{"id":5384,"date":"2023-01-14T03:10:46","date_gmt":"2023-01-13T21:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=5384"},"modified":"2024-06-25T01:40:54","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T19:40:54","slug":"how-was-your-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=5384","title":{"rendered":"HOW WAS YOUR CHRISTMAS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 How was your Christmas?\u00a0 You know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have a story to tell.\u00a0 That’s what these blahgs are all about:\u00a0 stories from me.\u00a0 Sometimes what I have to say might make you laugh or smile or wonder why I haven’t gone off my nut before this.\u00a0 Maybe my story might pale in comparison to yours but I’ll continue to offer up my stories and we’ll see how mine stacks up.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 This Christmas of 2022 was the whitest I’ve seen in years.\u00a0 I was reflecting on that with my wife and realized in the past five or six years that we have had a green Christmas or light dustings of snow that didn’t amount to much.\u00a0 In fact, the last time we had a huge snowfall was on Christmas in 2017 because I wrote a blahg about it:\u00a0 BEING SICK ON CHRISTMAS IS NO FUN, BUT HERE WE GO.<\/a>\u00a0 That year I had to shovel out the end of my driveway so my wife could take me to the hospital with the worst sore throat I’ve ever had.\u00a0 I don’t care to relive it so read that blahg at your leisure.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve posted before about my lawn display of Christmas inflatables and things really looked nice until the major snow came and buried everything and I couldn’t find them again until the New Year.\u00a0 I don’t have any pictures of my display from Christmas 2022 so I’ll offer up some photos from inside the house instead.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 First up is our Christmas tree.\u00a0 We get a real tree every year but there are no local Christmas Tree farms open in our area.\u00a0 So, this is the second year we’ve purchase a tree from the local Firefighters.\u00a0 It cost $60 but it goes to a good cause.\u00a0 Here’s a photo of this year’s tree:
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\"\"<\/a> Notice that the star at the top is different this year.\u00a0 When we plugged in our old star it would not light up and when I tried to put in replacement bulbs, they all burned out.\u00a0 Here’s what our star topper has looked like in previous years:\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Our<\/a>We had that old star for a long time so it might have outlived its lifespan.\u00a0 My wife went to Canadian Tire and bought another one of the same shape and size but it shone in a bronze colour and I didn’t like it.\u00a0 I stopped at Walmart the following day and purchased the current one.\u00a0 I think it’s nice and the shining whiteness made it feel more like Christmas to me.\u00a0 Maybe I can get the old one working again or we might just stick with the replacement.\u00a0 Bonus marks to anyone who noticed that my 2022 tree was taller and thinner than the one above in a photo from 2018.\u00a0 I’ll talk more about the tree later
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\u00a0\u00a0 I like nutcrackers.\u00a0 There, I’ve said it.\u00a0 There’s something about them that makes me want to collect them and display them at Christmastime.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here’s another photo from 2018 when I displayed most of my nutcrackers:
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\"2018<\/a>That wasn’t all of the nutcrackers because I had to put some of the nutcrackers on a speaker and others on the floor.\u00a0 This year I decided to build a little shelf to put on the cabinet in the photo so that nutcrackers would be on display up the wall.\u00a0 Here’s the result:\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>You can see that there are still some on a speaker and others on the floor.\u00a0 \"Hockey<\/a>Throughout 2022 I bought about a dozen used ones at thrift shops and they stayed on my piano during the year until joining the above collection.\u00a0 My daughter Abbie gave me the hockey player nutcracker on the second shelf for Christmas and which I picture on the left.\u00a0 I think he’s fun.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 The other thing we take pride of in our house at Christmas is our mantle display of Christmas related figures.\u00a0 Here’s what that looked like in 2018:
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\"Mantle<\/a><\/p>\n

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It’s a challenge to fit everything on the mantle and I usually buy two or three more and try to fit them in.\u00a0 Here’s what the display looked like this year:\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mantle<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Mantle<\/a><\/p>\n

Click on any of the above photos to get a larger view.\u00a0\u00a0 Then you can really see some of these treasured figures close up.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 Now, let’s talk about what happened to our Christmas.\u00a0 The plan was to have my daughter Emily and her husband Charlie drive down from Toronto on December 24th and bring my son Noah with them.\u00a0 Well, it started snowing December 23rd and didn’t stop until late Christmas night on the 25th.\u00a0\u00a0 The roads were closed out our way and the major highway between Toronto and Belleville was also closed.\u00a0 I had a large snowdrift in front of my garage door to the top and I had to dig it out to get at my snowblower.\u00a0 On Christmas Eve, Abbie and I walked out in the falling snow to the end of our driveway and by then it was knee high.\u00a0 Here’s a video of Jeanette and I heading out Christmas morning to clear the driveway again:\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\nhttp:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/videofiles\/ChristmasMorning2022.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Emily, Charlie, and Noah did not get to our house until December 26th so we held off opening presents until that day.\u00a0 I had stopped at my Mother’s house on December 23rd to bring the 28 pound turkey to my house to cook and bring out to her house on Christmas day.\u00a0 It was cooking for 7 hours in my house and it smelled awesome.\u00a0 The bird, like us, did not make it to Christmas dinner at my Mother’s until December 26th.\u00a0 Jeanette, Abbie, and I nibbled a little at it Christmas day with instant mashed potatoes and a little of the stuffing that was inside the bird.\u00a0 On December 26th we had the turkey proper at my Mother’s with real mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots, peas, and turnip along with rolls and three different kinds of of pie (pumpkin, apple, and pecan if you’re interested).\u00a0 Besides my children, my wife, my son-in-law and my Mother, we had dinner with my brothers Dan and Todd and my friend Tom who had no place else to go.\u00a0 It was just as good on Boxing Day as it would have been on the real Christmas day.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 Now back to the tree.\u00a0 In 2019 I wrote a Christmas themed blahg called\u00a0MEATS AND CHEESES AND BABY JESUS<\/a>.\u00a0 In that blahg I debuted a new Christmas entertainment with the same name as the blahg.\u00a0 Here’s an excerpt from that entertainment:
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\u00a0\u00a0 I should add that I also have a tradition of disposing of the Christmas tree.\u00a0 At the bottom of our property is a creek that runs fast and deep in the spring after the snow melts.\u00a0 Our annual live Christmas tree, after its stint in the house, rests out behind our garage until I can get to the creek in the spring and chuck it in.\u00a0 It\u2019s swept up in the current and disappears.\u00a0 I tried following a tree one year and got about half a kilometer before the creek took a bend through a farmer\u2019s field and was carried out of sight.\u00a0 In my imagination there is a Valhalla for our Christmas trees down where the creek ends or maybe it manages to make its way to the sea.\u00a0 More likely there\u2019s a dam of trees somewhere along the creek route overflowing and flooding the farmer\u2019s fields or perhaps the basement of his farmhouse.<\/h4>\n

This year’s tree was no exception to the tradition of launching the tree into the creek in the New Year.\u00a0 It didn’t quite work out as planned but I recorded a video of my attempt to properly launch the tree:\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n