Here’s Lizzie, our Christmas kitten. She has always loved Christmas. She likes to lay under the tree when the lights are on. When she is younger she used to climb up into the tree and so we had to perform a “Catectomy” pulling out of the tree.
And Kodi the Pomeranian. He loves to play.
He loves my wife. This is what he does when she leaves the house for any reason.
He loves walking so we do that a lot.
I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters
I went on a late afternoon hike recently at Turkey Mountain. They are putting a new sign up. Kind of cool in that it is also a topographic map of the park. I think maybe they are going to make it into a planter of some sort.
I took the Lo Chi trail which goes downhill to the Arkansas River. It passes this beaver pond on the way down.
And the trail goes under this flyover for one of the downhill bicycle runs. I guess this is technically a table top because you don’t have to catch air. But you can if you want. A real flyover would be a gap. Talking to the bikers they have their own language. Many older people like me would “roll over” this rather than try and jump.
And I found this baby backhoe that the contractors use to build trails. I’ve lost track on the new trails. This looks like they are building a new trail already.
Lo Chi doesn’t get as much use as some of the other new trails. I only saw one other person on my two miles outing.
And the sun started setting. I was on the east side of the ridge so it immediately got a little cooler.
We still have some pretty good fall color on the mountain.
And some more color. I walked a short segment of the RiverParks bicycle trail as part of my route.
Only two miles but hey I had a good time.
Back at the parking lot, these two women had set up their apparatus on one of the pavilions and were having a lot of fun twirling around. I don’t know what you call this but it looks challenging.
Pretty darn athletic is what I thought. They would climb up to the top of the pole and invert with the their legs holding them up. I couldn’t do that in a million years. Got to have a strong core for just start plus not get dizzy twirling round and round upside down.
Changing course, one morning in our back yard.
Found this giant Santa Claus inflatable in a nearby neighborhood.
And we are slowly getting our house decorated for Christmas.
And after a long hiatus I started doing jigsaw puzzles again on my ipad. I love doing them even though they take a lot of time. A great advantage is that you can’t lose any pieces and I use the option to orient the pieces in the right direction. Plus the texture of cardboard gives me the heebie jeebies and so I avoid that as well. And! there is no table with the puzzle on it when you are not working on it.
And today (December 7) is Pearl Harbor Day. Let’s not forget the heroes that day.
And, I am linking with Skywatch Friday!
Tuesday night Heather, Logan, our Pom Kodi, and I loaded up and drove to the Tulsa suburb of Sapulpa to check out the Route 66 Christmas Chute in their downtown. We went last year and loved it!!
The city blocks off several blocks of Route 66 downtown and install these big frameworks and then people decorate them. You walk underneath the decorations. It is wonderful and you have great light for taking photographs. Also the merchants really go all out decorating their storefronts for the occasion.
Most of the restaurants are open if you are hungry or thirsty plus there are pop up shops selling food, drinks, and gift items.
Logan really loves gingerbread cookies.
Heather loves snowmen.
I love the reindeer and the sled.
Kodi loves Heather!
He also found two other poms to have a faceoff with. They were barking at him and he was just looking. He didn’t like being pulled away. I swear Pomeranians are the most spoiled dogs ever but we still love ours.
The Grinch was in a storefront!!
I figured out what Santa is going to leave me.
If you like Christmas trees, they have dozens of them, from little dinette sized trees.
To living room sized.
And big ole – courthouse plaza sized.
I think a good time was had by all.
It’s open every night through December 31. Check out their website. Download the printable scavenger hunt check list.
I’m linking with My Corner of the World
Here’s a Christmas scene at our house with some early morning shadows coming through the front window.
And a Little Library on a trail. In addition to books, it contains a geocache. I was the first person to find it which makes me a legend in my own mind. I actually didn’t find it, I had been looking for it for 20 minutes and the cache owner walked and handed it to me. It got approved so fast that she hadn’t hidden it yet. So I hid it. A couple guys came by six minutes later so they were second and third to find.
And a shadow selfie cast across a trail sign asking people not to use muddy trails.
So these are my last shadows of 2022!! I wish everybody a Happy and Healthy New Year!!
I’m linking with Shadow Shot Sunday 2. Go check it out.
Another front porch skywatch photo. I went artsy here by crouching behind our shrubs with some Christmas lights on them. As old as I am crouching down of any kind might be termed as “suffering for my art.”
Kodi the Pom puppy is who I blame for not getting out and taking more pictures. Having a new puppy is kind of like having a kid. They demand constant attention! If we don’t give him positive attention by playing with him, then he gets negative attention by chewing on electrical cords. We’re exhausted!
Another front porch skywatch shot!
My wife bought Kodi a couple of Christmas outfits. He is not a fan but we thought he rocked this elf outfit.
This time I stood on my front porch and pointed the phone to the southeast instead of the southwest like the previous two photos.
I was able to head out to the Arkansas River trails and check on construction of the new pedestrian bridge. It’s looking good but it won’t be done until well into 2023.
And I checked on the PSO power plant across the river. I love stuff like this.
To those who celebrate Christmas I wish you a Merry Christmas, Oklahoma style. To everyone else, I send you greetings and well wishes.
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday
I call this week’s Skywatch post “Inside Edition” because that is mainly where I have been lately. After some great outings that all came to a halt through a combination of my wife catching the flu and cold rainy weather.
So it was like I went to my backyard and took some sky photos because I didn’t have any recent ones and it was a nice sunny day finally. And of course I used one of my iphone camera apps and edited the photos. I do that a lot. I hope it doesn’t bother you.
And the other thing I do is I am constantly tagging photos. I’ve got 85,642 photos in my flickr account and about 3,000 are untagged starting in November 2015 and going backward. I delete about half of my untagged photos in a given session. I found this one this morning during a tagging session. It’s kind of over the top on editing but hey, I kind of like it. I think I used my distressedfx app.
I also found this untagged photo from November 2015. It is from a run I did along the Arkansas Rivier at night. You know starting in 1992 until 2020 when I retired I ran by myself every Wednesday night after work pretty much regardless of the weather. During the non-Daylight Savings Time months I ran on the river because they had lights. Now I am thinking what was going through my little cotton picking head. Of course the answer is that I worked during the day and I was running longer races back then so I had to run longer in training. I’m retired and now, and don’t run, but I walk and ride my bike a lot. All during daylight hours.
Earlier this week it was Heather’s birthday. She recovered from the flu and we had a great time going out for breakfast, going to a movie (Spirited, see my previous post, a wonderful movie) opening gifts, going out for dinner, and then birthday cake!!
Son Logan joined us. We all had a great time.
And we are all decorated for Christmas.
I completed another jigsaw puzzle. This one of an old barn. This one about killed me. All that wood was hard to piece together. I’m doing one now of the Grand Canyon. It’s hard also. That’s okay. I love ipad jigsaw puzzles.
That’s about it for this week. Check back soon. After losing all three of our dogs in about a year’s time to illness we are picking up our new pomeranian Kodi. I’ll have a few photos of him to post. Here is a preview from several weeks ago.
I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.
Happy New Year from our bunch. The day after Christmas the whole family made an epic three mile walk to a Barnes and Noble store to take advantage of their 50% hardback book sale. Heather and Logan were not as enthusiastic about the walk as I was. I led them along the greenbelt so there were no sidewalks or other modern conveniences and we had a to climb a fence. I had a blast and that is what counts right?
Even our critters got toys. Rascal loves his new toy. Rascal has been in therapy for hip and rear leg issues and has responded great to his accupuncture and land therapy.
So we are taking him on walks again and he has his mojo back.
Heather made some gingerbread cookies. My wordpress is being strange now. It is not showing me previews of all my photos so if things look out of whack that is why. I save and reboot and things work like they are supposed to for about five minutes and then quit.
This is a Skywatch post right? Here is a sunrise to the east of our front yard.
And a sunset looking across the street.
I wish everybody a happy and safe New Years!! I had more to talk about but maybe the internet has decided that I am done for now.
Come link up at Skywatch Friday
Here is Lizzie the Christmas Cat. She loves laying under her tree in our living room. She is kind of cranky right now because there are now presents under the tree.
I’m recycling this photo from a couple weeks ago. Santa water skiing on a lake in Chickasha, Oklahoma.
This is my brother’s Christmas tree in his apartment at assisted living. Please be thinking of him. He got a breakthrough infection of Covid despite being triple vaccinated. He has had the monoclonal antibody treatment and is recovering. The center has quarantined the residents to their room right now because of the Covid surge. He is a former marathon runner and he had been doing virtual 5Ks in his walker up and down the hall of the center. So no more of that. I’ll be able to go see him tomorrow.
This was a scene from Bentonville, Arkanasas in November. Kids just kind of make Christmas.
And a drone shot of our house decorations.
My MIL has great decorations. I love how she does the cast iron stove in her front entry.
Some people go to Turkey Mountain and decorate trees there. They do go and take the decorations down.
One of the project managers at my former employer had a pipeline construction Christmas tree. She added to the decorations every year. She and the rest of my former coworkers are still working remotely, since March of 2020.
My wife’s gingerbread cookies are always a hit!
One of the nice things about working downtown was checking out all the decorations in the various office buildings.
Oops!! I forgot, this a Skywatch Friday post!!! Here is a sky from the Bakken Oilfield of the North Dakota. My friend Josh took this photo and I am stealing it.
I hope everybody has a great Christmas. Come join the fun at Skywatch Friday!
One warm evening last week all three of us headed out to Broken Arrow to check out the Rhema Ministry Christmas LIghts.
They have been doing this for years and it is free and quite the show. The lights are spread out all over the campus. They also have really good pedestrian flow compared to previous years and that is important in these pandemic times.
There is no charge and there is a very chill vibe going on.
There are milliions of lights, and reflections of those lights all over the place.
It’s a Christian organization and of course Christmas is a big deal in Christianity, celebrating the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
There is certainly a lot of joy on the Rhema Campus.
I love the marching band.
And of course, you have to have Santa Claus.
I’m linking with Our World Tuesday. Come check it out!!
