Getting ready for the New Year

I spent today getting ready for the cold weather that is forecast and getting ready for my annual New Years Day flying.  First thing this morning I went out and added some insulation to the shop water line.  It has frozen before when it was cold and they are forecasting lows in the teen's.  I still had some insulation left when I finished that job so I added it to the drain lines in the motor home.  With those two jobs done, I started loading the motor home and charging batteries for tomorrow.  Since they were also forecasting a chance of snow I got a set of skis out and put them on the Piper Cub.  It has never had skis so I had to do a little modifying of the cables.  It started snowing this evening so maybe I will get to use them.

Eye Doctor

Friday I had an appointment with my eye doctor, we left early and did a little shopping as I was out of cereal.  We got done shopping sooner than we expected and went up to Mik, Michelle and James' for a short visit.  After lunch at Freddy's Just For the Halibut we went over to Kaiser and I got my bi-monthly blood test.  We were a little early for my appointment but I checked in and we sat down to read.  That didn't last long, they had scheduled an extra test and I got called right in to do it.  By the time the appointment was over I had been in three different rooms with three different people.  The vision test wasn't as clear as I would like so I scheduled an appointment for new glasses.  The scan of my eyes looked normal to the doctor and the eye pressure was lower than last time which is good.  There was indoor flying scheduled tonight in Centralia but after the big day and all the exams my eyes had I didn't feel like driving up so we settled in at home for the evening.

James' New Car

The first thing I noticed this morning was the sunrise, before having breakfast I grabbed the camera, went out and took a bunch of pictures of it.  The recycling had gotten a little ahead of me over the weekend so I got it all loaded into the van.  I made a run over to 4 Corners and got the motor home's propane bottles filled, picked up the mail and some sandable primer I needed for the floats I am working on.

James came up this evening and showed us his new car, it is a 2008 Subaru.  His dad bought it for him, James likes Subarus as his friend has one and James got to drive it quite a bit when they went to Reno.

New Toy!

I went down to coffee this morning and got the videos delivered to Pastor Pam.  We had a great visit, Janet told us about the day Mt St Helens blew and they lost there new house that they had only been in for ten months.  It was really interesting and we all shared stories from that day.  I went to pickup the mail afterwards and there was the new racing drone I had preordered.  I spent the rest of the day getting it bound to the transmitter, setting up the transmitter and flying it around the living room.

Video Editing and Wing

I did some more catching up on my blog today.  Then I edited the video of Pastor Pam's Christmas Day sermon so I can take it to her Wednesday at coffee.  Those jobs took most of the day, but I went out this evening and got the top of the Pilatus Porters right wing covered

A day of rest, sort of!

I was a slow starter this morning after the big weekend.  I went through a bunch of pictures and edited them for my blog.  I finally decided that I needed to get pellets in the shop before the rain started.  I used the mower and trailer to get 6 sacks into the shop and got the fire going again.  After it warmed up I put new Deans plugs on five new battery packs.  The small 2200 Mah are for the Convergence and the big 6000 Mah ones are for the hexacopter.

I ended up getting the left side windows installed on the Pilatus Porter during the day then this evening I installed the landing gear.  After I went in I did some catching up on my blog and watched some of the games from this weekend.

Christmas Day at Mik, Michelle and James'

We started our day at church, I needed to video Pastor Pam's sermon, we got there early so I would be sure and get the spot I wanted.  Today was also a joint service with the Lutheran Church.

We got to spend a couple of hours with Jackie, Chris and Cora before it was time to head down to the Hendrickson's.

Cora got lots of attention, they had to leave early because of snow in the Seattle area.

There was lots of good food today, Mik did his usual great job on the prime rib.  The pecan pie I could hardly wait to try was great!

Malik, James and Debbie smiled for me.

Debbie, James and Rome handed out the presents.

There was a little congestion where the presents were stacked, Bev managed to weave through it with our presents.

Michelle got a bunch of these VR Goggles for the kids and they were a real hit, even with the adults, Roger had them on for quite a while.

Of course I had to get a picture of our daughters Bev and Michelle, Bev's friend Rich is in the foreground.

This is at 8:30 as things were winding down.  It was a busy but fun day, we took the slow way home over Pleasant Hill Road and there were lots of Christmas lights to enjoy.

Christmas Eve

I had a great time playing with Cora today before we went down to Dan and Robin's for the Christmas Eve party.

She is really into shoe laces and got mine untied without any problem.

They asked me to take a family photo for them.

I put my Seahawks hat on her, it didn't last long before she got it off.

She did take a short nap before the party.

She is all dressed up to go see Santa.

Ava and Harper were anxious for Santa to arrive.

Cora went right for the beard and almost got it off.

Vera and I

Santa's gone and the present opening has started.  There was lots of great food as usual.

I was number two in the gift exchange, it wasn't long until Steve stole the Jump Starter I had picked, it got stolen from him a little later.  Michelle photo bombed me big time.

 Mik is looking for something to steal.

James was in the gift exchange for the first time this year.

Vera surprised everyone by stealing Dan's lights and wireless headphones.

I had been sending pictures to Barry and he sent this one back of Mona and her sister Nicky.

It was a great evening that made lots of good memories

Playing with Cora

Chris, Jackie and Cora came down for the Christmas weekend.  Vera got to give Cora a bottle right away.  Then I sat down with her and we played for a while.

She is getting pretty active, I got down on the floor with her before they put her into the walker and I think she will be crawling before long.

Getting ready for Christmas.

First thing this morning we wrapped our Christmas presents.  Vera made some treats to take to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I went out and cleaned up the shop so I can start covering the wings during my next session out in the shop.

I finally remembered to take a picture of the elevators I covered the other night.

I got the work bench all cleaned up and now have plenty of room for covering the wing.  I swept the floor which tends to get lots of scraps of covering as I work.

After I was finished cleaning up I installed the right side windows and it went much better than I expected.

Rescuing Lucy and a Piano Concert

I went to coffee with the Pastor this morning, just Janet, Pam and myself there but we had a great time talking.  Janet told us a couple of stories that really got our attention.  Not long after I got home I got a call from Dianne that they needed help getting Lucy out of a tree.  It turned out the ladder wasn't long enough so they had the base in the bucket of Gabe's tractor.  Dianne was in the bucket steadying the ladder, I was in charge of raising the bucket until the ladder was high enough so Steve could climb up and get Lucy.   It all worked as planned and Steve had Lucy down in just a few minutes.  That sure added some interest to my morning!  I got the other elevator of the Porter covered today, but still no pictures.

This evening we went to a piano concert at the church.  I got a kick out of their program which read "Music of the Season brought to you by Two Old Ladies with a "Not-so-Perfect" Concert.  The two Cathys did a great job and I never heard any mistakes.

The church tree and decorations look really nice.

After the concert we drove around looking for Christmas lights.  We found several places that looked great,

On the way home I stopped and took a picture of the lights on Cowlitz Street.  The fog added a little different effect to all the pictures we took.

What a difference a day makes

Wow, I woke up this morning to almost no snow left so I grabbed the camera and took a couple of pictures.  We went to Kelso and finished up most of our Christmas shopping this morning.  We had lunch on the way home, picked up the mail and the rest of the gifts in Castle Rock before settling in at home for the rest of the day.  I got one elevator of the Pilatus Porter covered today, but I guess I forgot to take a picture.

Jackie sent me this picture of Cora playing with a tablet, she is getting techie pretty early!

More Snow!

We woke up to a fresh layer of snow this morning.  There was enough to bring us back up to four inches on the deck.

I had noticed blinking lights down on the road so I walked down to see what was going on.  It looked like this truck got stopped just before the right front wheel went in the ditch.  A wrecker showed up a few minutes later and got him going again.  We had a very productive morning and got all our Christmas cards done.  We made a run to town to mail the cards and made a stop for a few groceries.

I got the stabilizer of the Pilatus Porter covered before going in to watch Monday Night Football.  The game turned out to be a good one that I really enjoyed watching.