Merry Christmas 2025

[Murfreesboro]

A very thoughtful gift, given your skills!

Happy New Year!

[Andybev01]

A bit soggy tonight, but very atmospheric.

[Murfreesboro]

Ah, that's beautiful. Is it chilly?

We're back from our cabin trip and headed about an hour south to meet up with Alabama relatives for lunch.

[Andybev01]

'Chilly' is a relative term, it's drizzling and foggy right now but it's almost 60° .

[Murfreesboro]

Yes, foggy and drizzly 60 degrees is much colder than sunny 60 degrees. Right now we're a sunny 41, and I feel fine outside without a coat, at least for short periods.

[Murfreesboro]

Happy Epiphany! Tonight I'm burning my outdoor Christmas lights for the last time this season. Tomorrow I'll start dismantling things.

Carnival season starts today in New Orleans. If we were down there, we'd be eating King Cake.

[Andybev01]

I too have my outside lights on tonight.

Tomorrow they get packed away and no outsiders will know that I have 3 trees to take down, and half a dozen wreaths to pack away.

[Murfreesboro]

My indoor stuff will take much longer to pack away, I assure you. Longer than my outside stuff, I mean. I'm not trying to compete with you about which one of us will take longer.

[Andybev01]

Not a competition, more like shared, melancholic comiseration?

[TheHeadlessHorseman]

I hope that everybody enjoyed the holidays.

I had really bad back pain for about 2 weeks after I slipped on the ice, I'm doing better now but I'm still experiencing some issues, the holidays were fine other than that. It's usually slow for business in Jan. but it's been very busy for us lately, so that's why I haven't been around.

I got some great gifts for everybody, and after a very long conversation with my wife I finally got her to agree to sign the parental consent form for Phoebe to compete at nationals this year, we gave it to her for Christmas and she was absolutely ecstatic about it.

We gave our employees a very generous bonus for Christmas to show them that we appreciate them. As usual, we always give them a cash bonus so that they don't have to report it, and one of our young employees was so excited that he ripped open the envelope immediately, the bonus was in twenty dollar bills, and I stood there and watched him struggle to add up the total, after about a minute he asked me how much it was, so I told him and he was very appreciative of it. Like most of our employees, he's a good kid, but dumb as a bag of rocks. I'm truly disgusted by the educational standards that the kids in this country have to grow up with.

I also came across this ad on Facebook, I honestly have no words to describe it other than creepy, even the title of the ad is creepy. I know the guy means well, but there are better ways to advertise it.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/it ... 1614699918

Murf - thanks for sharing your recipe, my wife said that she's going to try your version as well as the traditional recipe. This is the link you were talking about right?

https://www.oceanspray.com/recipes/clas ... -nut-bread

Continuing from the birthday thread, I know exactly how your husband feels, I went to work when my wife and kids went to watch Wicked. With that said, I hope that you had a great birthday, and that you and your kids enjoyed the movie.

Andy - we watched your video, and as usual, you've outdone yourself again. My wife said that your decorations remind her of when she was a kid and she would visit department stores during the holidays and there would be wall to wall Christmas decorations every where you looked, and your decorating style gives her that same feeling of amazement and joy that she had back then.

Also, how did the decorating contest in your apartment building go? Did you get first place?

69e8eb297a11686d.gif (490.44 KiB) Viewed 8 times

tenor.gif (1.27 MiB) Viewed 8 times