Thanksgiving

The girls and I just returned from a long weekend in Nordegg.  We spent our first Thanksgiving out there and have things set up well enough that we could have a traditional turkey dinner.  We were not able to leave the city on Friday evening after work as I had a hockey game, and Hailey had to work.  She recently started a retail job at one of the clothing stores in West Edmonton Mall.

My brothers families were not around this year, and Margarit's brother was unable to join us.  So we invited my Mom to come along and had just a small group together to celebrate the holiday.

The recent poor fall weather saw about a foot of snow dumped in the Nordegg area this past week.  Calgary was harder hit and got between 16 and 20 inches.  Edmonton escaped the storm and had cold weather but no accumulation.

By the time we arrived out in Nordegg at mid day Saturday, the snow had melted down quite a bit.  It hit a high temperature of about 7 on Saturday, and got even warmer... up to about +9C on Sunday.  It was melting and dripping everywhere and beginning to get fairly muddy.  By Sunday evening much of the snow was gone.  It got colder on Sunday night and we woke up to a skiff of fresh snow on Monday.  

The recording thermometers that I left in the cottage a couple of weeks ago indicated that the temperature did not get down any lower than about 8C.  I had left one of the room heaters on; turned down low, and the baseboard heater in the basement was set at 10C.  This despite the fact that it got down to about -12C on a couple of nights.  So I guess we are good with our current heating arrangements until it gets quite a bit colder.  By then we will have our forced air electric furnace installed and can make sure that we keep the temperature about freezing near the plumbing.

It was a pretty laid back and casual weekend.  I hung up the old antique telephone that I bought at an antique store last spring.  We brought out an extra dining room table and chairs that we have been saving for the cottage.  I worked on a few chores including installation of some walnut posts for our railing.  I had been constructing and finishing these posts in the evenings after work.  They are hollow sleeves that fit over the supporting aluminum posts that I installed a couple of weeks ago.  I also finished up some electrical rough in for the furnace, and installed a new bumper onto our ATV.  The old one did not survive a disagreement between the girls and a tree.....

On Sunday while it was nice we loaded up a truck full of waste cardboard and packaging material and took it to the dump.  This has been accumulating in a pile beside the cottage for several months now and it was time to get rid of it.

Then on Sunday afternoon we roasted the turkey in our new oven and put together a big Thanksgiving spread.