To finish up the old year, we had a very nice Christmas dinner with Big Daddy and TMom & Papa T. I think Chris got most of the pictures, and I forgot about getting them before he left. Joe and Brian were also there for Christmas day...it was a good time...especially after Big Daddy loaded everyone up with eggnog (and Wild Turkey).
Chris and family headed for Corpus the weekend after Christmas, and Denise made a pass through the house to give it a spruce-up before Joe came back with the kids for the New Year's week. She found this under our bed very close to where Maggie was watching TV. hmmm - we might have a little chocolate pack rat on our hands.
Anyway, we took advantage of the weather and the energy of youth to do a little demolition after Joe's bunch arrived. The pump shed full of junk, the old metal shed by the power pole, and the mystery pen in the back all fell to the sledgehammer and crowbar. We even started clearing the overgrown area around the old pen, including the fence on 3 sides.
Here's before and after on the pump shed area...
...and the mystery pen. You can barely see the trunk of the big oak just to the right of the pen in the first picture.
Of course we replaced this with an unsightly pile of non-burnables.
It wasn't all work while they were in town. Jack's very first shot with his Christmas Remington 870 resulted in a fat woodchuck...at least it looked like one.
Audrey practiced her decorating skills and made a scrumptious cake.
We took a trip to the fireworks stand for the kids to spend their Christmas money and entertain us by the campfire on New Years' eve.
We also took a trip to the catfish pond on a nice sunny day between cold fronts. There was a Papa-imposed limit of 5 fish apiece, and the three of them took turns on two rods. Alice caught her fish quickly...she said she never waited more than a minute for a bite.
Audrey really had to fight for hers, but she persevered and brought hers to the bank also.
While he didn't catch the fastest or work the hardest, Jack caught the biggest at 7 lbs 4 oz.
They ended up with 51 pounds of catfish; Joe cooked some up for us that night and took the rest of the fillets home to experiment with the kids on some recipes he wanted to try.
Denise and I had a quiet weekend after I worked 1/8 of my remaining weeks in Houston. We mostly cleaned up some more around the old pen area. Denise raked up the detrius of autumn and hauled it to the edge of the woods. She says the little tractor beats the heck out of a wheelbarrow.
We'll close out with Audrey's decorated red velvet cupcakes and a special Holiday message to those who want me to work a little longer.
Sorry so long, all caught up now. I'll try to show some pictures of some of the finished rooms in the house next time. Hopefully Denise will knock it all out before I retire, and I can start on the list of deferred projects that has been building since the summer.
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