I got the garage door got fixed on Monday. I was afraid the whole thing would have to be replaced but the tech just replaced some rollers and a couple brackets, and had it all working again in an hour or so. Though he did say that the door is "showing its age." But anyway it's now working and we can bring the vehicles in from the cold again. Beth had another craft show Saturday; this one was up in Leesburg at a new winery that we hadn't even realized was there until a couple weeks ago. Apparently it opened last summer, and they import grapes from the Paw Paw wineries but make the wine there. Looks like an interesting place, who knew? So anyway, it's been really cold and really snowy lately, and the show was outside. In a tent, though, with heaters running, so it wasn't terrible but everything was set up on a sheet of packed snow and ice, which is what you stood on all day. We all hauled Beth's stuff up the the winery and set up in the morning, then Natalie stayed and the rest of us went home. The sales were even more brisk than they had been at Wawasee (we figure it was all last-minute Christmas presents). Beth sold out of soala soup and most of the chili (both of which she brought crock pots full of) and all told made over $600. That's Christmas money right there. Speaking of last-minute presents, we still haven't bought any for the kids yet...

Somehow, last Wednesday, the cable on one side of the garage door somehow jumped out of the pulley, which caused the door to go crooked within the tracks, which when the door was operated basically caused it to eat itself. It got jammed, hard, in the up position as we were leaving for FCC kids…so I stayed behind to try to get it down. I wasn’t having a whole lot of luck until a guy I know drove by and saw me trying to get it down, and stopped to help. We got it pretty much down and headed to church, but on the way back I found I did not have a key to get in the front door so I had to force the garage door back up enough to get under it, and it stuck, hard. Eventually I got it down far enough to decide it was ok to leave it where it was, but the track was pretty beat up, several rollers had pulled out, and there was general disarray. of course this is happening when it is so freakin cold. I did pull the truck out of the garage when the door was up, so at least we could come and go, but having both vehicles outside sucks. Thursday I also had an eye doctor appointment, and since my close in vision is now getting bad I decided to give bifocals another try. Hoping for the best this time, a few years back I just could not get used to them. Beth says that when she finally got bifocals, it was like a revelation, but I hated them before. Hope I get used to them this time. We did an hour of bell ringing for Salvation Army at Owen's Saturday, did I mention it's been really cold? A bit later on Saturday the snow started in earnest, to the point that church service was still on but Sunday schools were all cancelled, and we just didn't make it to church at all.

This has been a busy weekend. Friday night, we all went to the Komets game in Fort Wayne; it was the annual teddy bear toss. I was so proud of Missy, she picked out like 8 stuffed animals she was willig to donate for the toss. And we got quite a treat at the game, or at least part of one. We went to Fazoli's for dinner before the game and headed over. The Missouri Mavericks were the opponent, and they got the better of things early on. The scored first, but the Komets tied it up during the 1st period. After 2 periods it was 2-1 Missouri. Then in the 3rd period, it rapidly became 3-1, 4-1, and 5-1 Missouri. Then the comeback started. Down 4 with 13 minutes left (despite outshooting MO by like 45-12), the Komets scored 2 quick goals. With a couple minutes left, Beth wanted to leave to beat the traffic out since she had a craft show, We were making our way out and were in the hallway with about a minute left in the game when the Komets made it 5-4. We saw that on the monitor. But by the time we got to the car and headed out, I couldn't help but notice that nobody else was coming out. At home I learned that the Komets had tied it with 30 seconds to go, and won it about a minute into overtime. And...we missed it because of the one time in her life that Beth wanted to leave somewhere. Anyway, early the next morning Beth had a craft show to sell her soup at, at the Wawasee Middle School. Biggest craft show around. Beth made two pots of soup the night before to bring to the show, and in the process of heating the chili up in the morning (at like 4:30 am) she went upstairs for just a minute and came back to it burning on the stove. Almost in tears, she asked me to see if the chili was still any good but it tasted like an ashtray. So she had one pot of soup. We went and set up (hauled a lot of gear with us), and I stayed until the show had been open for a while before heading home. I brought the kids back at around lunchtime, they all shopped a bit and we brought Beth lunch, then we headed home again (Natalie stayed). Sales were steady all day, altogether she sold something like $450 worth of soup. She sold out of the soup that she had the crock pot full of for samples, of course. Saturday was also Natalie's birthday. She did not want us to do anything, or go anywhere, or get her anything, for her birthday. But we did anyway. She didn't want a party, but we did get her a big stuffed bear and some Ulta makeup stuff, and she went shopping there with some birthday money she got. And cheesecake. She wanted cheesecake. Also this weekend I finally got fed up with the horrible wireless connection on the Fire TV stick (we've started streaming "The Walking Dead," which we love) so I bought a new cable modem and wireless router on Amazon to replace the crap gateway I've been leasing. Now there is no video buffering and signal dropping, yay.