winter wonder land

Well almost... we have had the days from hell the last couple of days... We went to Kamloops on Thursday to see Larry's surgeon, (leg is finally all healed).. and we lost heat in the "Jimmy"..put almost a whole gallon of antifreeze in it, at $17 a gallon... we were going to go shopping for a few things, but decided that Kamloops was just too cold with a north wind... so we came home. Larry went down to Langley on Friday to pick up Mom... Jimmy had been okay, we did have heat coming home, but it quit again on their way home for the coast... heat on the floor only, but none blowing up...another gallon of antifreeze, probably the heat switch and the water pump.., and then he said it wasn't running well yesterday... only on 5 cylinders...And i need to get into town to do the finally Christmas grocery shopping... The yesterday morning the water froze up here in the mobile..we do have heat tapes on it, so he just had to plug it in, and we had water in a matter of minutes...it was -30 yesterday morning, so it was tough doing chores, and the alpacas and the llama were all shivering... so i got '1st born' to pick up some grain in town...and they sure enjoyed it...warms them right up... so now we had water, lots of heat, grain for the critters, and a warm mash for the chickens...and the POWER goes out... at 5:05, and the outside temperature was -25... we do have wood heat but we need a fan to bring it into the house, and with no power, no fan... so Larry got the generator going, brought an extension cord into the house, and we plugged in two heaters and a table lamp, but even with that the house temperature was 18.5 in here when the power went back on at 8:20... it amazes me that during the summer 18.5 is a comfortable temperature, but in the winter, it is damn cold... Mom was sitting here with her warm fuzzy housecoat, and a fuzzy blanket, and i had my housecoat on, and my nose was really cold..and the temperature was still dropping, but we have heat and power today, and we are very comfortable..
Had a busy day baking yesterday, 5 loaves of bread, a batch of shortbread, butter tarts, and two batch of lemon butter (that we use on shortbread tarts), the tangy and the sweet go so good together... my favorite Christmas cookie.. Made a old family recipe this morning,"fudge cake".. and it is so good... marg/brown sugar/flour/egg/and cocoa...no leavening and only cook it for 20 minutes ..using it as a gift for a friend who loves chocolate..will have to make another batch of butter tarts as DIL loves my tarts... i do make my own pastry, but i love the pre made ones for these tarts... will also make some green tomato mincemeat tarts for Mom and Larry... not my favorite at all...
I just have one more gift to get for DIL, she is getting a gift certificate to Ikea, but i like her to have something more to open under the tree...and a few more gifts to wrap and we are all done..take care and have a great day...