Christmas Music

So we are 4 days from Halloween, then getting a bead on a nice Tom Turkey for Thanksgiving, and finally Christmas rounding out the holiday season.

I know most people have very hard and fast rules for when you can begin to listening to Christmas music......only after Thanksgiving......only after Dec. 1st........any time in Nov/Dec.......there are as many rules as families.

I've always thought that to just listen in December is not nearly enough time, but for others that's more than enough (right Dad?).

When Lynn and I were nannies we always had the last week in August thru Labor Day and we would road trip to Wisconsin to visit Lynn's family. Our tradition was that on the 21 hour trip home we would only listen to Christmas music thus starting the holiday season. Most people thought we were a little nuts but we loved it...........it was car karaoke all the way to Connecticut!

Let's face it, its some of the only music we know all the words to. Plus, it just makes you happy when you hear it, can you really frown when you hear Dean Martin singing "Let it Snow" or Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" or even the Muppets singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"!

I think Christmas music needs to be played whenever you need a quick pick me up, pop in your favorite Christmas CD and let it fly! (Maybe that's just me?)

Til next time.........Merry Christmas!
Nanner

SKUNKS

Lets talk a little about skunks!

Its about 4am on a Tuesday morning(very early)
Lynn and I are sound asleep with the AC on in the window(its still a little muggy)

All the sudden we awake to the AC blowing skunk spray in our faces!!!!! (GAG!)

There is apparently a skunk gang war over turf and the turf is OUR FRONT YARD!!!!!

We(Lynn) get up to turn the fan away from our faces but the stench is still so strong and all we can do at this point is laugh about it. (it really did suck!) Just a lot of skunk foo coming through the window.

Oh well, what can you do(since I don't own a gun)..............

I'll keep you posted!

Nanner

Day 9

Day 9..........Saturday June, 16th ..............the trip home

So, I'm really sorry to keep you all hanging but I just haven't been able to get it together and have 5 minutes at the computer for ages!

Well, I've had a great week in Oregon, absolutely perfect weather, great food, and fun with friends and family but now its back to reality and heat, humidly, and work :(.

So I fly out of North Bend on a hopper and switch planes in San Fran to get to JFK. Its a lot of travel but I should be home about 10:30 at night........IF ONLY IT WERE THAT SIMPLE!

I get checked in at North Bend and its foggy.....FOGGY! My plane is delayed out of Portland, but I have a 3 hour layover in SF so I'm good, we are looking at a 30 min delay. Mom and Dad and Grandma are with me at the airport so we are chatting and waiting for the fog to lift.

After an hour I go check in again and the plane from Portland came down but couldn't land so it went back to Portland.............OK?

After another hour I am getting a little worried about my connection so I go to the front desk again and check on my flight. The attendant says that now I probably won't make my connection. BUMMER?

So I see about a later flight into JFK..............NO AVAILABLE SEATS?

OK, now what? The attendant (who is pretty new, John) says to me ..... do you know any other airports in the area? #^*%?#& Don't you know John?

So we start going through the other NYC airports, CT airports, West Chester airports and still there is nothing...........He can get me into Hartford CT thought Denver than St. Louis to arrive Sunday at noon. NOON!!!??? That won't work John,,,,,,you see I have Yankees/Mets subway series tickets for Sunday and I need to be in CT before Sunday!!!!!

Now I'm almost 4 hours after I was supposed to leave still looking for a flight..............Yee Haw, John has found me something.................

North Bend to Portland,,,,,,,Portland to St. Louis,,,,,,,,,,,,,,St. Louis to BOSTON!!!!!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME..........BOSTON, but that is all John has so hey book it! The only worry now is there is no room......NO ROOM.........for delays, I only have 20 minutes between each flight. No sweat!

I get to Portland and make my connection, We are hitting a headwind that's slowing us down to St. Louis..............I'm not the only one trying to make this next flight to Boston and people are getting worried........me included........

As we are getting ready to land the flight attendant tells us to check with the attendant right outside the gate for where the next gate is...........OK

I'm the first one out and ask about the gate for the Boston flight............I'm at D36....it's at C7.... HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!! She tells me not to go all the way around but cut through the McDonald's area down the back hallway to a short cut to the C gates....................and I'm off!!!!!

I make it to the gate as they were beginning to close up the plane, I said there were several people coming from my flight so just wait a minute.........we all made the flight, but it was close.

Now we are in the air and I'm so hungry, there is no food on the flights unless you but it now, usually I get something on my layover but that didn't happen this time so I forked out about $15 for dinner and snacks. Oh well.

So I'm all set now except I was supposed to go to JFK and now I'm going to Logan in Boston, and instead of landing at about 9:30 I'm landing at 11:45!

Lynn and Bevie came to pick me up and we headed home, I needed to eat and then we dropped off Bevie and went home and were in bed by............2:30am and up at 8am to get into NYC for the baseball game!

The most amazing thing to me is that I totally got all my bags without any problem........but that was the ONLY thing that wasn't a problem...

Now I'm back and can't wait to visit again................

Hope you all enjoyed my trip as much as I did...........

Nanner

Day 8

Day 8......Friday........June 12th........(My last full day)


So earlier in the week Uncle Chuck wanted to know if I wanted to go crabbin' with him and Dad?
Heck yeah I wanted to go! Up and gone to meet up with Chuck in Charleston to go into the bay.


This is Uncle Chuck getting ready to throw out the pots to catch the little, tasty fellas.

Once the pots are all out then we take the boat in and have breakfast near the boat launch.
(It's a whole ritual thing...)

So here is Chuck bringing up one of the pots.....the first one was really full, but the next ones were not as much, but we still brought in 18 crabs.

This one was a nice little haul. You have to measure them to make sure that they are big enough and you need to only take the males (there is a joke in there somewhere).

It's kinda like the show "The Deadliest Catch", but on a much smaller scale ;-)

Then after a hard morning of crabbin', its time to cook and pick all the meat out, which is more fun if you have a little "Moose Drool" beer to chase it down. (thanks Brad).

It was a blast going out with Dad and Uncle Chuck and there is not hardly anything better than crab that is that fresh! YUMMY!!!

I had to run home and shower after crabbin' so I could have lunch with two friends from high school, Sue and Cammi. I haven't seen them probably since we left high school (20 odd years ago). This year I started on facebook and reconnected with a lot of friends from high school and the summer camp that I used to work at.

It was so fun to catch up with what everyone has been doing. Good thing that the restaurant didn't mind us hanging out well after we finished our lunch!

So now there is only one day left of my vacation, I head home tomorrow, and that's a whole other story!

Nanner

Day 7

Day 7......June, 11th..........

Mom had to go to the hospital where she volunteers a couple of days a week. So Dad and I spent the morning getting ready for Jim and Vicky to stop by on their way to family reunion camping. By getting ready I mean we cleaned the house, washed the laundry, went food shopping, washed the car, redeemed our soda cans, and baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch......... YEAH RIGHT!!!!!

We spent the entire morning looking up video's on "you tube" of Jeff Dunham and all his cast of characters......Sanata Annana......Jose` Jalapeno`(on a stick).......and Walter....plus so many more video's it was crazy---------(hey, maybe we should take a shower and get cleaned up since Jim and Vicky will be here in any minute----ok, just one more.....)

We managed to be cleaned up about 3 seconds before they got here. Nothing like some good ol' Ellis timing :-)~

We had a great visit and lunch with Jim and Vicky, when I do get homesick, its not just for my folks and brothers and their families........I miss my extended family that I grew up with. We were all so close and we did so much together; holidays, birthdays, weekends, and of course camping! I think that I was in high school before I realized that not everyone took vacations with their extended family too. It was like that movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" but its more like "My Big Ol' Redneck Family"......good times.

Only 2 more days to cover on my trip so stay tuned!

Nanner

Day 6

Day 6, June 10..........and now for something totally fun.

So we just dinked around pretty much all day with me giving Mom some computer lessons.....now she can shop online...Woo Hoo!

We had dinner plans at Uncle Chuck and Aunt Marilyn's house. Marilyn makes the best fish! And of course bonus we got to watch part of the Seattle Mariner's baseball game(Chuck is a big fan). We had to leave to go out to Todd's shop where he manages an ATV rental place so we could go for a ride out on the sand dunes.........I haven't done this stuff in years, I forgot how much I love it..........

Here is the view from on top of one of the dunes..........This is the McCullough Bridge in North Bend, built in 1936. It's the longest structure on any Oregon Highway.

The red ones are Razers which can ride 2 people and the white one is a single which Mom and I rode.

Here is my brother Todd coming up a big hill.

Here are Verissa (my sister-in-law) and my Mom (with the yellow helmet).
Here I am coming down a hugh hill.....the scary part is that when you come to the top you cannot see over the top you just have to go over blind and hope for the best. Plus its sooooo steep!

Phew! I made it! It can be so scary, but its really too much fun.

Here Mom and Dad are getting ready to go down this hill and up the other side. The problem is that if you don't go fast enough you will get stuck halfway up the other side...It happened to Mom once but only once and she did great!


Me and Mom having a good time!

Of course there is some stuff even my family won't do......we didn't know who this guy was but he was getting some great air!

I forget just how beautiful it is on the dunes. Pockets of water and trees along the trails and just the open dunes overlooking the bay and you can take trails all the way out to the ocean. I remember going to the dunes when we were little in our old jeep. Sometimes Mom would make us kids get out while Dad tried to climb a steep hill. One of so many great memories from growing up where I did. I wouldn't trade where I grew up for anything.

Nanner

Day 5

Day 5 June 9th.............



Happy Birthday Grandma! The day started with a quick trip to Walmart to get a birthday card and some cough drops and maybe cough syrup(once again I get sick when I'm in Oregon, I don't know why, but I do almost every time). I'm having this wicked cough that comes up from the depths of my lungs and sounds like I've been working in a coal mine my entire life(maybe even born down there)! So we get to Walmart and hit the card section trying to find the perfect card for Grandma and I start to cough......and cough harder........and HARDER, now people are looking and Mom and Dad are starting to worry, and I'm starting to worry(if I cough much harder I might just wet my pants)!........Good News, someone is coming over to help me(now I'm really embarrassed)..........HOLY CRAP.......this woman comes up to me and asks if I need any help......



First off, I can't talk because of the coughing

Second, I really am embarrassed

and Third..........SHE'S WEARING AN EYE PATCH.........HELLO DOES SHE ONLY HAVE THE ONE EYE OR IS SHE SO WORRIED FOR ME BECAUSE SHE LOST THE ONE EYE COUGHING!!!



So now I'm coughing up a storm and trying not to laugh because its making me cough more and I still might wet my pants!



I cough my way over to the pharmacy and chug some cough syrup and buy some cough drops and then call Lynn to get a hold of my doctor to get me a script.......



So that was the first adventure of the day............Jill, Verissa and I went to the movies(Angels & Demons) I liked that book so much better than The Davinci Code so I had high hopes for the movie and it was ok.



Then we all went out to dinner for Grandma's birthday to the Chinese place in North Bend that used to be the old dinner. I guess some things never change since the table behind us ordered pancakes for dinner......the food was great! Of course I had another coughing fit as dinner was ending and spent the last 15 minutes outside in the parking lot. Tomorrow should be just as fun too.



Nanner