We had a quiet Thanksgiving this year. Pam cooked a turkey roast in the crock pot and baked a fabulous rhubarb and strawberry pie. (Pie was served warm with vanilla Haagen-Dazs ice cream.) Several other “fixins” were prepared as well including mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and various fruit dishes. It was a good day for eating (and football games)!

The rest of the week’s activities were pretty low-key. We continue to put up Christmas decorations and have almost all the outside items put up. A few inside “window” lights have been put up and the place is starting to look good when evening falls and all the lights come on. There are still a few more “window” decorations to go.

A larger shopping trip was in order so we headed for the Walmart in Decorah. Over time we keep a list of items not available locally, both hardware and food items. For example, I use agave liquid as a sweetener as it has fewer calories than sugar and is better for my Type-2 diabetes. It is not locally available. Another food item we like is McVities Digestive Biscuits, another hard-to-find item that the Decorah Walmart stocks. A number of smaller items also made it to the list, so it was a good time to go shopping and stock up.

Although we found the items we were looking for, many empty shelves were observed. Supply chain issues affect even Walmart, it seems. The same is true for online-items. I ordered a pair of winter “Bean Boots” and some lined jeans. The boots may not be available until first week in January. (The jeans will be here before Christmas.) LL Bean said there was a chance the boots would arrive earlier — I just hope I have them on my feet before the worst storms of the winter hit NE Iowa.

The week’s other activities were pretty minor. Now that all the boxes have been removed, Pam is swabbing down the storage room in preparation for Becky’s visit. I continue to go through some of my slides and negatives — to take a journey down memory lane and re-acquaint myself with what I have and where things are. Pam’s work on the Solstice (Christmas) cards continues. A bit of frustration arose when I tried to use an Avery Label return address template on the computer; the template did not match the labels even though it was downloaded from the Avery site. A couple hours of “tweaking” was needed to produce acceptable results.

Today will be another lawn clean-up day as the City of Elma will be hosting a Christmas Parade tomorrow (Sunday) and I want the place to look its best. This should be about the end of leaf season, or at least I hope so. Normally this part of Iowa has snow by now but we are looking forward to a week of mild weather – for December – with high temps in the low 40s for several days. OK by me as this will help out with the cost of propane which we use for heating. (The price of propane is up almost 30 percent this year over last.) The rest of the week should be pretty quiet for me, with no major projects planned.

Photo Archive

From the fall of 1991:

Pam with Felicity and Toby at the park in Mt. Horeb, WI
Jerry with kids on a Mt. Horeb hiking trail
Felicity with a Lego creation
Toby B-day with my parents, George and Emily

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Penny

We take our time with exterior holiday decor, aiming for tasteful. Admittedly, Heart House has the perfect mix of porch spindles and flower bed fencing to stage lights. Others in town use the Midwest standard of “decorating” by lining up every garish lawn ornament in a row and flipping the switch. To each his own, I guess.

Hoping the “warmer” temps stick around for weeks and weeks.

Happy Trails.