Now everyone wants to wait and have the turkey at Christmas. It came frozen and as yucky as I feel, I've decided it's fine with me. I am not up for cooking a fancy dinner right now. Heirloom heritage turkeys sure look different from the broad-breasted turkeys sold in grocery stores. They are longer and not rounded or compact. They have more dark meat and less breast, the way nature made them, which works great for my family since no one really cares for the white meat and it always ends up an ingredient in something else while we eat the dark meat straight.

I love the little packet that came along with it. It has thawing instructions, brining instructions, cooking instructions, a recipe for turkey stock, a recipe for turkey soup, and a recipe for stuffing.

It also has a page with a photo of the turkeys when they were about half grown and says this:

[i]You have purchased a healthy and happy turkey which was raised in sunshine and clean pastures during their growing season (never on fertilized pastures). Diet: A turkey will eat 25% of its diet on grass. Your turkey ate an organic mixture comprised of: Spelt, Emmer, Wheat, Peas, Camolina, Seaweed, and Sea Salt. We guarantee that we never buy grain or corn from China.[i]

So it makes my sustainability goal and it makes my 100 mile foodshed goal, since the ranch is about 50 miles away. Hopefully it will make my flavor goal as well when the time comes to cook it. It also came with a large, insulated bag for free. That will come in handy for our monthly trips there. They gave us another one last week (also for free) that is a little smaller.

Since I won't be making a big old Thanksgiving dinner after all, I've decided on roasting two Cornish game hens. That will give each person a half a bird (since DH will not be here). I will make a small pan of bread stuffing and we will have roasted potatoes and green beans. A mini-feast, I suppose.

----------

DH goes back to the slope tomorrow and he will be working for 3 weeks. Then he will be off for three weeks and return to the slope on New Year's Day. Then it's highly possible he will be doing a 3 and 1, before resuming his normal 2 and 2 schedule.

Christmas Bonuses usually come out around the middle of December. Last year it was on the 16th and anyone who wasn't there received those checks in the mail a couple of days later. I am trying not to anticipate it, but it's hard. I am a planner and I like to know what is going to happen. Last year it was 5% of DH's income. This year it is rumored to be 10%. I can't help hoping for the 10% because it would wipe out the rest of our credit card debt. But even 5% would do a huge amount of payoff and then our income tax return would finish it off. It will be quite high because we get to claim the full HSA deduction.

I've calculated what it will cost us if the payroll tax thing is not extended. It will be $170 a month for every four week pay cycle, or about $2040 a year. If they do reduce the child credit from $1000 back to $500 per child, it won't really affect us much. We couldn't claim one of our kids last year and only half of the other one because of income eligibility. And DD will be 17 next year, so we wouldn't be eligilbe to claim her in 2013's tax return anyway, as I understand it.

We can absorb it, we will be fine. I'm not so sure about many others though. I'd like to continue to have that money, but I don't resent it. I mean, my mother is on social security and Medicare, my SIL is on food stamps, and my BIL (my sister's husband) is on disability and before that was on unemployment for the full term allowed. I like to look at it as our taxes going to support the programs that support our family members. And we help directly as we can.

----------

We looked at a couple of houses. 1 beautiful 1756 square foot rambler, 3 beds, 2 baths, on one acre with an enormous shop and a smaller shop with attached office, for $239,200. It's just outside of town and mid-way between my Mom's house and my in-laws house. It's a funny piece of land, though, shaped like a pie wedge and the train track borders the property. Since trains go through at least six times a day, I think that would be too disruptive.

We looked at another really nice two story house about ten minutes out of town that has 5 bedrooms, 4 baths, a shop, a barn, and 3 acres for $299,000. It's set up so that the one floor could be used as a MIL apartment.

Then just for fun we looked at a $500,000 house with a lake view and a mountain view. It was spectacularly beautiful and had most of my dream house wants, like a baker's oven, a huge kitchen with lots of storage, a wrap around porch, gables, 1 acre grounds, hard wood floors, beach access. And it had a lot of DH's wants as well, with the shop and four car garage (makes me laugh as we are a one car family). If we could afford it, it would be big enough that we could house my mother, MIL and FIL and SIL and neice on top of our own family. But I do not want to mortgage our lives away. That is not in my plan for future happiness. It sure was pretty, though.

I think we're still a year away from househunting for real, to be honest. The repairs on the old house go slowly. I am hoping we will be able to put it on the market by spring, but I am not holding my breath. If it doesn't sell, we do have a solid tennant willing to rent it for $1000 a month. Average rents out there for that size home are $932, so it'd work out all right, we just wouldn't have money for a downpayment like we would if selling, so we'd have to save up for that, although I'd want to pay off the mortgage first. It'll be under $15K after the next payment. I don't want to have two mortgages on two houses, I'd rather own the possible rental outright.

Hopefully it will just sell though and we won't have to worry about it. There is an investor who is interested in it, but most investors try to lowball and I don't want to deal with a lowball investor, though I will if I have to. Mostly I just want to be done.