Really big snow

The boys in the snow on Saturday afternoon.

Looking at the house from the intersection of Kerlee Heights and Old State Ten

The orange color is the lights on the deck stair handrail

We were warned. A week ahead of time word was out that snow was coming near Christmas Day. At church the big fear was that it would interfere with Christmas Eve services. We managed to avoid that scenario. But it started snowing about 7AM on Christmas Day and didn't take a break until Sunday. We did have ot cancel services on 12/26. We stopped counting at 8 inches. Plus, with the wind that kicked in on Sunday afternoon and evening, it was impossible to tell what was new snow accumulation and what was blow-off. These are some pics from Saturday. Today is supposed to be cold again with wind, but Tuesday should bring higher temps and a nice thaw.

The pecan tree and the intersection of Old 70 and Kerlee Heights

Seated one day at the organ

It wasn't actually me at the organ, but rather Eli. I had to fix a badly out-of-tune pipe today. And while I had the casework opened up, and since I was already dust-covered, I decided to touch up the tuning of the reed ranks.

I took care of the one note myself in the early afternoon. I used a pencil to hold the key down while I climbed up and fixed it. To do the reed touch-up, though, I decided to wait until Eli arrived at church off the school bus and let him hold keys for me.

All that went just fine. The reeds had suffered as we have been alternating between seasonably cool weather and bitterly cold spells. They sound much better now. As I was finishing up, Briggs asked to see inside the casework. I don't think he ever had before. Briggs was the perfect size to maneuver around the casework; I just wish he could handle the tuning! Then it was Eli's turn, though it was not his first peek at the ranks of pipes.

As we were finishing, a choir member showed up, and she and I sat down to chit-chat. Briggs ran off to find a basketball. Eli sat on the organ bench and experimented. I wasn't listening too closely as he drew one stop and another to hear the highs and lows and so forth. But as a few minutes passed I realized he was picking out the tune New Britain (Amazing Grace). I kept my focus on my conversation, but eventually had to pause because Eli was playing the melody on the pedals! My chorister had noticed the same thing at about the same time. Eli had pretty much figured out the basic melody and was beginning to add the grace notes too, mostly in rhythm.

His pedal technique was awful but I was struck by the fact that he deliberately chose to create the melody using his feet instead of using a manual. I demonstrated a soft, sustained chord for his left hand to accompany the melody and let him play the whole thing again. It sounded pretty good to me and to the singer!

Today Eli's band was doing its goodwill concert tour around the local elementary schools. It seems at least one choral group was also in the mix (maybe they were singing at the mall where the band had lunch), because he says that was how the New Britain melody had gotten in his ear: a group sang it today.

Who knows what this little experience may lead to, if anything. But it certainly was a nice "aha" moment in the midst of an otherwise ho-hum day.

Famous first words

Tonight at supper, we got talking about baby-talk. We circled around to early words the boys have created.

One of Eli's best was "dippit" which was his way of saying "ketchup." I remember the first time he used the word at the McDonalds in Ashland, VA.

Briggs' best new word was "wee-too." That was his version of "thank you." It was followed pretty quickly by "wel-tum" for "you're welcome."

Calvin hasn't got any really famous ones yet, but he is just on the cusp. Right now he's saying "buhmamma" for "banana." We're waiting for the really creative neologisms to start spewing forth.

You can still hear any of us using "dippt" and "wee-too" in conversations amongst ourselves. Luckily for us, the two older boys still find remembering, talking about and laughing over this sort of thing funny. Eli was slightly embarrassed, but managed to see the humor in it all.

This one did not

The second weekend in December was predicted to be messy weather-wise. We tried to prepare ourselves for it. It was a "big" weekend at church with special music in the morning and our big dinner theater in the evening. The weather was supposed to be rainy Saturday evening changing to snow and freezing rain at some point on Sunday. We figured we'd have church but would have to take a wait-and-see attitude with the evening event.

We woke up Sunday morning to 4 inches of SNOW! First service and Sunday School and the dinner theater got canceled right away. It was bitterly cold. The snow kept falling and we ultimately canceled our second service also. (Though at 11AM when I awoke from a mid-morning nap, it was SUNNY! Blue sky sunny, and the snow was melting!) Luckily, for the sake of my guilty conscience, it started snowing and sleeting again in the late afternoon.

It was supposed to be rain, but this was the scene early on Sunday morning. Two-thirds of the boys decided to make the most of it. While we missed the worst of the winter weather the first weekend of the month, we got slammed the second weekend!

Later that day

Later on the day we got our Christmas tree was the Black Mountain Town parade. We encountered clear and sunny skies, snow, rain and sleet, all of them, on the 60 minute ride back to Black Mountain!

This year for the first time we had two boys marching in the parade: Eli with Scouts and Briggs with Cubs. Because the two units are associated with the same church, they linked up on their parade float. Briggs got to ride on the float; Eli carried a flag. (You can almost make him out in the lower right corner of the photo above.) It snowed and rained (freezing rain) the whole time. This snow storm took it easy on us.

The famous tree hunt of 2010

A couple of years ago we went to Yancey County for a live Christmas tree. We had a lot of fun: the weather was sunny and nearly 60 degrees. Libby wanted to do the same thing this year. The weather was snowy and 25 degrees.

We set off anyway. We got to Burnsville just as their Christmas parade was finishing up: got stuck in traffic and everyone was doubly anxious because snow was falling like crazy and sticking everywhere. We stopped for lunch to mull it over. We decided to persevere on, with the proviso that we would turn around if there were any driving issues. We started up (UP) Highway 197 to get to the farm we wanted to revisit. About a mile in the road was slicked up and a couple of cars ahead of us had stopped, dead in the road. We slid around a little also and ground to a halt. A salt truck came by and salted the other lane; didn't help us a bit. We sat for about 20 minutes until volunteer fire fighters pushed us off our snowy spot. We turned right around and crept back down the hill.

We stopped for a tree at another farm near town, in the valley. We'll try to get back to our first choice farm another year. When it's warm; and when it's sunny.