My Grandfather Evans would go out late on those cold Chicago evenings and shovel coal into the fireboxes of the apartments to keep the boilers up to pressure so the folks inside would stay warm and toasty during the cold winter night. I thought about this last night as Riley and I walked in the cold darkness admiring the houses and the Christmas lights.

Our outside display is pretty much completed. 2 items remain to be setup. Yesterday the tree went up. This year while looking for my Christmas gift suggestion at the Home Depot, I came across a small battery operated train that actually goes in the tree. How cool is that? We always have the train under the tree, but the presents get in the way so the train can't run. This little train is actually up in the tree about 4 feet off the floor. No presents to interfere. The setup was a bit more than the box implied. But it is way cool for the little one in all of us. So the tree is up, lights all fixed and burning, and the little train goes round and round. Next we will be ornamenting the tree.

We also dug out the fiber optic Christmas village scenes. I call them imagination things. Ian can look into the little scenes and pretend he is there. we added a new one to out growing collection. We now have a lighthouse decked out for Christmas. I picked it out myself. Reminded me of our time working in the lighthouse on the Oregon coast. I have fond memories of those days.

I turned the garage into a little machine shop. I've been collecting tools all summer preparing for my project. I'm building a set of driving controls for the van. It is time I got my mobility back. I can't afford new controls, nor would the company sell me the used set they had unless I allowed them to install. The controls price was $150. However, they want to tack an additional $700 to install them. I figured even with having to buy tools I can build them for a lot less. I'll post on my progress as I go.