Dad called his sister

So now I'm more up on the family news.   Two of the daughter families celebrated in MN with kids this year so M just had Christmas with youngest daughter.    That daughter and DH have a fairly full house as their daughter and SiL are staying there.   The 2 years married couple sold their condo and are buying a house but couldn't move in right away.    And we got the Christmas card from that daughter, from sis, and from the one farmer up in northern ND that rent the land mom and then dad inherited.  The other farming brother had put in a card with gift box of cookies.   They send the gift cookies annually, I guess they make decent money on the farmland and like to keep the owner happy.  Sure works for us to have the same stable leasers every year too.

I was telling dad we HAVE to do something about shed now there is a big gap in the roof!  -- "I KNOWWW"  Grrrrrr,  if he knew the situation had gotten that bad why didn't he arrange to get the roof fixed before winter hit.  Winter was late coming; we had extra time this fall so he could have bought the felt and manned the tractor so I could tack down the shingles with a bit of instruction in November or first part of December after my ride season had ended.  Or he could have hired it done, I'm pretty sure he isn't hurting for $.   Now I think it is too cold to mess with trying to shingle until well into spring but I will have to put up some kind of redneck fix.  I'm thinking old horse blankets with a coat of WaterSeal and some tires will have to do to keep the shed dry until roofing weather is back.  

Today I have to get the bits of recycling that I will dump at work out of my car later.   I needed to drop M's b-day card in the mail and didn't want to juggle too much in my hands while doing that.  I'm a bit frustrated because I still have so much clutter in the form of extra clothes and various stuff in my bedroom even after I have tossed and donated a lot.   It will be better once I tackle my closet shelves and they are up next now that my walk-in closet is pretty well cleared out and cleaned.    There is also now bookshelf and file cabinet space upstairs and I need to switch to utilizing this new space to remove clutter from downstairs soon.  

I need to find new homes for jigsaw puzzles and adult games and some of mom's kids games and toys.   Need to make some calls to see if VA could use the adult games, and call a place or 2 about the kids stuff.  I suppose if I can't find  happy takers I can just drop them off at Salvation Army, but I'd like to have confirmation that wherever they go expects they'll get used.  Oh well if it comes to it, the stuff will have better odds at SA then remaining on shelves at home.

I also need to get busy with sorting out what I will take to the endurance regional convention, and cleaning, making minor repairs to those things.   As convention approaches I'm getting cold feet about the whole enterprise of taking stuff there and hoping I don't end up having to drag it all back home.  I need to remind myself that even if nothing sells, I will be in a better position to list things on Ebay after organizing and cleaning it for public display so no matter what I wont lose anything by doing that.