The weather has been mild and warm lately so we have been getting outside. Saturday, Heather and I went hiking on Turkey Mountain. We took a back country route so the trails were not as busy as other places. When we got back to the parking lot, it was full!! I had to do some maneuvering just to get out of our parking space.
So, yes, glad to see people enjoying the park. I hate to take more of it away for bigger parking lots though especially when needed only one or two days a year.
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Sunday, the kid joined us and just for something new and different we ventured up to the Rogers State University Preserve in the nearby town of Claremore.
Very nice hiking trails and not very many people. We only went a couple miles but it was enough.
I saw this and my Dad joke that came to mind was, “Somebody has lost their hope.” Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
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Here’s the kid. A good time was had by all!
So we had a good weekend. This morning though I wake up and find out my laptop screen is not working. So I am putting this together using my office television set as a monitor. I love what computers can do but hate the machines. After all these years they are still very fragile devices. Wish me luck trying to figure out what is wrong.
Christmas this year was a quiet affair. Just us and my mother-in-law. We talked several times with my brother who is in long term care here in Tulsa. (We are all excited, he has recovered enough to where he will be going to an assisted living facility sometime early next month.)
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We grilled steaks for dinner along with mashed potatoes, green beans, asparagus, and crusty bread.
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Here’s son working away at his video games. That is what he does.
I hate photos of myself. The force was not with me photography wise. I couldn’t get the white balance or anything else right. That is what makes me a picture taker and not a photographer.
This was desert. There is a bunch less of these now than there was 24 hours ago.
Lizzie and LJ looked on with detachment. They got toys though which they promptly push underneath furniture. The dogs didn’t get new toys. They only like them a little bit and then ignore so we brought out last year’s toys and that made them happy.
At this age our gift giving is kind of simple. We buy whatever Logan wants which really isn’t too much. A few days Heather and I went to Best Buy and got an Apple Watch for her and this fancy Garmin sports watch for me. Both watches have pulse oximeters so they tell us what our blood oxygen levels are. It’s got a bunch of other gizmos on it.
So after a bit, we took my mother-in-law home and we sat down and watched Christmas Story. Logan’s favorite movie on this day.
So we were blessed. We have our health, my brother is getting better, we enjoyed each others company.
If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a great Christmas as well.
We are closing out 2020. I am not going to miss it. What an ordeal the world has been through.
There is still plenty to be thankful for. We have our health, my brother is slowly recovering from his illness.
Christmas will always be special to me. A time of hope and healing and remembering.
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Heather’s gingerbread men.
We miss our sweet doxie, Ginger.
I was born in northern New Mexico. Christmas has always been more of a quiet contemplative occasion than a raucous party. Oklahoma artist and journalist Terry Clark captures a New Mexican Christmas perfectly in his series of post cards he does every year. We treasure the ones he sends us. Check the link to his blog.
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Merry Christmas to you and your family from our crew!!
On Sunday, while participating in cleanup effort at Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain Urban Wilderness I found a Christmas tree in the park. I consider it a form of graffiti. Not that it is bad but that is kind of what it is. I kind of like it actually.
I also found a couple bird houses that look like they have been there for some time.
A couple week ago I found another Christmas on the mountain.
This is what the tree looked like last year. There is at least one other tree based on what I see on my instagram feed.
I also found a nandina shrub. Nandina is of course not native to Oklahoma. Turkey Mountain back in the day had farms, ranches, homes, lots of oil wells, illegal liquor stills and a bunch of outlaws. There are a few places where one can see remnants of its past.
The cleanup was successful. About 45 people showed and picked up a ton of trash, trimmed trails, and picked up the remnants of at least two abandoned homeless camps. One of which had been occupied off and on since the 1980’s. This was the first cleanup we had since February. We took pains to ensure a covid safe situation. A local news station came out and covered the event. I can’t embed their report but you can check the link here.
In other news, my brother Bob is continuing from his illness that started over a year ago. He is transitioning from Long Term Care to Assisted Living. I’m really proud of him. He has worked hard. This former marathon runner is starting to walk and insists he is going to race again one day.
At the house, our cats are really into the Christmas Spirit. LJ loves napping in the sun.
Lizzie loves the bed spread.
My wife has put here snowmen out.
And other things.
We have a lot to be grateful for. We had a little scare. One of our painters came down with Covid and so we had to go get tested and we are all clear. Pending getting a test and then the results, we quarantined probably for a total of sixty hours. Drove me flat crazy I have to say. We sure didn’t want to expose anybody else though.
I hope everybody is enjoying the Christmas season. In these darker times one has to look for the joy maybe a little harder.
Bitterly cold windy day today, this guy was guarding our bird feeder from the hungry birds. What a bully!!
From earlier in the week, I don’t know if its the same one or not but he was calmer.
LJ is chilling out. I don’t know what happened but the vet said he doesn’t need insulin any longer!! Yea!! I wish he’d of told me before I bought a new bottle of the stuff for him.
We finally got a decent snow in Tulsa the other day. I think they said it was the first appreciable amounts in seven years. We were supposed to get one to three inches but it came out five inches of very heavy wet snow.
I was glad to see it although it made for very tough shoveling. I shoveled our driveway and then I shoveled MIL’s. I could feel it so I took it easy but I still slept soundly after all that.
Here’s our house. I don’t do ladders any longer so the lights are low, very low in the case of the ones under the snow. They didn’t short out or anything, they just kept on burning.
And speaking of burning. I’ve mentioned that we are freshening up our house some. We had painters in and they removed the smoke detectors and they looked kind of dingy so I was checking to see what the replacements were and found out that our smoke detectors only have a ten year life and we have lived in the house for twenty years. Made me feel foolish and we now have new smoke detectors. Don’t be like me folks, if you have an ionization type detector check and see if they are still in date.
The whole situation with the snow and painters drove Lizzie to drink. She doesn’t like strangers in the house so these months of work have been hard on her.
Here’s a “go out to get the paper and snap a photo” skywatch shot. I’m lazy like that. You don’t have to travel far to get a nice shot sometimes. I post a lot of the shots on instagram. I am just glad that my neighbor finally got his car door damage repaired. I got as many comments about the car damage as I do the sky.
Tuesday, several days after the snow, I ventured out to Turkey Mountain to check out the snow. I love hiking in the snow. The RiverParks Authority would just as soon people stay off the trails because of the muddy conditions but I went anyway. Don’t tell them okay? I got all sorts of rationalizations.
I was plodding along and saw some movement and saw a herd of about eight deer off in the woods. Sorry about the quality of the photos. All I had was my point and shoot and my iphone.
I stood there for about twenty minutes. The first ten, they all stared at me except for the little ones. After that all but one or two relaxed a little grazed and then they got tired of me and left.
A little further along I came to a pond. I just love the reflections on it and the sky.
I started taking trails I don’t usually take just to avoid the muddy more heavily used trails. There is nothing prettier than a single track trail through the snowy woods.
I saw this way off the trail and checked it out. It is some sort of oilfield apparatus. I had never seen it before. I thought I knew all the old abandoned wells, pumpjack foundations, abandoned pipelines, and cables on the mountain, but I guess I didn’t. One of the people with the River Parks Authority commented on my instagram that he didn’t know about this. So I made a find!!
By this time I was getting a little cold and tired so I took another single track path back to the Snake Trail to get back to the car. I really enjoyed my outing.
That’s about it, I am linking with Skywatch Friday. Come join in!!
