Snowmaggedon 2010 Pictures
Well, I’m going to be brief and just let the pictures do the talking. It is still currently snowing outside…
Well, I’m going to be brief and just let the pictures do the talking. It is still currently snowing outside…
Okay, So last year some time I made a post about the horror’s of the Capri Sun Juice bag and I was trying to figure out what I could do with the bags to recycle them… (http://www.edcharles.com/WordPress/?p=635)
Well, Over the camping season, I collected as many of them as I could in onion bags and I came out of the wild wonderful camping season of 2009 with over 400 juice bags! Hmmm, 400 bags didn’t seem like too many considering my girls can drink these down faster than Dad can drink a draft under a dare at the bar.
While we are experiencing our winter “down time” before the camping ‘kraze’ hits us, I decided to get all of these juice bags out and start to clean them up and make a reflective blanket out of them to put under each side of our camper beds to keep the heat in and the cold out. Here are a couple of pictures of the progress…
I’ll keep everyone updated on the final project soon!
After watching Food, Inc and reading way to many articles about Genetically Modified food lately, Sara and I have decided to ‘adopt’ a farm this year. Well, not so much ‘adopt’ … but purchase a share in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm.
We found our farm by visiting the website called Local Harvest (http://www.localharvest.org) which by zip code / city / state you can find family farms in your area where you too can get fresh produce without having to eat something that was shipped to your local grocery store from Argentina. We’re both VERY excited about the prospects of having 30 weeks of fresh vegetables, herbs, fruits and eggs to tide us through the growing season of the year! Do you take a risk in not receiving a lot of fresh produce? Sure, but just as in normal farming, you can also reap the rewards of a plentiful harvest. What an excellent way to teach our girls that there is a better way to eat, to live, and to be in harmony with the planet that we are constantly destroying these days.
Our farm is named Sycamore Spring Farm (http://www.sycamorespringfarm.org) and is less than 20 minutes away from the house in Frederick, Maryland!
They have numerous other items available at the farm such as pick you own events, classes regarding topics such as food preservation and solar/wind power, etc. I’m especially excited because I may have found a local source to replenish my worm population after my little, umm, how should I say it, slaughter of an excellent pound of red wigglers last year.. ;-(
The early spring is an excellent time to sign up as there are a limited amount of shares on each of the different CSA’s. Check it out! What do you have to lose?
While I don’t place myself in the same class as men that browse the jewelry store two days before Christmas to find that special person in their lives the best rock to place on their favorite’s skin for the next generation, I still feel like I may have placed myself in the same class by jumping into the heifer class of consumers this year that decided to buy their special someone a kindle for Christmas. (Holy hell?!? Was that a run on sentence or what?!?!)
Wow! Did I make a mistake!
Was this a mistake in a bad way? Well, I’m not sure… Let’s just say that since she has received her new E-Ink tablet full of wonder-fictional bliss on Christmas day, she hasn’t spent a night doing anything more constructive then trying to read enough pages to make her kindle ‘Burn, baby, burn’!
I’m not complaining.. If I’m doing anything.. I’m whining that I haven’t got a decent turn to read on it!
The screen.. Awesome! The instant gratification of downloading books in a snap.. Amazing! The “quietness” from not hearing the television blasting reality TV…. priceless!!!!
So.. My review…
Kindle..
Pure bliss…. Pure perfection… Pure love…
(Now, I just need to buy my own…)
Since the early years of my life on this planet, I have never experienced the joy, the euphoria of having a real Christmas tree in my house during the holidays. Like a pre-heroin addict that has no clue, I didn’t understand the allure of having a real tree exposing my visual and nasal capacity to the realistic experiences that a box of plastic-molded aluminum and a cylinder of a Walmart pine scented candles couldn’t replace.
We were advised to visit Mayne’s farm in Buckeystown, Maryland by numerous friends. Without distraction, we scheduled a date to visit Mayne’s and pickup our first real tree since we have been together, a nostalgic 12 years of artificial pine’ness that has lasted us up to this point.
Up to now, I was convinced that there was no need to set yet another “tradition” into place with the Charles’ family and was totally comfortable with the artificial tree ‘ceremonies’ performed each year. With my selfishness set aside, I was willing to be flexible and try at least one additional change to our regime…
It was early November, the date was set. There is very little that is planned in the Charles’ household without at least a three to four week deadline time frame. At this point, I was still not convinced that this is something that I wanted to do (like I had ANY choice in what I wanted to do at this point).
We decided that Sunday December 7th was going to be our day because it was only three weeks away from Christmas and that it shouldn’t be too crowded when we got the tree. Oh, were we misguided in our thoughts. It was extremely busy and very muddy as we had just received six inches of snow in the area from an early morning system that had passed through. The mud had caused an unbelievable traffic jam on the farm of 4X4 trucks slipping through the mud and people in a mass chaos trying to get back to their vehicles.
It took us a couple of minutes to park our car in the middle of a mud field that would have made a farm full of pigs ecstatic and then we were off for the Christmas tree ‘nook’ (What the hell do you call a field of Christmas trees? A nook.. A christ-mi? A boog-ville? A treefarm?)
Once we made it past the broo-ha-ha (and YES that is a technical term – Broo-Ha-Ha) of the tractor and trailer ride we were at our final destination and something that was the epitome of my Charles’ family desire. To get the best looking Christmas tree in the bunch…
Well, we had a great time (other than Mia crying the ENTIRE time back to the car after we cut the tree out of the field and carried it back to the comfort of our ‘homeville’)
The place was a MUD-PIT!! Seriously, I’m not joking.. N0.. seriously.. Woodstock people would’ve walked away blushing… No.. Really..
There are a couple of pics that I wanted to post about this..
So, what’s my personal opinion about this? I was soo freaking stressed out about this little adventure.. Dare I say more stressed than having an upper GI at my doctor’s office.
Once we got past the insanity of getting into Mayne’s farm and then once we were in the car heading out I finally felt my normal Christmas holiday meds kicking in and stabilizing out everything.
So what’s my overall opinion about Mayne’s, a real Christmas tree, and what I would do next year…
With this said, we got the tree home to the house and off the top of the explorer and I did the first annual bitching about how much I would need to trim off the tree to make it fit in the great room. Surprisingly, there was not much trimming needed and then the tree was quickly stood upright in the house to begin it’s three weeks of dehydrating.
I am a big proponent of doing things BIG! So, of course, our trees must have a massive amount of lights. My whole goal is that when you walk by the tree and are looking at it, it MUST appear to be twinkling. A LOT..
Well, little did I know, (As I have NEVER had a real tree), that it would take a little bit more lights that our old artificial tree. When the tree was finished with the lights, I had placed 3000 lights on the tree! While for some people, this feat may seem a little “Griswold-ian” (Keep up with me here okay.. Clark Griswold?!? Oh Whatever) We BOTH like it!
Here are a couple of pictures from the overall event leading up to the fully decorated tree….
So we had a whirlwind of a trip to PA to visit the fam over turkey day this year. Here are pics and some short ditties (<— is that even a word???) on the trip..
First up…. Packing to leave..
I love this pic of the girls right before we were ready to leave because of the explorer in the background and the MASSIVE blue box on the top. For those of you that knew my dad, he used to build furniture (and everything else) in his workshop. While every piece that he made will be treasured for more than a lifetime now that he’s gone; every piece he made either weighed 5 thousand pounds or it was so ‘gi-normous’ you needed a crane to move it! He built a bookcase and the bottom was easy to transport but the top.. well.. that is a different story. The big blue box on the top of the explorer is the only place that the top would fit…. So the family enjoyed the flapping of blue tarp the whole 4 1/2 hour trip up to Nana Charles’….. lol
Here’s a good picture of my mom and sister… (Thanks Sara!)
So here are a couple of ditties from the visit to Mom’s….
The 2nd half of the trip was spent at Grandma P’s… On Saturday night, we all went out to the local Japanese steak house for some fun!! Believe or not, I think this was the first time the girls have experienced chop sticks! lol Here are some ditties from this trip…
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, there is so much in my life that I am thankful for that I just don’t give enough attention to each day. So, here is a little list of things I’m thankful (Big, little or something that stupid to you but important to me..)
I’m thankful for..
Like every other one of the zygna games (minus Mafia Wars.. just gotta stay away from at LEAST 1 game!) I’m totally addicted to Fishville and it’s only day 2.
But, I’m still trying to find some good websites out there that list the different levels and what XP points you need to have to get to those levels.. Anyone have some good suggestions?
I found Adam Nash’s blog that has lots of information about the game.. Very Nice.. It’s located here -> http://blog.adamnash.com/2009/11/12/fishville-economics-points-experience-levels/
Here’s my current level information: