Tag Archives: Christmas

Christmas 2023

Christmas and the end of the year buzzed by really quickly this year. Sorry I have been incommunicado all the sudden but hey, I’m back. So I’ll bring you up to speed.

A few days before Christmas we joined another couple for a Christmas music show at historic Cain’s Ballroom featuring several very talented local singers and musicians.

Isaac Hanson, of Hanson, showed up and played a couple of songs. Heather and I remember when he was just a little boy and played for free at local events with his brothers. He’s all growns up now and has a whole bunch of kids of his own.

Heather made her traditional gingerbread cookies. They are always a hit.

They go fast.

We made a visit to my brother Bob at his residence.

And gathered around the tree.

On Christmas Day we went to my MIL’s house and we opened gifts and had steak and baked potatoes for Christmas dinner. Bad blogger me, didn’t get any family photos.

A couple days later Heather, son Logan, Kodi, and I drove a roundabout route to Colorado Springs. My sister and BIL were hosting their family for Christmas. We hadn’t seen them for years so they graciously assented to our presence.

They are an active and fun loving bunch. If you are going to hang with them you better get up early and be prepared to stay late. They were very welcoming to us crashing the party.

Here is Logan with my sister and BIL’s dogs. The little dog is Maisey and is very sweet the big dog is Aspen. Aspen kept trying to play with our little dog, Kodi but Kodi was intimidated.

Sister and her husband treated us all to the US Olympic and Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs. It was great. There are lots of things to look at and videos of past performances and artifacts like the costume above worn by Peggy Flemming who won the Gold Medal in figure skating at the 1968 Winter Olympics. I always thought she was classy and elegant.

Back at my sister’s house, Kodi went for a walk and got to meet Jasper the horse and get sniffed and inspected really good by the horse. I think our city dog thinks he doesn’t want become a ranch dog.

On the drive back to Tulsa Kodi found an earth cache. A specialized form of a geocache. So now I call him Kodi the Geodog.

I also got a shadow photo of Kodi so I guess he is a shadow dog as well.

So anyway, that was our whirlwind trip!!

I am linking with Skywatch Friday, Saturday’s Critters, Shadow Shot Sunday 2, and My Corner of the World

Saturday’s Critters – In the Woods, On the Water, Covered with Leaves

I went on a hike the other day and encountered some deer. I love seeing deer. They are so beautiful and graceful. They are not hunted on Turkey Mountain and so are not skittish at all.

I went geocaching at a local park and saw some ducks paddling around on a pond.

Kodi and I were playing in the backyard and he decided to take a little rest break in the leaves.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!!

I’m linking with Saturday’s Critters.

Kodi and Lizzie

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

A Late Autumn Hike

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.

IMG_3226

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.

IMG_3229

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.

Jigsaw puzzle

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.

_DSC0878

And today (December 7) is Pearl Harbor Day. Let’s not forget the heroes that day.

And, I am linking with Skywatch Friday!

Sapulpa’s Route 66 Christmas Chute

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

Year End Shadows

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.

Skywatch Friday – Santa is Almost Here Edition

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.

IMG_2866

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.

IMG_2865

And I checked on the PSO power plant across the river. I love stuff like this.

Oklahoma Christmas

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

Skywatch Friday – Inside Edition

Campera+ App

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.

Camaera+ App

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.

Distressed FX app

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.

04D1331A-D9D5-4F03-BE77-6072E2953064
Jigsaw puzzle

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.

Me and Kodi

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday.

Skywatch Friday – New Years Edition

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