Shop / Decorate / Left-Over Eats

The most fun four days of the calendar seems like one very enjoyable holiday followed by three Saturdays. Here in Healdsburg we truly are thankful as the fires skirted around our town. We are still unloading the car from having it full of evacuation things. Every day there are numerous events designed to help those less fortunate and who are having to start all over.

But, if you watch the news it is all about -- shopping. How many folks, how much spent, how much saved, how little parking, systems down, free shipping, deals out of stock, shopping small business Saturday, gearing up for Cyber Monday . . . I love it.

The truth be told for us -- 99% of our holiday shopping will be ONLINE, as it was last year as well. The difficult task is tracking all the shipping and making sure that what was ordered was sent and received -- so far so good.

We heard tales from some who ventured out to the mall -- which reinforced our decision to shop online. What will they do with all those mall shops in the coming years? Will the malls be reborn with a whole new vision and purpose -- we'll see.

And another way to "push the fire out of our every waking moment" is to decorate for Christmas.

We have put up our 18 foot inch pine tree lighted with delicate white lights and are ready to surround it with this year's bounty.

And we have added a new tree this year -- a fully decorated action-packed ornamental tree -- "Wonderland Express".


It is very attractive and it plays Christmas music (if you want) and has three moving trains -- very soothing to watch. It satisfies the tradition of having to set up a train to go around the tree. What will they think of next . . .

We also put "lights" up outside again this year. Only we changed tactics -- we are using lasers to highlight the shrubs and walls of the porch. So easy, yet so attractive to the eye. We'll feature those lights in a coming post.

We weren't the first in the neighborhood to add outside decorations, there are several homes that have had lights up for over a week. This year lights may really help to lift spirits.

Beautiful bird! Great soup (and three or four super dinners)!

Our turkey this year turned out perfectly. On Thanksgiving day we ate dinner around 5 pm and had all the traditional trimmings, including moist turkey, cornbread stuffing (from inside the bird), fresh green beans, twice-baked mashed potatoes (in the shell), gravy, cranberry sauce (with the can markings still visible) and delicious rolls.

After dinner, we took most of the remaining meat off the bones and started a large pot of turkey broth that will be used to make turkey barley soup this weekend.

We already have had two dinners from the turkey and expect two more along with the remainder used to make the soup -- good eats. The soup might last midway through Christmas if we don't tire of it.

After a few days, we portion-freeze the soup and then microwave as needed. We have a few unidentified containers of soup in the far reaches of the freezer -- but that just makes it more interesting for lunches.

At Thanksgiving dinner we were even able to "talk turkey politics a bit -- but not to any great depth.

The search continues throughout the "Gillett(e)" branch of our tree.

To the left is just one of hundreds of news reports about the death of King Camp Gillette.

We still do not know exactly how he is connected to our tree but we are still searching for that answer.

He certainly was a very interesting person in that he authored several books as well as invented.

He only had one child, King Gaines Gillette, who lived until 1955 and died in Newport Beach, California.

My family used to ride our bikes to Newport Beach frequently and heard many stories about the Gillette family there. More details to come.

Still searching, DNA Matches continue to pour in as more and more folks get tested.

Just from one of the three places that we have tested, Ancestry DNA, I have been given 540 4th cousins or closer -- so far.

And there are just as many from the other two services as well. It is impossible to keep up and to try to figure out the connections.

I look forward to eventually getting software or an "app" that will make more of the connections for me.

It still is very exciting to see the possibilities that DNA offers.

I am just getting used to learning about where my paternal ancestors came from and to where they migrated. All from DNA results and matching:

On the left, in green, are some of the places in Germany that some paternal ancestors originated. Interestingly -- I have been to some of those locations -- never realizing (only sensing) that this was our "fatherland" so-to-speak.

On the right, in blue, are some of the locations that some of these ancestors settled and their patterns of migrating further within the United States.

All very encouraging information -- to me -- to answer some of my questions. But there are so many more questions now . . .

That is a bit of our week, see you all "in a few" !