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I have all my equipment tucked away for the winter. The pop-up camper is loaded with moth balls (to deter mice) and set up inside the barn along with the pickup truck and tractor. When the weather turns really bad I will start parking the Volvo in the barn, right now it is too convenient to just tuck it under the lean-to.

The Volvo, snowblower, two bottomplows, back blade, discs, harrows and wood chipper all fit under the lean-to off the barn.

The brush hog and 3-point hitch boom occupy 1/2 of the run-in shed while the other side contains two slip scoops and an extra metal gate. Unfortunately, the wagon sits outside all winter. This spring Kathryn gave it a good painting with the left over deck water treatment.

We are expecting 15 for Thanksgiving with several kids. We spent much of the weekend moving furniture, picking up, creating play spaces and cleaning. But all work and no play is no fun, so Sunday afternoon we took a short walk, sat in the sun and enjoyed being outside.

A tree branch with interesting orange fungus and snow topping.

Eric enjoys a fruit roll-up treat during our break.

Kathryn and Trey enjoy some face time during our break.

Trey is a frame-filler.

The weather was so nice on Saturday that we decided another cook out at the far corner of the 40 acre wood lot was in order. We loaded food, drinks and lawn chairs into the pickup truck. We were joined by Bob, Skip, Rhinda, Molly and her two boys: Matthew & Micheal. Eric and Matthew went over early with me to build the fire - although mainly they just whacked stuff. Kathryn and Molly walked over with Michael, who at 3 years old needed to be carried part way. We cooked hot dogs garnished with Bob’s homemade sauerkraut. We drank hot cider and hot chocolate. The boys cooked marshmallows. The temperature took a tumble from the 30s into the mid-twenties as the sun set and we returned home.

We had snow Saturday morning and it hung around for quite a while.  This was our weekend to get the house in order prior to having Thanksgiving Day company, but Eric, the dogs and I couldn’t resist getting outside for a snowball fight.

Trey checks out the interesting tracks while Eric queues up a snowball.

Don’t trust that kid - he has a snowball behind his back!

This could be trouble.

I went back to work full time on Tuesday. I was really getting used to the ‘retired ‘ schedule.

I had a EKG on Tuesday morning with everything checking out OK. I had my list of things to ask my cardiologist. Can I: swim, use the hot tub, hike, backpack, cut wood, play volleyball? And I got OKs for all - so I cut wood and went to the Y twice during the week.

On Friday evening we took Ed and family out for dinner to celebrate Ed’s 30th birthday. We went out for pizza and the kids were all good. We had a good time until we left. The snow was squalling and it was a little nasty leaving Syracuse. We drove out of the storm and had no problems until we came up the hill to our road, which was covered with ice. I almost fell twice going across the road to get the mail.