphin, Manitoba to a wedding the Saturday before and came home to try to do two day's work in less than one. I went off to work on Monday morning not even realizing that the Christmas rush at the Post Office would be kicking into high gear - to say the least, it was an interesting day! And an exhausted evening.

Tuesday the hospital in Brandon, Manitoba finally called that Mitchell could book his surgery date for Thursday. The poor kid inherited his mother's lousy genetics as far as gallbladders go, and is every bit as anxious to get rid of his as I was to get rid of mine. We set the date for Thursday, my staff was super about rearranging their week so that I could go, and then the hospital called the morning of the operation and "bumped" his surgery for a more life and death case. It left poor Mick even more stressed about it all, and me with a day off in the middle of the week. I decided that it wasn't going to go to waste so I tied into my Christmas baking.

By the end of the day I had two kinds of tarts, a double batch of cookies, and enough poppycock to feed an army. I've hauled a big part of it down to the deepfreeze so that there might be something left by the actual holiday, and I threatened to take a picture of it with today's newspaper so that I could prove that I had, indeed, done Christmas baking for 2006.

Today I house cleaned all morning and then asked Glen to climb up into the attic and bring down the Christmas decorations. I had plans to get a whole bunch of that job done, but it just didn't seem like much fun all by myself. Jesse and Jenn will be home after their last exam on Monday afternoon - maybe they'll help me. Sandy won't be home till the following week as her exam schedule is different. And Mitchell should be minus his gallbladder by Tuesday afternoon. Hopefully, while he is sleeping off the anesthetic I'll have time to get out to the stores and get the last of the things I need for gifts. I know what I need so it shouldn't take me too long.

Then there should only be the tree to put up, the gifts to wrap, and maybe a bottle of wine to unwind with ...