Friends, food, fermentations and festivities.....

Great weekend in Yankton.

Of course hit Charlie's for pizza Friday night. Saturday we slept in as best we could. Why is it when you get older you can't sleep in anymore? Darn internal clock. After breakfast we made our shopping list and hit Wally world.

I decided to buy a couple bows and put them on the trees we donated to the city in memory of mom and dad. One at Memorial park on the northwest edge of the tennis courts and one at Riverside park on the outside of the left field fence at the baseball diamond. I thought it made them look a bit festive! I dropped our new point and shoot digital camera in the mud taking the pics of the evergreen tree (see the mud at the base of that little guy!). Thank God the camera and of course the tree were fine.

We got the soups, potato dumpling and chili, made and all the other stuff ready for our holiday gathering party Saturday night. What fun it is to get together with that group. It was the six owners of the Clubhouse and then Kris's mom (Joan), my Godparents (Luther and Joan) and one of my mom's friends (Rose). We have all become more like family than friends and we cherish the time we spend with all of them. We love to sit and share stories, laugh and have great food. As a thank you and Christmas present, Kris and I took everyone to the play which turned out to be a more of a musical of "What a Wonderful Life" it was good but different with the singing, which was unexpected. I have never seen the film version all the way through so might have to do that this year at some point. We headed back to the clubhouse for desert and an ornament exchange. What fun. We also tried to take a group photo with the new camera. We got it on the tripod. Kris tried to set the self timer. Lets just say this provided a LOT of the laughter of the evening. She did figure it out with Gilly's help and we finally got a good picture of all of us. I guess there is a bit of a learning curve on this little guy (canon SD880is).

(back row l to r) Ronnie, ME, Nanci (Kono), Joan (Kris's Mom)

(middle row l to r) Joan, Rose, Luther

(front row l to r) Dawn (Mackie), Kris and Christi (Gilly)

Sunday was nothing but ugly as far as the weather. Cold with 30-50mph winds makes a deadly windchill. We decided to head out semi-early and glad we did. From Vermillion to I-29 the visibility was not so great at all. We stopped and filled up with gas at the Coffee Cup ($1.43 / gallon) and about got blown away. This truck stop is really out in the open and the wind was REALLY BAD at that point. It had to be 40-50 mph! VERY DEADLY if you are out in that very long. We got on the indy and the road seemed to be good except we had a nasty cross wind at that point that just loves SUVs! Oh well, we survived and got Kris's mom home in Crooks with no nasty events happening. Lot more snow in the the Crooks area than Sioux Falls but Sioux Falls has more then Yankton.

I watched The Flying Scotsman (Graeme Obree)on Showtime yesterday afternoon. He fights evil demons and the World Cycling Federation to set a few world records on a bike he made out of a washing machine parts. Amazing and good story. Then it was off to ZZZZ-land after the movie for three hours! Pretty laid back afternoon that was for sure.

VERY COLD this morning 12 below zero with 30-40 below zero windchill....UGH! Don't like it this cold. I will take snow anytime but I hate this below zero crap!