Foo - Happy Holidays !

It's time to pull up a chair, pour yourself a hot cider or some egg nog...

Are you getting a lump of coal and a spanking or have you been good, thinking you should have been bad ?

:)

What is your favourite Christmas memory ?

What are your favourite traditions ?

And if you are not celebrating Christmas you can join in too... it's just me and the Christmas fish here now as the dog has defected.

A lump of coal is just a young diamond. And spanking is bad? :innocent:

Fav Christmas memory: First train set...I have picture of me (5yo) on my dresser. I'm in my pj's with my dad beside me.
Fav tradition: I guess just the whole fam getting together. I feel fortunate that we all get along very well.

Christmas fish? Did someone catch you a delicious bass?

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r162/jsharr/bass/TX_lake7.jpg

jsharr -

You know you owe me a fish dinner when I come down there... :)

Hope you and the family are enjoying the season and hope the kid's stockings aren't filled with fish.

A lump of coal is just a young diamond. And spanking is bad? :innocent:

Fav Christmas memory: First train set...I have picture of me (5yo) on my dresser. I'm in my pj's with my dad beside me.
Fav tradition: I guess just the whole fam getting together. I feel fortunate that we all get along very well.

I remember wanting a train set more than anything in the whole world but knew that since times were hard (my mom was a single parent) I might not get it.

My grandfather came to visit us that Christmas and when I awoke there was a big bog under the tree and he and I spent the day setting things up and he told me all about how he helped build the Roger's pass back in the days when they ran steam shovels.

He loved trains... they were his first mode of transportation as he said he never saw a car until he was in his teens and spent some years hopping those trains to get from place to place. :)

Had to look up Roger's Pass...impressive, and neat story. Thanks for sharing. There are still a handful of old growth white and jack pines in northern Wisconsin that were miraculously spared the lumber barons' wrath. Some rudimentary trains were used to transport the felled trees from the "front lines". Not unlike the tech/design of the steam shovels. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the early 19th century. Love those old photos one typically finds in mom and pop diners.

Had to look up Roger's Pass...impressive, and neat story. Thanks for sharing. There are still a handful of old growth white and jack pines in northern Wisconsin that were miraculously spared the lumber barons' wrath. Some rudimentary trains were used to transport the felled trees from the "front lines". Not unlike the tech/design of the steam shovels. I can only imagine what it must have been like in the early 19th century. Love those old photos one typically finds in mom and pop diners.

It was brutally hard and dangerous work... my grandfather lost most of one thumb in one accident and said he came very close to being one of the casualties on March 4th, 1910 when an avalanche killed more than 60 of his co-workers.

He also told me about having to dig out the bodies afterwards and for a long time I was terrified every time we drove through the pass despite it being much safer due to better avalanche controls.

He was born in 1884 and when I was a young child he was already well into his 80's and was like a walking history book as he had seen so much change in his life and done so much... I was lucky to have been able to spend as much time with him as I did and it was only when he was 98 that he had to move into a care facility and he passed away at 100.

Just getting an update from NORAD... Santa is approaching Colorado Springs right now and should be here soon.