Wednesday, December 05, 2012

An Active Brooks Bunch

November kept us busy, and it looks like December is going to be filled with activity as well. Daniel started playing basketball, both boys are still in Scouts, and Karen volunteered to build a snowman for the Lowes float for the Rochester holiday parade. At that's on top of some special Christmas projects we're working on.

The theme of the Rochester parade was "Cartoon Christmas," and so the snowman wasn't just any snowman; it was Sam the Snowman, from Rankin-Bass' Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the character voiced by Burl Ives, and made to look a little like him. Everyone in the family participated in Sam's construction. He was crafted from papier mache over a base of three large balloons. Both boys helped paint him. Karen, William, and I made the cardboard banjo that he holds, and Karen constructed the clothing and the facial features.

Thanks largely to our snowman, Lowes won third place in the corporate category.

During the beginning of November, Thomas and I worked together at Measured Progress. Now that the job is done, we're back to working on other projects, including Thomas' Kindle cookbook and my book, and lots of eBay selling by me. The selling is going slowly, but every once in while I get surprised by the sale of something I've listed again and again without apparent success. Sometimes I think I just have to persist until the right buyer finds what I'm selling.

The extra money we made in those few weeks did allow us to do a little extra Christmas shopping, and catch up on the heating bill. I don't know what kind of winter we're going to have, but even a mild winter means a couple of tanks-full of propane before the Spring.

The house has been treating us well on that front, though. Yesterday, we didn't turn the main floor's heat on at all, and the sunshine outside was enough to keep the house comfortable even though the outside temperature never got above 50 degrees.

December is also the month of Danny's birthday. This week's home celebration includes meatloaf for dinner, which is one of Danny's favorites. And this year he's invited his friends to join him for bowling as his birthday party.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. Even though I don't get many chances to write in this blog (because, for one thing, I'm already doing a lot of writing for other projects), I will try to keep up on life events here at The Brooks Bunch with the daily pictures.

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