Winter Wonderland

Christmas Time!

My favorite time of winter. I am for sure a "summer girl" because I love the sun, sand and waves the best. I must admit, however, that I do love the sights and sounds of the winter holiday season. I love the songs, I love the crisp feel of the air, I love the outpouring of love and affection from friends, family and even strangers! As the song says "greeting smile after smile..."!

Shawn and I took a hiatus from fishing to ready our home for our family for the holidays! While this blog is about our boating adventures, we actually do put forth the same energy and intensity to our "land life"!

To prepare for the family Christmas dinner and for overnight guests, we (mostly me, Liz) mudded, taped and painted several rooms in the house. Then we began our food preparations for what as truly going to be a feast: crab balls, bacon-wrapped oysters, rockfish dip, prime rib, salad, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, rolls and cranberry-cherry pie for dessert. We waited too long to go to the Christmas Tree farm, so we found the perfect tree in the woods!

Decorated, the tree looks beautiful!

Four of our five children were with us for our holiday dinner which made us so very content. All of them travelled to be with us, and we were very grateful to them for their willingness to do so.

We decorated the wood stove for the season.

Of course, we had our Christmas Day cruise!

I knew, of course, that working on the boat is a continual process and we did our share of boat work as well.

Shawn and I winterized our girl. We pickled the fresh water system with nontoxic antifreeze and changed the oil as part of the beginning of the winterization of the YellowBird.

Then we (Shawn, mainly) ensured we had wood for the wood stove in the house before the Big Freeze came in January. He also put an ice-eater at the dock.

Just in time before the Big Snow!

In the first few days of January, we had a big freeze and lots of snow (for our region).

Our creek froze SOLID! We were able to walk across it and almost out to the mouth of it.

The ice eater did a good job of keeping the water nearest the dock moving (somewhat).

I was able to ice-skate! One of my favorite pastimes.

We were worried about the YellowBird because of the combination of low tides and freezing, but even though she looks VERY cold, she "weathered" the big freeze just fine! Now we are awaiting Spring!