December 31, 2011

Outside Temp: 25 F (it's getting a little chilly... We've been so spoiled by the warm weather for the last few weeks, I forgot what colder weather felt like)

What I cooked today:
Nothing... It was one of those days where we weren't home enough to actually cook anything.  I had Lucky Charms for breakfast.  :)

Update:
We had planned to go into town to switch out Ryan's boots, have Allen's boots checked and do some shopping.  But by the time we finished church and headed up to the parents house to chat for a few minutes, the pro shop was closed (they closed early today, around 2ish).  Thank goodness I called before we left!  I guess I'll do my weekly shopping tomorrow (which works because I can get the Sunday paper and the new week's coupons!)

Patrick and Grandpa were awesome enough to take our garbage to the dump today.  We don't have garbage service (actually, I think we might, we just don't use it.  We do the dump instead).  It's been about 2-3 weeks since we last dumped the garbage, so I was getting really antsy to get it dumped.  And Grandpa's dump pass expired today, so it was a good day to go!  We 'store' the garbage in the garage, to keep the wild animals out (except the mice, which we catch with traps), and it's been cold enough that the smell is not a problem.   It's really, really cheep to dump your own garbage, but a little bit of a pain.  I figure in a few years, I can just send Allen... after all, what else is a teenager for?

I spent a little time chatting with one of the ladies from town about who owns what house around us.  I think I'm going to try to go around town and take some pictures of the old houses around us.  They just tore down two houses that have been here for decades.  One was filled with asbestos, so it had to go.  The second one, I'm not sure if it was just really old, but it was pretty narrow, about the size of a row house, maybe 15 feet across the property line.  There are a few other houses that are empty.  It's really kind of neat, although it seems that most of the old houses are empty and just torn down.   There's not much left of the town now, probably less than 20 houses.  This town used to be quite big, with a lot of businesses and people.  Now, it's down to less than 20 people, and only a post office and a church and a auto shop. 

Here is a picture I found of the town in 1918, over 80 years ago. 

You can click on the picture to get a bigger size, but here is Raynesford, 1918.  The town is actually smaller than this now.  The picture at the top (that is cut off) is the school and the number of students in 1918.  I'm going to ask permission to get a similar picture from the top of the hill to compare with this one. 

We ended up spending the day at the grandparents, watching movies, having dinner and playing yet another game of Clue.  Patrick doesn't know how to let the kids win, so he wins more often than not. 

Not bad for the last day of the year!