Christmas
2002: Part 2
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This is part 2 of Christmas 2002, spent in Alma KS with my paternal grandparents, aunt & uncle and cousins. It's always difficult to be able to get all of us together at once, but we seem to manage to most every year. Unfortunatly I got a bit sick, just an upset stomach, however I was still able to partake in the ritualistic firewood gathering.

				These are some of the elevators just outside of Topeka. Just to give you an idea of the beautiful Kansas scenary.
				The turnoff from the Interstate for Kansas highway 99, which heads down to Alma.
				This is from the road heading out of Alma to the farm. Just recently the road was paved, for all the years before that it was a nice gravel stretch. The deep blue sky in these past 2 pictures was not edited in, that's pretty much what it looks like.
				The obligatory group photo.
				Here's Grandma with her new clock radio.
				My folks.
				My uncle loves to tell stories.
				My 3 eldest cousins, Mike, Josh and Anna.
				What's this? A trash bag for Christmas?
				Mother and daughter, they could almost be twins!
				Time for dinner... mmmm... prime rib...
				This here is old red, the wood gathering run over anything who cares so long as it still runs pickup. Behind it is the trailer made out of another old pickup bed we ues to double our wood hauling capacity. Old red threw out a rod on the way back the first trip, making the clutch inoperable. Luckily master mechanic Grandpa got it fixed right up without any problem.
				Matthew took Grandpa over to the neighbor's place first to get permisison to drive thru to get back into the timber.
				Over past the railroad tracks, that's where we're heading off to.
				Uncle John starts up his saw, Grandpa's already going at it. RYan watches to make sure they're doing things right.
				The wood splitter is waiting for some workers!
				Ah, here it's getting some attention. That thing runs like a champ. Sure beats using an axe.
				We filled one bed and moved onto the next. In all, we filled three beds full that day. Two in the morning and another after lunch.
				It was nearly the perfect day, warm enough that you didn't even need a hat on once you were working. I love that deep blue Kansas sky.
				We took down this tree before heading home, and cut it up when we came back in the afternoon. As usual, oak == very very very heavy wood. We devised a contraption to roll the logs up onto the splitter, but had to lift up the last piece since that was our base to set all the other's on. It took 4 men to lift it! I'll see if I can find a photo of the logs once my mom developes her pics.
				Ryan & I decided to walk/run back instead of driving around the creek. Problem is then we have to cross it somehow. You can see here that we got most all the way across and then had to get up the bank on the other side. I took the jump and grab onto the tree approach, as seen here.
				I figured it was easier to do one jump and pull myself up than use a bunch of stringy roots to try to pull myeslf up. It worked, and it was fun to be so adventerous! I then proceeded to drop one of my gloves in the field while running back to the house, so I had to turn around and go back for it, losing all the time we made up by taking the short cut. Oh well.
				Oops, meant to put this at the start... this is Michael, Mark and Al over at Al's house.