No Tree This Year

There is not going to be a Hahn Family Christmas Tree this year. Once we decided that we would be going to Florida to see my parents for Christmas, Kris pointed out that we shouldn’t bring it up from the basement, unpack all the ornaments and lights, and set everything up if we weren’t going to be here to enjoy it. And she was right. It is a lot of work, to set up the tree. It takes me two full days to get everything up and decorated. Plus, with the cats, we are constantly shooing them away from the tree. They chase each other around it, and Samson will try to chew on the strings of lights, or swat at some of the low hanging ornaments that ate sparkly and catch his eye. It is a constant battle to make sure they leave the tree alone when we are home, I can’t imagine what would happen if we weren’t here for a week. They would have it toppled over, or worse.

I did bring up a few things, like the girls’ nutcrackers, and some of Kris’s snowmen decorations, but it just doesn’t feel like Christmas around here without the tree. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have a tree up in our house. Even when I was in college, I had a tree. I think it would have been 1990 or 1991 when I was living in a flat by UWM that we didn’t have a Christmas tree. I know we can’t really have it up, but it still makes me sad not having it.

Indian Invite '16

We had our first Indian Invite as workers/volunteers today.  Since this was our first foray into working it, we had no idea what to expect.  The good thing was that we had someone working with us in the kitchen who has been doing this for something like five or six years (he has had two daughters each as varsity cheerleaders for four years).  But it was still hectic.

Getting the meat heated up and ready for walking tacos was easy.  All we had to do was put it in the convection ovens for about 15 minutes.  The big problem that we had right off the bad was making coffee.  Since we opened the doors at 8:00 AM, we wanted to be able to have coffee ready for anyone who might need a pick me up.  The problem was that the coffee makers we had in the kitchen were the old, barrel style percolators.  I have NEVER made coffee in one of these, and had no idea how they worked.  Add to it I had no clue what sort of filters were supposed to go in them and it was just a comedy of errors. 

The first batch we made had grounds in it because we didn’t use paper filters.  It also wasn’t something that we pushed start and the coffee was ready 5 minutes later.  It took 15-20 minutes to perc and heat up.  The first few cups we sold to people must have just been BAD!  Sorry about that. 

Once we got the hang of things we had a nice little assembly line going with our hotdog and walking tacos.  Oh, and one other thing we ran into was having stuff ready right away.  Along with the coffee, we had a few dozen donuts and cups of donut holes, figuring that would be good “breakfast” stuff for people.  Well as early as 8:15 or 8:30 people were coming up and asking for walking tacos.  Really?  A walking taco at 8:30 in the morning?  Or even a hot dog?  I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t something that I would have considered for a breakfast type item.  Next year we’ll have to keep that in mind and make sure that EVERYTHING is ready to go by 8:00 AM.

Overall, the event went off pretty well.  It sure seemed to go quickly though.  I think everyone was pretty much cleared out by 1:30 PM and we were cleaned up and packed up by around 3:00.  Some of the parents went to a local watering hole to “celebrate” afterward, but Kris and I were tired and just figured we wanted to go home and take a nap.  I wouldn’t have figured it would have taken that much out of us.  Although being up by around 4:30 AM to be there at 6:00 AM didn’t help.  The only downside as I see it was that we were unable to see any of the competition, so we don’t have any idea of how the other teams we would be competing against this year, look.  Then again, it shouldn’t really matter much as long as they hit their routine.  Next competition is the UCA Nationals qualifier, so they better work their butts off between now and then if they want to go to Disney in February.

Competition Prep

Tomorrow is the first competition of Ali’s HS cheerleading career, the Indian Invite.  And since the Falls hosts it, the parents all have to work it.  That means that the day before is devoted to preparing.  All the parents met at the high school around 7:00 to begin set-up and preparation.  Kris volunteered us to help in the kitchen with concessions.  Luckily, we were working with a parent who has been doing this for at least the last five years, if not longer.  I know he has had two daughters go thru the varsity team, though I don’t know what the overlap with them was and this is his last year since his youngest daughter is a senior this year.  He showed us around and what we need to do, so we finished our part rather early, so then we helped out with other areas as we were needed until we had everything set up, or just about all set up.  I think we’ll have the kitchen pretty well set for the morning, I just hope things go smoothly.

Update

We finally got our confirmation for Kris’s dad that he was accepted onto the state’s care/assistance program.  We have meetings with case workers and nurses now, but for the most part, we have a huge weight lifted off of our shoulders now.  The funny thing is that the assisted living facility was trying to tell us that we needed to pre-pay her dad’s rent/care bills for a couple of months ahead of time so that we would not have to worry about his care/coverage being approved.  I am glad we didn’t.  I am still not sure I trust the administration there, but for the time being, things seem to be going well so we just cross our fingers and hope for the best. 

Camera Upgrade

This year for my birthday, I decided to finally upgrade our camera. For years we have had a simple, point-and-shoot. Our current one is 8 years old, and we are starting to lose some pixels on the viewing display. Aside from that, with changes in technology (megapixel size, resolution, etc.) Kris’s iPhone camera is probably better quality that the Sony Cyber Shot. So since we had a little cash saved up and money I got in gifts, I decided to pull the trigger on a Canon DSLR. I have wanted to get one for years, but just never had the money saved up because something else always came along.

I don’t know how much it’ll get used, but I am hoping much more than the little one. I realize it is a lot bulkier and I can’t just carry it around in my pocket, but I hope to be taking more photos now (and better quality ones as well). It will probably take a little time to get used to things, like focusing, light settings, etc. but I think I will be able to get the hang of things pretty quickly. Look for some better shots on the Christmas Card next year!

Finalized My Trip

Today I got everything finalized for my work trip.  I am heading to Mexico the first week in December.  I’ll be gone from Sunday to Friday.  I am actually looking forward to going.  I know lots of people hate travelling for work, but now that the girls are older and I don’t need to worry about them and how Kris is going to get along with them by herself, I don’t think I will mind travelling for work.  The one thing I worry about it being able to communicate with everyone I need to.  I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, so hopefully the people I will be working with will speak enough English that we’ll be able to get our work done.  Check back next month and I will try to post things from the road.

Extra Cookie Book

We have had our power go out a couple of times in the last few days due to some repair work a block over. It was sort of frustrating. However, I got a call today that came up on the caller ID as WE Energies. Usually we will get a robo-call saying “your power is back on, we’re sorry for any inconvenience”. So I answered and was surprised to actually get a voice on the other end. It was an actual rep from WE Energies who was calling to apologize for all the outages, we had to put up with the last few days, and as a way of saying they were sorry, she said they were going to send us a 2016 WE Energies Cookie Book as a token. AWESOME! So now we have an extra cookie book! WOOHOO!!!