MERRY CHRISTMAS IN GRASS VALLEY

I don't imagine many people are wishing for a whiter Christmas than what most of the country has received this year. Yet, this morning our world has again turned white. We awoke to rain and sleet that quickly turned to heavy snow and, almost instantly, all of the ground that had been revealed disappeared beneath a blanket of new white. Here's a small album of photos taken this morning in our front and back yards.

Here atop our mountain is the home of our nearest neighbor. They are also snowbirds usually at Sky Valley this time of the year.

The sign reads, "Swimsuits optional beyond this point" but, thankfully, the hot tub isn't operating at this time of the years or there would be goose pimples on places not accustomed to them.

Looking east from our deck towards the peaks of the High Sierra Nevadas in a brief sunbreak.

Another brief shaft of sunlight highlights our backyard.

Judy and I hope you've had a wonderful and meaningful Christmas this year.

A Firefighter's Family Christmas

WE Wii’d THE NIGHT AWAY!

Holiday schedules become very flexible when a family member works in emergency services. Our son Kevin, as almost all of the readers of this blog know, is an officer in our largest fire department. As often as not, his schedule ends up with him working on many of the major holidays, and this year was no exception.

In depth negotiations with Santa Claus resulted in a special delivery several days early so the whole family could celebrate the holiday together. Therefore, Tuesday, Dec. 23rd became our Christmas.

A little more snow fell throughout the day, ending before sundown. Our unplowed road is rapidly turning into an icy downhill slide as the white stuff gets packed down hard on the gravel. Only the hearty are venturing out until those conditions improve substantially.

Last year we had the pleasure of having our daughter Laurie and Granddaughter here from North Carolina but this year, with the economy being as tough as it is, they stayed home. We missed their smiling faces around the dinner table this year. Dinner was wonderful though repeated attempts to get the two boys to make nice faces were a complete failure. We settled on a nice picture of we four adults with the two munchkins doing what they felt like doing.

A very generous Santa delivered a Wii fit video game system to Kevin and Dodi’s boys and, when they all arrived at our house that evening for Christmas Dinner and our gifting, they brought it along with them. What a lot of fun. We bowled, raced, played baseball and laughed and shouted at successes and failures alike. I can clearly see why the Wii is so popular.

Waking on the morning of Christmas Eve, we discovered that Mother Nature was doing her thing again and moderate snow was falling. The trees looked as though they had been dusted with powdered sugar.

Oh the First Snowfall of the Winter

Let it snow, let it snow…….OH JUST STOP IT!

The first snowstorm happened before we returned home and the second one arrived last night, lasting into this morning.

Though we didn’t measure, it appeared we had something like 10” on the ground when we got here and another 5” or so fell overnight. Now we have 12 or `13” on the flat after some of the original compressed down.

In recent years our snow accumulation has been pretty light but this year's weather forecasts, out through the first of the year, look like Grass Valley will keep this snow around for a while.

More storms are forecast to arrive starting Saturday night, DEC 20th lasting through all of next week with some precip arriving each day. Some of that will be snow and some of it rain but it makes for a rather soggy holiday in Grass Valley.

Old Rowdy ventured out in the white stuff today and didn’t think much of it. I can just imagine how that cold white stuff felt on his belly and other stuff located in that area. Brrrrrrrr!

The Christmas cookie baking began today making the inside of our home smell wonderful with brown sugar, vanilla, and sugar odors filling the air. In the bath, however, the smell is of Ben Gay for my joints that ache in the stormy weather.

We're at home for Christmas

Home again, home again, jiggity jig:

We celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary driving north on State Highway 99, from Desert Hot Springs to Grass Valley. That trip is nearly 600 miles and that’s a long days drive.

When we awoke yesterday morning the heavy rains of the previous day and evening had come to an end and the day was washed in brilliant sunshine. Nearly an inch of vitally important rain had fallen in the previous day and while there was still great concern in the areas that had been stripped of all their vegetation in the recent wildfires, no large movements of mud were reported on the morning news.

Snow had fallen quite heavily on the high desert around Yucca Valley, Lancaster, and Apple Valley and, of course on the mountains around the Palm Springs area. The mountains are always beautiful but dressed in winter white they are at their best.

In California’s central valley we encountered several hours of rain showers while driving through. As we approached Grass Valley on Highway 49, we began to see snow on the shoulders of the road. It increased as we rose up the mountains until the ground was totally covered with something less than one foot all over town.

Of even a bigger shock to our systems, however, was the temperatures which stood at about 26 F downtown…..brrrrrrrr. After a month and a half down in the 70’s and 80’s of the desert if felt like we had stepped into a freezer.

In this morning’s early light we drew the drapes and got our first good look at a magically white winter wonderland. The bird feeder on the deck was decorated with what looked like a huge cotton ball while the icicles dripped from the rain gutters.
Judy immediately set about decorating for Christmas and, by the end of day one, the tree was up, full of lights and our heirloom ornaments. The potpourri pot is bubbling, the village is on the mantel, and the only cds in the player are those containing Christmas favorites such as Mannheim Steamroller (we were fans long before Rush Limbaugh discovered them) and Ray Charles.)
The grandsons arrived after school and found it a little hard to understand why Grandma only had package cookies and none of the wonderful home-baked Christmas confections their taste buds were remembering. Life’s lessons continue to be learned.
Grandma tried explaining that everything would be done in its time but I don’t think they really understood.
So, we’re home for Christmas. The weather guy, by the way, says we’ve many more snowy days on the horizon so it seems certain that Christmas will be white.

More Merriment

I was struck the other day with the thought that the desert environment we live in is much more like the conditions into which the Christ Child was born. Bethlehem is and was in the desert with palm trees and other prickly things. The vision of a white Christmas, with sleighs and evergreens, is purely European and American.

But even here on the desert, far away from home and family, the joy and excitement that is the Christmas Season do infect us. It’s true that most of us don’t get carried away with decorations in our restricted-space homes on wheels, but we still decorate. Some even find creative uses for the desert cacti and palm trees found everywhere around us.

In fact, some folks, mainly those who staff these resorts during the whole winter, do go all out—nearly over the top—in exterior holiday décor.

Of course the resort at which we stay has been fully decorated with animals made from the dry end of palm fronds decorating every street post and all of the various buildings sporting icicle lights and other decorations. One of the differences between these displays and typical commercial efforts is that these were all thought of, designed, and created and installed by the volunteer workers who staff these places in exchange for rent or having to move after a set number of days. They are a hard working group and did a great job on the decorations this year. The penguins sliding down the faux snow slope are especially cute.
Here at our house, Knute the polar bear (Yeah, named after what was the little orphan bear in Germany) sits proudly at the front of our yard greeting all who pass. The candy cane lights around him glow nicely in the dark.

Inside our little home we have our miniature tree with politically and environmentally correct LED lights and, since we normally hit the sack around ten, we have no problem complying with the resort’s request to extinguish holiday lights by eleven p.m.

The “Holly” channel on our XM Satellite radio is capable of playing Christmas music 24/7 and Forest our Alaskan Bear sits in the driver’s seat wearing his Christmas outfit—a Santa hat and his tee shirt from North Pole Alaska.

Oh yes, we’re very Christmassy – Christmassie – Christmassee – oh whatever. We’ve no place to store gifts so our clothes end up in plastic bags stuffed under the bed, but we work around the situation. The packages for back east have all been shipped and due to arrive any day now. Our stockings will be hung with care but that will have to wait until we journey back to our very own chimney in Grass Valley. There Judy will fill the house with the cherished decorations we’ve collected over the years and the wonderful smells of Christmas--cookies, pumpkin pie, apple cider, turkey, and who could forget—SWEDISH MEATBALLS.

The grandsons will visit with sugarplums dancing in their eyes, certainly not prepared for the disappointment of opening a package with a shirt or pair of pants inside. They’re still at the age when they believe all gifts should be things to play with. Underpants as gifts are just one of life’s hard lessons. Growing up is tough. Those cookies will soften the blow at least in part and they’ll look back and remember the warmth and love of Christmas at Grandma’s house.

Oh yeah, it’ll be Christmas 2008 at our home whether here or there.

Though not a Christmas picture at all, we came upon this scene in the resort with Mt. San Jacinto backlighted by the setting sun. Really pretty, don't you think?

Heading Home for Christmas?

Having been here in the Southwest for a month and a half, our activities are now focused on returning to Grass Valley, for the Christmas Holidays. As things stand now, on the 10th of December, our departure, scheduled for next Tuesday, the 16th, is in some doubt as a large, cold storm is headed for California. It’s due to arrive this weekend and persist into much of next week. For much of the state it will bring some much needed rain, but in the mountains snow is anticipated to quite low elevations.

The plan is to leave the motorhome in storage here on the desert and drive home in the Jeep.

We’ll keep a very close eye on the situation and may have to delay our departure or cancel our trip altogether, depending on the severity and duration of the storm. Yeah, Laurie, it looks like this year you could have had a white Christmas in Grass Valley. You also may have had to enjoy it without us.

We’ve just had a couple of the very windy days for which Desert Hot Springs is known. When you are located adjacent to hundreds of wind generators you have to expect some windy days. For the remainder of this week, as we await the arrival of the storm mentioned above, we’ll have lovely, warm weather.

This past weekend we attended the Indio International Tamale Festival along with our friends Lyle and Marge Hacke and an estimated 99,996 others. There were tamales of every size, shape, and filling imaginable—fruit tamales—pork, beef, chicken, turkey, cheese, and vegetarian. If you couldn’t find something that tickled your taste buds, there was something wrong with your buds.

Cynical Ron wondered if the latino guys loitering around the Border Patrol recruiting trailer were legal or not. He also was amused by a group of police officers enjoying a pleasant conversation with each other while the odor of marijuana drifted through the air around them. I guess it demonstrated that what law was being enforced was very selectively chosen.

It was a beautiful warm afternoon around 80 degrees with wall to wall sunshine and the crowd was well behaved.