My Christmas Day was fabulous!

I woke up around 8:00 ish, and snuggled with my girls for a while. Then went downstairs and did some stuff on the computer. Around 9:30 I put all my cold weather gear on and headed outside to deliver gifts to my neighbors – but had to make a bit of an unexpected detour to avoid the Moose that’s been hanging around the neighborhood lately. Apparently she was helping herself to a Christmas Meal consisting of my neighbor’s expensive shrubbery.

Once I got all those packages handed out (and even got a Christmas Hug) I headed on down to Palmer.

Oh my goodness, what a gorgeous drive that was! The entire way I kept having to remind myself to keep my eyes on the road because they kept wanting to stray off to take in the view! Thankfully, there was not a whole lot of traffic on the roads. The temperature was WAY down, like in the minus-twenties – so everything was Crispy Cold and Clear Blue.

I arrived at my sister house with plenty of time to hand out gifts, open the ones received, and help out with cooking the meal and setting the table. I even got to chat with Lauren for a while before everybody showed up.

Our guests for Christmas Day were: Stewart & Julie (my brother and his wife), Martha & Henry (Noel’s in-laws), Katy & Daren (my niece and her boyfriend), Lauren & myself, and Noel & Hank (my sister and her husband). The meal consisted of Prime Rib and King Crab, with green beans and mashed potatoes. For desert, Martha brought Pumpkin Pie & Pecan Pie.

After stuffing myself full of crab (sorry, Prime Rib is NOT my thing) I headed over to Mother’s house. She is sick with a cold, so I found her on her couch with a kitty, a blanket, and a book. We chatted for a little while, but I left fairly soon after – both to give her time to rest, and to get me home while it’s still daylight.

I spent the rest of the evening watching movies, snuggling with my girls, and making cards.

The PERFECT holiday.

Oops!

I got a text from my sister the other day saying: Did anybody get Ruthie a strainer?

I replied with this text: Not yet, but I really need one.

To which she replied: Oh pooh. That was supposed to be for Lauren!

Imagine my surprise come Christmas Morning when I opened my gift and discovered – You guessed it!

A strainer!

Vehicular Incident

I’m alright – nothing to worry about. But I did have an incident today.

I was driving south (towards Girdwood) on the Old Seward around 1:00 this afternoon. Just as I went through the intersection of O’Malley the back end of the truck in front of me popped open and a car battery flew out and hit me in the front, down low. My car then bounced over it and drug it underneath me for quite a while before it worked its way out.

The driver of the truck had no clue that anything had happened, so I followed him to his destination (he was taking a load of scrap metal and old batteries to Total Reclaim for recycling). He was very nice, very polite, and took responsibility right away. He gave me his name and phone number as well as his company’s name and phone number (he was driving the company vehicle) and told me that he would pay whatever it took to fix my car.

At that time, I had no idea what or even if any damage had been done, so I took it immediately to Kendall Toyota and had them look at it for me. Turns out, there was damage: the front grille was popped out, the bumper has a thumb-sized dent with chipped paint, the skid plate right behind the bumper has two or three very large dents/cracks, the oil pan is dented – but not yet cracked, and battery acid was sprayed all over the undercarriage of my car.

The mechanic washed all the acid off and then advised me on what I should do to fix it. The estimate he wrote up for my insurance company is for $533.50 plus $55.60 for the estimate. I still have to take it to a body shop to see how much it will take for them to fix the bumper, but I’m guessing it will be another $500.00 or so.

While at the shop, I called my insurance company and filed a claim. Once I got home, I went on-line and filled out an accident report with the police. Tomorrow I will call the body shop and see what they tell me. THEN I will call the guy and let him know what’s going on.

Hopefully, this will continue to go smoothly and not have any unpleasantness or I shall have to eat a lot of cookies.