We woke up Sunday 12/24/17 Christmas Eve morning to a heavy coating of ice everywhere. We lost a few tree branches in the back, and the driveway and walks were just an ice rink.
Fortunately, our friend Butch was in the area and offered to stop and throw sand in the driveway from his spreader. That really helped, though I used about a third of a bag of Ice Melt on the walkways. What a storm that had been.
Sue wanted to go on a photography adventure as the sun was glistening off of the ice encrusted tree limbs and it was just calling out to her; "Hey, Susan! Get a move on with that camera of yours!" So, we stuffed Beau into the car and headed out.
We drove through Alton, and past Pine Mountain after doing some exploring on a dead end road that dead ended early because of many damaged tree branches and limbs arched across the narrow, icy, dirt-based road. We kept driving on Avery Hill Road thinking that at some point it would take us back down into Alton. We ended up in the Alton Shores community with many of the ways through snow blocked. We just back-tracked to Pine Mountain, stopping for gas and some take-out lunch at the Alton Circle Store.
When we got home, we ate quickly as we wanted to get outside and chop through the cracked ice that had formed since we had left. That took us a little longer than we had hoped for, but we wanted to get everything cleared off as best we could so when our kids arrived they wouldn't need ice skates to make it to the door.
So that I could visit with everyone instead of cooking, I started my food prep work around 2:00pm. I was fixing cauliflower fried rice with oven baked pork roasts. We were having an early Christmas Eve dinner as both Lucas and Jill would have a long ride that night back to Bedford. Just as I was finishing up the major part of that, both Lucas and Jill arrived.
Of course, Beau went spastic and made a fool of himself. But he settled down fairly quickly, accepting the new arrivals as he had met them a couple of time before. He was fine after about 5 minutes of attention. After a few minutes of getting settled in, they scooped Beau up and off they went for a walk.
Just as they were pulling the car out of the driveway, Colin and Ren drove in. While we waited for them to get back, we sat in the living room and had a nice chat.
Well, as usual, it took longer for the meal to cook than I had anticipated. The pork roasts were larger than I had thought and the directions called for cooking them longer than I expected. Instead of eating at 6:30 as planned, it was more like 7:15 before we settled around the table.
After dinner, we had the deserts that Sue and I had worked on and just relaxed before everyone left. It was supposed to snow heavily later that night and well into Sunday, but it was clear for Lucas and Jill's drive back to Bedford. It was wonderful having the kids over, and spending time with them.
