3000+ Christmas trees later

After selling over 3,000 Christmas trees during the past four weeks, we are done. They hauled the last 45 of our trees out of here on Monday to be sold on another of our lots by one of the long-time employees who will be staying here through Christmas. All in all, I think that only about 100 trees total had not sold as of last Sunday. Not bad considering the company had sold over 11,000 trees altogether. The lot is now again belongs to our local pigeons who are pecking away out there as I write this.

Tomorrow we move our rig over to Walnut Creek and we will be staying in our daughter's driveway. We will be making cookies and pierogies and spending time with family for the next few days.

Merry Christmas!!

1036

We have them stacked just about everywhere. Early this morning, we received a truckload of 1036 trees. Good thing because we had sold more than half of the first load we received and we will probably sell over 800 more by the time Sunday is over. The first weekend in December is traditionally the biggest sales weekend of the season. We will probably be out on the lot for twelve hours each day and the time will be just a blur. Unfortunately our bodies will tell us how much we worked. Time is definitely going by quickly. Before we know it, it will be Christmas. Ho, Ho, Ho!

First of the Christmas Trees

We got our first load of Christmas trees yesterday, a total of about 650 trees (we thought it was going to be 850). The trees come wrapped up into nice neat little packages with lots of twine. We spent all of yesterday and most of the day today cutting off all of the twine and putting them in the proper display position in our racks. If all goes well, we will sell about half of them in the next four days. Monday we are scheduled to receive another semi-truck full of trees...about 700 this time. We will be keeping very busy for the next few weeks.

Cecile spent most of yesterday on her feet between helping our unloading employees get the trees to their proper location and doing the cashier side of the manager training in the afternoon. Gary did the training for the guys, dealing with all the outside aspects of the job. Anyway, Cecile was fully expecting a long day of soreness today because of yesterdays activity. Voila, there was none. She's keeping her fingers crossed that it just isn't delayed a day.

We officially open the lot tomorrow morning at 8am and will be hard at it until around 3pm. Hopefully it is very busy and the day goes by quick. Tomorrow night our bosses will be putting on a Thanksgiving spread for all of the managers.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody!

Christmas Tree Lot - Before

The Christmas tree lot is pretty well ready for the trees which are scheduled to arrive early on Tuesday morning...all 850 of them. Of course this will be only the first of several shipments of trees. When all is said and done and the season is over, we will have sold over 2,000 Christmas trees.

The first picture is of our Santa chair which was badly in need of refurbishing. Cecile put her summer hands-on painting lessons to good use and did a great job of bringing the chair back to life. The Santa chair is a favorite of families for photo memories of their trip to pick out their Christmas tree. When our trees arrive, we will frame the chair with fresh trees which will make for great photo opportunities. The second picture is a "before" picture of the lot without trees. I will post again with pictures after the trees arrive and are put into place.

Excitement at the Pumpkin Patch

After a busy and windy day of selling pumpkins, Gary went in to have some dinner. While looking out our window he noticed something not quite right with the large crane at the construction site across the street. Sure enough the crane had come down in the wind. The winds didn't seem to be more than 15 or 20 mph but there must have been enough to spin the crane around 180 degrees and tip it over. If you notice the flag on the very tip of the crane...that was once straight up in the air. Ain't life grand...well, not for that construction company!

The Pumpkin Patch

Here we are at the pumpkin lot in Burlingame, CA. We have been here for six days and are keeping pretty busy. The really hard work is pretty much done. One of the pictures shows a big box full of pumpkins on a wooden pallet. When we got here, there were twenty-five of these huge things just waiting for us to empty and spread around. The best part was that they have to be unloaded one at a time. You don't want to bruise the product. Giving a rough guess, I think that there were originally over 500 pumpkins. Cecile spent her time decorating the cashout booth and the surrounding area. She loves stuff!

Now our jobs are limited to selling and being babysitters. The new craze in pumpkin lots is to have large inflatable attractions to bring the families in. We only have two of these: a large inflatable slide which is shown in one of the pictures and a 'Clifford: The Big Red Dog' bounce house. There are some pumpkin lots to the south of us, in San Mateo and Redwood City, have five or six of these big monstrosities. It seems as if pumpkins are only a side business...giving the lot a seasonal dressing!

The lot is a little confining since we do not have (nor do we really need) any employees so we are pretty much on our own. The business owners are also parked on this lot until their Christmas tree lot open and they have offered to give us a bit of time off so this may not be so bad...and, only 17 days until Halloween.

Ain't life grand!

Winchester Bay, Oregon

Well, we have been in Winchester Bay for eleven days and the crabbing has been awful. Last year we stayed here only eight days and we got over 150 legal-size crab, plenty to eat, freeze and can. This year, after having the crab traps out for ten days, we haven't even caught 40 legal-size crab. What a difference! Lots of little ones, females and seaweed but we had to throw all those back in. But the socializing has been fun and food at the potlucks has been great...just not many crab dishes.

We pulled the traps out this afternoon, will be cleaning up and packing up tomorrow and plan on leaving on Friday. We will take a relatively slow drive down to Coarsegold and should arrive at Park Sierra on Sunday.

The pictures are various shots of the area and the intrepid mariners. The last one is of Ken showing Janice what kind of boat and RV setup he wants. Can't catch crab, may as well dream!

Ain't life grand!

The Lady Awakens

We purchased this amaryllis as a bulb about seven years ago and it has survived all the subsequent traveling we have done. It blooms once a year, every year and seems to be getting bigger all the time. By the time it is finished it will have four big beautiful red trumpets. The last trumpet will come out after we get to the coast. After it goes dormant again we will finally have to split the bulb. Then we'll have two of these beautiful flowers.

We will be leaving for Winchester Bay, OR tomorrow for about two weeks of hopefully productive crabbing and socializing with friends. We are really looking forward to having fresh crab every day!

Visit to Portland...Oregon

Cecile and I took a well-deserved break from the Pegs and Jokers creative studios and went up to see our son B and his wife K. They just bought a house in the Portland area and this was my first visit there. The house is in a great area and should be a perfect place to start their soon to be growing family. We took a tour of the area with K and had lunch at Paradise Bakery, where they have the greatest cookies in the world, while B had to suffer through another law school class. Late in the afternoon we all decided to see a movie, 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Cecile and I thought the movie was pretty good.

Grandchildren milestones

During the past week, our grandchildren have achieved several milestones. Our granddaughter CJ had her fifth birthday celebration. Her mom and dad took her and her brother JR to Disneyland for what was described as a wonderful weekend.

Then, if anything could top that, CJ went to her first day of kindergarten and JR had his first day of pre-school. They were both very excited! They grow up so fast!

Ain't life grand!

Full Production

Our Pegs and Jokers production has ramped up a few notches. We got a great deal on 200 feet of 1 x 12 clear pine while we were on a quick trip to Eugene. So we're all busily working to try and get 30 sets done before we all head out for Winchester Bay in two weeks. Ken and I are hard at work in the wood shop turning the pine boards into usable shapes while Janice and Cecile do all of the painting. They are also our quality control department and they are tough!

After a long day working, you'd think we would be sick of Pegs and Jokers but we do enjoy the game.

Lobster Dinner

On Tuesday afternoon, soon after Cecile arrived home with the lobsters in tow, we started the preparations for our lobster dinner. Ken & Janice had gone into town earlier in the day to get fresh corn and red potatoes to go with our lobster. The dinner was wonderful but we also had the treat of sharing champagne with Ken & Janice in celebration of their 44th anniversary.

Ain't Life Grand!

Cecile Visits Maine

Cecile spent five days in Maine visiting her good friend Joni. They had a lot of fun together going to the local beauty college for facials and massages, shopping at some of their favorite places and going out on Casco Bay for a cruise with their favorite captain, Guy. She had a wonderful time and has promised to take her husband (who couldn't go) next time. The four pictures are 1) Cecile and Joni at the Desert of Maine where they worked during the summer of 1999. 2) Cecile at the Freeport LL Bean Outlet store. 3) Cecile getting her facial & massage 4) Cecile on her way home with the lobster

Fishing Adventure

Ken and I decided to go fishing early yesterday morning. Our goal was to catch enough Kokanee salmon to be able to smoke. It was a beautiful day and we were the first ones to the boat ramp, just before first light. One of the best things about the morning was watching the osprey go up and down the lake fishing. Unfortunately the osprey caught a bigger fish than us and the dozen or so osprey we saw most likely caught a lot more than we did. Ken caught our only fish (a rather small one) soon after we dropped our lines and set our downriggers...and that was it. Ken and I each had one that got away but I'm sure that they were not real big ones. From talking to and observing the other fishermen on the lake, nobody had a very productive day. Oh well, like I said, it was a beautiful day!

Meteors and a Waterfall Hike

We stayed up a little later than usual last night (well, later than I usually stay up) to try and catch a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower. The meteor activity was supposed to be at its peak from 11am until dawn. We gave up pretty quick after we only saw about a dozen meteors between the four of us. I think that our problem was that, since we have so many trees around us here, we only had a relatively small opening overhead to be able to see meteors. We saw a lot of satellites and planes though.

Today Ken was working on the depth finder for his boat (important since we are going fishing tomorrow) and the ladies were working on their painted creations, so I decided to go hiking in Cascadia State Park (only a quick half mile walk up the road). I was tempted by the waterfall hike since the sign said it was only 0.8 mile up to the waterfall. What they didn't say was that the elevation changed by about 500 feet which made it a little more of a climb that I had anticipated. I had to stop a couple of places after the really steep parts to catch my breath but I survived it. The falls drop between 50 and 75 feet which made the hike worth while. I am including a picture of the falls and a picture of the Santiam River where the water from the falls eventually empties into.

Ain't life grand!