The weather did it again!

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving Day as we all know. We had a blustery day here, but the sun was shining inside and outside of our house. We had Thanksgiving Dinner here with our family including my parents, my sister Dale and her hubby Jim, sister Dana, and our extended family Peggy and Amanda Higgins. We sat around the dinner table in our new addition room that was built specifically for that purpose (for the most part) and ate and ate and ate. Well actually we ate and then we talked. We were at the table over 2 hours talking about past memories and what we are thankful for. I am so glad we had that time together. It was a great blessing to me.
Then the next day, I went back to work on the mail route......disaster. The day after a holiday is never fun. Then when you add 3-4 inches of snow and no snow plows out things get interesting. When you add the fact that I was on the ridge driving on winding valley roads things got really interesting. At one point, I prayed myself down a huge winding hill and said thank you God towards the bottom and then proceeded to end up in a house's yard. Thankfully the man was there although he was leaving and had I been a minute later, he would have been gone. We dug the car out and rocked it until it came free and I was off again. That would not have been so bad if I had not been stuck once already and was now running about 2 1/2 hours late. The office sent another sub out to take my mail in so it could go on it's way and I continued on the route. Right after that sub left, she went into the drink, but got out. I went up another one of those wonderful hills and could not slow down on the top enough to make a corner. I went right off of the top of the hill and was headed straight for the fluffy little sheep in the pasture below. Well, I yelled (mostly in my head) "please God, I can't afford to buy another car" and suddenly I stopped. I just kind of plunked right off the road and came to a stop. There was no way to back up, but I remembered that to the left of me was an old driveway and a gate. I turned the car as sharply as possible, drove it to the left and right out of the field and out past a house that is being built and on down the road again. Worked slick. Thank God there was not too much snow to do that. I went on with the route and finished it in too, too many hours. Usually because this route is the largest in Tomah at almost 100 miles, it takes me 4 1/2 hours or so. I was out there for almost 7. I do not want a repeat performance anytime soon.
My new mail route has been delayed for a month or so. The post office reminded my boss that they cannot change a route during the month of December. So.......January seems like the new date for me to start. It will bring about a change, but I'm pretty sure that I need a change right now.
After all of that snow on Thursday, we ended up with rain Sunday and Monday all day long. Hard rain. The temperature went up to about 55. Then the bottom dropped out yesterday and we were back to 20's and 30's with snow.
My Dad, Aunt, Uncle and I went to get Christmas trees yesterday. We came back with 3 that were over 10' tall, ours that is about 9' and my Aunt's which is about 6'. There we were tromping around in the snow picking out trees. The three largest went into the village of Warrens where we had a place ready. We will decorate them with white lights and we have deer made out of grapevine that light at night to place around them. This is the start of the Christmas decorations that we hope to add a little to each and every year.
I have the menu for Christmas Eve done for this year. Only 34 different things. I picked out some odd appetizers and some old standards. We will probably have more than 45 people here this year. I am planning for around 80 or so just in case. Somehow there never seems to be all that many leftovers. Of course if any of you wanted to come there is always room for more. Ha! Ha!
Christmas baking starts today. I think I have about 22 kinds of cookies to make. That will help to fill the 17 or so gift baskets that Will and I take to our loved ones and local people that we know will be alone at Christmas time. We also take goodies in for Will's shift at work and to my Post Office buddies. None of them are picky so it makes it easy. One year we did cinnamon rolls for everyone in our church and the church down the street. We will see what happens this year, it could happen again.
Well, life at our house goes on. I am working on a study on being thankful. I had just thought that I figured it out when God threw another whammy at me and I learned that I wasn't as quite as far as I thought. We prayed and God fixed it, but it was a quicky lesson from him on the difference between knowing and KNOWING something. I hope that I have learned it now and I don't have to do that again, but I'm not holding my breath. There is a great and vast divide between knowing something in your head and knowing something in your heart.
God Bless. Please, please take the time to enjoy the holiday season!
Deanna