Happy New Year!! 1-4-25
Retired Life. Sunday.
It was still dark out when the alarm went off in an attempt to get us to church on time. We were sleepy and tired. But after looking at the below Jesus picture, we remembered why church makes us happy, and got up and got going. The sun eventually did come out. Kind of.
After church and then lunch, we took the Sacrament into Hanna's Mom. Someone gave her a new pink hat and she likes it and looks good in it.
And then we all took nice long naps.
When we awoke from our comas, it was snowing out. Frivvy was more than happy to run out and play in it.
In the evening, we watched the movie "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." It was very will done and has been unanimously voted onto our "watch every year" list. We were especially ecstatic and excited that the coolest character in the movie, the dad, was an accountant! There just aren't enough movies with accountants in them. It's partly why we love Christmas With the Kranks. Tim Allen playing the part of an accountant. It's awesome and funny and still has a great Christmas Message to it.
And that ends our Christmas Movie Celebrations. Merry Christmas.....and may you make friends with all the Herdmans in your life!
Retired Life. Monday.
See a picture of my day's appointments below. Yes, you are looking at it correctly. NONE! As an introvert, this is my favorite kind of day. And to keep it that way, I even entered "DO NOT PLAN ANYTHING ON THIS DAY!!" at the top of the schedule. (I'll mention here that Hanna, the Extrovert-in-denial, couldn't make it through the day without leaving to visit a friend....). I used to have up to 13 tax appointments a day. I have no idea how I was able to do that. But, retirement with no schedule suits me just fine.
Declared a snow emergency.
Declared myself a self-made lawn equipment mechanic.
Fixed the Electric Snow Blower we use on the deck. The chute keeps coming off it and has done so ever since I bought it. There is no help for this. No Youtube video, no help at customer service, nada. It's like no one else has ever had this problem. I think it is a manufacturer defect. But, with a cool electric drill and some zip ties, I fixed it somewhat permanently.
Transformed the lawn tractor into a snow plow. I broke the world record for making this transformation, since it is about the 17 millionth time I have done it. Even with not remembering where I put a couple of the pins and having to search the entire garage to find them. On the shelf. Where I put them.
Snowblowed the deck.
Snowplowed the driveway.
And then in the evening, we watched a couple of shows.
A very fine retired day. With nothing on my schedule.
Retired Life. Tuesday.
New year's eve or not, old people still need to eat. So, we did the usual...
Planned our week. Made up menus. Prepared shopping list. Drove to Plummer. Played Uno (changed it up!) and ate salads at Gateway. Walked the Trail of the CDAs with Frivvy. Bought groceries. Drove home. Unloaded. Put everything away.
I let Frivvy wear my old Ponderay Newsprint Hat. I couldn't get him excited about it though.
On the trail...(by then I was wearing the hat...)
Shopping at the store in Plummer is always exciting. We find things there that we can't find anywhere else, like this "Great Big Bread".
Part of putting the groceries away included me taking a ham we bought and carving it into serving-sized pieces to be frozen for future use. Frivvy was hoping for a taste and looked sad when it didn't happen.
2024 went out with an incredible sunset over the Palouse.
And a friend sent me this comic. Funny or not, it is very realistic and is exactly how we'll spend the holiday tomorrow.
In the evening, the Sister Missionaries came over for dinner. Always a blessing to have them in our home.
And then we watched some shows.
And, since the novelty of staying up late usually wears off before you turn 60, we are going to bed.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Retired Life. Wednesday.
Happy New Years!
When I was in college, I was warned about what the life of a Certified Public Accountant would be like on every January First. INVENTORY DAY!! And auditors all across the land audit corporate America's inventory. Over my illustrious career, I got the opportunity to count airplanes, cars, school buses, paper, mining equipment, groceries, PVC pipe, and probably a bunch of others that I don't remember. Today, I did not count anything. Retired life is bliss.
Although I did spend significant time on the Stewart-Longhurst Family Budget Excel Spreadsheet. It proudly uses 12 tabs that all interconnect and calculates the minute details of each of that year's monthly budgets, tax liabilities (if any), amount to pay in tithes, percentage of retirement in the market vs CDs vs real property, and long-term forecasts showing whether or not we'll outlive our money if we live to age 100. It's a lot of fun! 2025 is almost ready to go.
We chose to eat our mountain of snacks and watch one of the football games. Selected the Rose Bowl and was going to watch it delayed so we could fast forward thru the 175 minutes of commercials. But the game was over by half time, so we didn't bother. We watched a bunch of TV shows instead. And ate our snacks.
AI drew a picture of a retired CPA (me) watching football and eating snacks. ME!
Retired Life. Thursday.
Run errands day. Started with that annoying alarm clock going off while it is still dark outside. But, we had early-morning medical appointments. Sigh.........
-Drove to CDA and filled up with cheap gas.
-Drove to Post Falls and went to Labcorp. We both had blood draws. Hanna for her Thyroid stuff. Me for my annual physical including PSA to make sure my prostate cancer is still no more.
-To the nearby cancer clinic where Hanna had more blood drawn, this time to check on HER cancer and immune system (everything was business as usual), met with the Practitioner (primarily discussed medical precautions relating to our upcoming trip to Chile), and then they gave her an injection of cancer immunotherapy drug. Yes, three needle pokes within a couple of hours. I think Hanna is beginning to enjoy it though...
-Went to the bank. They have a screen at the drive thru that shows what they are seeing inside the bank. So I took a picture of it. Me waiting for the teller and Frivvy hoping he gets a doggy treat.
-Drove to Liberty Lake and got a hair cut. (Note that there will be no immediate picture of it. For women this is a big deal and you must compliment them on how it looks or they may get their feelings hurt while for guys it's more like an act of personal hygiene and we don't want to show it off or even talk about it.)
-Ate lunch at Legends while in Liberty Lake.
-Drove to the Valley. Picked up some stuff at the grocery store and some drugs at the pharmacy.
-Drove to the temple. We were a bit early, so I took Frivvy for a short walk around the parking lot. In the snow storm.
-Worshipped in said temple.
-Drove home. In the snow storm.
How'd we ever get all this stuff done before we retired???
Retired Life. Friday.
We went to breakfast at Harvest Moon. Best part is me getting a break from cooking our own breakfast. Hanna was invincible at Uno.
In the massive downpour, I drove Hanna to her hair appointment. Looks nice, right?
Once the rain turned to snow, Frivvy and I took a walk in it. I'd rather be out in snow than rain. We were both covered in snow by the time we got back. Abominable snowman and his white snow dog. Pictures were a fail....sorry.
I made a batch of my BBQ Bacon-wrapped meatloaf and we settled in and watched a movie in the evening.
Weird thing is when I looked at my FB Memories today, it showed that I took Hanna in for a hair trim and made that same meatloaf. Man our life is now predictable...
Retired Life. Saturday.
It snowed about three inches overnight and the wind blew up some drifts. So right after our French Toast breakfast, I put on my tractor mechanic hat and installed the new chains I bought onto the mighty Snow Tractor. And then plowed the driveway. Way more fun than using a shovel. Or a snowblower.
And later we met up with Del and Ella and Justin to have some tacos and catch up on life.
Busy day for old retired folks like us.
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