Dec 30 - almost finished

The year is almost finished. One more day to go ... but wait ... the 30th was a very good day.

Stef and Aaron arrived a little after 2pm. They called just before turning onto 522, and losing cell phone coverage, to let us know that they were almost here. In the winter, that's code for -- if you don't see us in 1/2 hour, send out a search party.

Once they were here we got organized, took a family picture, opened presents and had dinner. Of course all that took 6 hours -- who am I trying to kid ! We all did very well -- a good haul -- considering the troubled economic times. We do have a lot to be thankful for, but mostly for our health and just being together.

Now of course I have pictures to organize. That will come in the next couple of days. A new family photo needs to grace the website -- but we're still missing Kim and Meghan, so we'll have to update it in the summer if we manage to get the whole gang together at that point.

Dinner was the usual, but never boring, turkey-fest. After cleaning up we had pie, courtesy of Sandy and Lauren.

On the fishing front, we did not add to the freezer yesterday. At the end of the day one minnow was gone and the other had managed to hide beneath a stick or something necessitating breaking the line. I'll have to drill that hole in another place today since that's two days in a row with lost swivel, leader and hook.

It is cold, -19C outside. By daybreak it's supposed to be -22C. Brrr. Inside it's warm, helped considerably by the heat and humidity generated by people. The furnace does not have to work as hard when we have a crowd. The wood stove/fireplace is neutral since I keep it going whether there are two of us here or a crowd.

Aaron has a work-related errand to run in Sudbury today. He's going to test out his new Garmin Nuvi. It's charging on the floor of my den, plugged into the battery booster. David also wants to test his (we got them both Nuvi's) -- and will either run down the road to measure his speed or use the ATC. He has his plugged into the SUV. He'll get to use it more at the end of the week when he goes to visit his friend in Whitefish, a Sudbury suburb. He has arranged to rent a car in Parry Sound and drop it off at Toronto airport, so he'll have the car for a few days.

We don't have a New Year's party planned for this evening, per se, but we will be having a family fondue dinner. It's been a long time since we've done that. It remains to be seen how many of us are still up at midnight !

That's it for now ....