Yule Blog

We had a very nice, relaxing holiday with friends and family. Now that Danny is a little bit older, we were anxious to again experience the holidays through the eyes of a child. Last year, Danny was still too young to understand what was going on and this year proved to be a little bit more interesting. Danny is still a little unclear on the concept of Santa Clause and the importance of being on his best behavior on the days leading up to Christmas. Up until the last hour on Christmas Eve, it was touch and go whether Santa would be coming to our house. Fortuanately for all of us, Danny improved his behavior and Jason made a last minute telephone call to catch Santa to let him know Danny had a change of heart.

Jason and I woke up before Danny did, so I went ahead and turned on the TV while we waited for him to get up. The first four channels I turned to were playing one variation or another of this:

Ahh, the yule log. We kept this tuned during the mornig present opening ritual. I always get a kick out of this and especially love it when the annonymous, detached arm appears to throw another log on the fire or give it the occasional poke.

Danny got a HotWheels stunt track (No Batteries needed... Whooo Hooo)

Santa also brought this:


I am not at all a fan of clowns, but this retro punching bag clown is just what the doctor ordered to tame the wild beast on these long, dark winter days. We are having a blast with this thing and it is holding up quite well despite the abuse it has endured. Danny loves to punch it in the nose and thinks it's even more fun to kick him in the "peanut"......... Where did he learn that? Must be another thing he learned at preschool.

Moving on, here is the boy looking through his stocking. I am so in love with this home made Peanuts stocking I found on ebay. I have decided that I will take it over if / when Danny outgrows it.

We kept it low key this Christmas and everyone on both sides of my family mutually decided to just enjoy eachother and not buy gifts. Jason and I were also not going to exchange gifts, so you can imagine how excited I was to find an ipod Nano in my stocking. I feel like I am one more step closer to keeping up with technology. Well, sorta. Anyway, I am very excited to say the least.

After we opened presents at home, we jumped in the car to go visiting. We first went to Tom's house. Tom is Jason's kinda sorta ex-stepdad and is the inspiration for Danny's middle name. There was a bunch of family, dogs, and food at their house and we even took in a little Christmas day target shooting out back with Toms new .22 rifle. Good times.

After a quick trip to Jason's mom's house, we headed on to my folk's place for dinner along with my sister Sarah, my brother in law Casey, their little guy, and Casey'd parents. Whew!

Here was the scene:




Danny got a cool retro scooter and a tool kit from Grampeggy and Grampa Dave

After dinner, the two self admitted techno nerds got my ipod and itunes account situated

Here, Andrew has a little after dinner snack. Notice his little hand. I love it when their little hands go exploring when they are nursing.

Danny was a real trooper, going all day without a nap and going to 3 different households with present and family overload. He fell asleep on our way home, leaving Jason and I a couple of hours of peace to watch a movie....a gift I truly appreciated.

Now we have the task of packing up the Christmas things and getting ready for new years. I am not a fan of new years eve but there just might be a Guitar Hero party in out neighborhood.... stay tuned...

Winter happenings

Lake County rarely gets snow and if we do, it usually comes towards the end of winter. The last couple of weeks has brought us some snow, which is a huge surprise. It iOur rare snow storms are quite nice because the snow comes through with much anticipation, it is very beautiful and puts the entire community in a tizzy. Then, before you know it, the sun or the rain quickly comes and takes all the snow away. There was a time in my life when I thought I would love to live in snow country. Now I think differently but really do enjoy the beauty and excitement of the snow while it lasts. Here are some pics from the last couple of weeks:

This is pretty much the extent of the blizzard that rolled though our elevation last week, but it was falling this past week up in the mountains. We drove up to the High Glade area in the Naitonal forrest and got to experience a little bit more snow.
Katie, my snow princess. Wow, looking at this picture makes me realize how grey she is getting around her muzzle. You would not know it by the way she moves in the snow, though. She was so frisky, running like a wild woman.

Danny and me in our trusty rig. Jason did a great job manuevering us through the snow and we only got stuck once!

All that dead timber is a result of the big Forks Fire that swept through in 1997. I was home that summer and remember the ashes falling and the glow of the fire all along the mountainside every night. Rumor has it the fires were sparked by law enforcement in their marijuana erradification program, but that is just a rumor. As I see it, fire is a natural and necessary occurance in the wilderness. There is so much new growth coming up, and I saw so many animal homes in the burnt out trees. As Elton John would sing, it really is just "The Circle of Life"

On our way down the mountain, we stopped at this giant rock outcropping. I am obsessed with big rocks so we got out to take a break from the drive and climb around it a bit

The other side of this rock is a sheer cliff and about a 400 foot drop that kinda took my breath away. I hunkered on to the side of the rock with my fingernails and put on my brave face for Danny. I really try to avoid passing my hang ups on him as much as I can.

This one, however, has no fear. Well, except for garbage trucks, but that's another story.

Katie looks so majestic here, doesn't she? She looks like she is ready to bust into song.

And, he made it to the top!

A few weeks ago we headed out to get our Christmas tree. After getting our permit from the Forrest service office, we headed up to Elk Mountain. Our friends Allison and Bob, along with their kids Aiden, and Sienna went with us. After a long drive into the woods, and several hikes off the beaten path, we found our speciman.

Jason hiked up the hill with his chain saw

And cut her down as we watched.

The light was kinda poor so I did not get a good shot of our tree in all it's natural glory. Here, you can see it in the background after we got it all decorated.

In all honesty, it is not the best tree we have had, but it was a fun day and that is what counts.

I probablywon't be blogging here for a while, but will be sure to do a Christmas Blog wrapping up the insanity. Actually, we are going very low key this year and are not becoming entrenched in all of the madness. We will be spending lots of time with family and eating lots of food. To all who may be reading this, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and much health and happiness in the next year.

Our big night out

Thursday afternoon, Jason and I drove to Oakland to see AC/DC at the Oakland coliseum. It was so nice to get out of town for a night. Big D got to stay the night with grandma and grandpa Robertson, which my mom was just tickled about.

We roll into town and took the BART into the coliseum. I was really looking forward to doing some serious people watching and seeing some die hards. I was not let down. When I worked at the State Park one summer, I always knew who was playing at Konocti by the appearance of the campers rolling in during concert nights. I saw it all from the Willy Nelson fans to Salt N Peppa fans.

My personal favorite were the fans that showed up to see Rock Doesn't stop (Poison, warrant, etc.)

They checked into their campsites in the afternoon looking like the average person. When I saw them all leave around concert time, I see them looking all glammed up. It was great.



I was trying to be stealthy with my picture taking, so this is the best shot I could get of this one guy. He was dressed in a little school boy uniform and had the cap with devil horns coming out of it. I guess I could have been bold and just asked him if I could get his picture, but I didn't.

The fans that showed up Thursday night were pretty much what I expected. The majority of the folks were over 35, wearing their old vintage concert T shirts. There were a surprising number of families, and a few whipper snappers thrown in, but not many 18- 20 somethings. a few people dressed up as Angus, and lots of people were sporting devil horns. I was bummed that I had packed up my devil horns with all my halloween stuff.

We made our way to our seats and find Art Garfunkel sitting in front of us. Not really, but he looked just like him.

He is sitting there on the right with his two sons. He was having the time of his life, he had the biggest grin on his face and even though he seemed to be a pretty reserved little man, he did get up and dance and sing along with the best of them. His two boys were duds. At one point, one of his sons, who was probably 12 or so, sat down and looked very annoyed by the whole thing. Kids today apparently do not know how to party seriously.

Then there was this guy.

He showed up with his buddy and they looked like they had done some pre partying out in the parking lot. Anyway, he happened to walk in when the opening band was playing. Note: opening band was horrible. Anyway, this guy and his buddy came walking in, he was playing air guitar the whole entire time, even to this crappy opening band and looking like he was on top of the world. I am glad I captured this picture of him without being too obvious. I just wish I had captured him in an air guitar moment.

Finally, the opening band finishes and after a short wait, out they come. They opened with a song from their new album but played plenty of their oldies, which made me happy: Back in black, Dirty Deeds, the Jack, Thunderstruck, Whole lotta woman, TNT, Shook me all night long, etc. etc. I'll just let the pictures do the talking here.

**** Note the devil horns hands here*******


Angus did a strip tease and showed us his little bum

Their stage was awesome, there was this big train (With devil horns of course), when they played Hells Bells, a giant bell came down and Angus jumped up and hung from it. Those guys have not slowed down a bit and you could tell they were still so into putting on a great show for their fans.

After the show ended, we walked back to BART, stopping from time to time to watch some scuffles between some drunkards. We don't get out much so we were taking in all the excitement we could get. We bought a couple of discounted, unlicensed T shirts in the BART station, and headed to our hotel with some ringing of the ears but otherwise very pleased.

The next day, we headed to the Oakland Flea market and looked for some bargains.

I almost bought a stolen Nano Ipod for $80.00 but decided to pass and got a John Denver's greatest hits CD instead.

Wow, look how young and virile he looks here. This is not the John Denver I remember. John, why did you have to leave us so soon?! I still love you despite all of your faults. (And I know there were plenty)

Jason got some tools and fishing supplies and we headed on home.

Well, my ears are still ringing but the show was well worth our time. I am proud of those old guys and I hope they will be rockin for some years to some.

Thanksgiving

I am home sick today so decided to take advantage of some alone time to do some blogging. Jason and I are headed to the AC/DC concert Thursday night, so I will be sure to blog about that as soon as I can. Maybe I will have to take another sick day.... hmmm... I think I feel something coming on....

Ok, on to the purpose of the post: Thanksgiving!

This year, Thanksgiving was held at my parent's house. They had a full house: My parents, me, Danny, Jason, my two sisters and their husbands along with my neice and nephew, Sarah's mother in law, and Jason's grandmother, Betty. It was relatively stress free as we all pitched in with the cooking and clean up so it worked out pretty well. The biggest change has been the addition of grandchildren. The Robertson household had been absent of babies for the past 30 years until Danny came along almost 3 years ago. Cousin Joely and Andrew came along shortly after and now the house has become a lot louder and chaotic than years past. The addition of grandchildren has really shaken things up as it was getting a little dull......

Here, are all three cousins are captured in a picture together. We had all these grand plans of posing the grandkids together in their festive holiday outfits, but found out pretty early on that those Kodak moments are not all that realistic. It was hard enough getting a decent picture of all of them on the swings before one of them had a melt down.

Here, Danny and Joely watch a movie in Grammy and Grampy's bed while we get dinner ready.

Finally, we all sit down to eat. We had planned on eating at 3:00 but as you can see outside the windows there, it is dark outside.

After dinner, Jason looked over all the ads and plotted his Black Friday shopping strategy.

He did a really great job and scored a new laptop, so we are all very proud of him.

Friday morning, we headed back over to my parent's house to visit some more. The Borjons, long time family friends up the road, also had their children and grandchildren visiting so they said they would be coming over to join us. Check this out:

They rolled up with a tractor and wagon and took all the kids on an action packed Thanksgiving wagon ride. It was all very Norman Rockwell-esque. Throw in some bikes and a mini dirt bike, and you get a parade.

All in all, it was a very nice weekend. Stay tuned for my AC/DC blog!!!!