December 26 is known as “boxing day” in England, Canada, Australia and other places with interesting accents. I know the origins had something to do with the Lords and ladies giving gifts to their hired help… But for me Boxing Day meant shipping presents to people and doing a few returns at the post office. I felt like a post man.
The one big accomplishment for the day is that gabe and I put the finishing touches on our new three-quarter inch poofer. It will have more than twice the output of my old half inch Boofer that I made many years ago. It should be pleasantly scary
Tomorrow we leak test and then perhaps a test fire…
We did our family Christmas yesterday.. so today was bonus Christmas. I had to wake up at 3:30 in order to get Max to his 5:45 plane .it was good getting to hangout with him this morning
I went home and got a couple of hours more sleep.
I got up around 8:30 and had breakfast with Gabe and Diane.
Diane had some more of Max’s delicious home smoked salmon
We the got ready for a hike up camels hump which is getting to be a family Christmas tradition .
It was about 15F and sunny at the bottom of the Burroughs trail. We had snowshoes on but only really needed them for their crampons . There was about 2 feet of snow but it was elk packed on the trail. Believe it or not there were about 10 other cars there for hikers . It’s only2,4 miles to the top but it gets pretty steep .
Once you’re above tree line you are in gale force winds . We were fine till we hit the top. We’d read it was about a -35 degree windchill on my Mansfield which is only 10 miles away and a few 100 feet higher
We put a samstone up there
It was nice coming down and de-icing
It was a beautiful Christmas sunset on our drive homem. Here a view of my Mansfield from about A mile from home
We had a nice quick dinner of home made spring roles .. the. Gabe and i went i. To the shop and started building our new 3/4 inch propane poorer . We can probably finish it off this week . I’ll let you see
. Max is heading back to Santa Fe early tomorrow so We chose to celebrate our family Christmas early this year. It was a gray lazy day. I’m proud to say that it’s almost 10 pm and all of us are still in our pajamas .
the dogs are as in to Christmas as we are ..
Chai always finds her stocking . Not sure how she does it .. Kota almost like she can read !
Here we are all looking sleepy and santalike. . I think we we started about noon
Sam is always with us .. and especially on a day like this . Missing him is always part of anything fun and meaningful. It’s part of life now
Mac surprised us by bringing smoked salmon he’d made at home . It was SO delicious!
The rest of the day passed wonderfully slowly … we slowed down around 4
Mac and Diane made dinner . General Tsaos tofu and chicken . And eggplant
We harvested our first ripe Meyers lemon that was part of our dinner
Here s one thing i made for the family.. matching light up headbands
I’m feeling very grateful for my family and our lives here . I love my family so much. Missing you Sam
Really wonderful day… Just the four of us here. Diane and I did scoot out in the morning for an early morning grocery run…
But then we basically hung around the house the entire day.
I call it wrap day because we wrapped presents, we made spring roll wit rice wrappers and we listened to really bad rap Christmas music… All in a single day.
Early afternoon the four of us took a hike down by the river sure with the dogs… We wanted to see what it happened after the flood. It was a thin skin of ice everywhere… It was like glass to walk through it. We had a lot of fun playing with it
We visited the neighbors horse
We had both Sam lanterns burning all day… Kind of a Christmas time tradition for us
Another Christmas time tradition is that we decorate a tree in the woods for the animals… There’s a bunch of or baked goods drying with string of tight on. I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years
For dinner we decided to do spring rolls… Diane had a bunch of the rice paper wraps somewhere in the house are we all set to work
We also chose to sample Gabe sake that he brewed back in June. It’s been sitting there aging ever cents. It was…… Drinkable. Actually pretty good… It really strong.
15-year-old chai new just What was going on.. As we sat down to dinner she went out and picked out her stocking off of the stairs As she does every year to see what was inside… Too early for that yet girl !
Around nine we all climbed in the car and drove up to the catamount trail. We hiked up to the same tree we always decorate and through 84 different string that food bits onto the tree. Will come back in a couple of weeks and clean up the string. It’s always all gone by then . It was a cool crisp night 19° and a full moon… Just enough snow to make it beautiful.
We had Sambuca, chocolate peppermint milk and some lebkuchen from my friend Colja in Germany
As a final treat for the day… Diane found the book we used to read when the kids were very young about decorating the tree in the woods… I’m not sure it was the thing that inspired us but we were always read it when the boys were little. We read it for old time sake and looked at the pictures… I could’ve recited it
OK… Time for bed. Tomorrow we’re gonna do our Christmas because Max has to go back on the 25th
