It’s Heather’s Birthday Today!!
She’s the one that keeps things going in our house.
She’s always ready to go something, riding bikes.
Or hikes
Or sitting down, chatting over a brew
Or in the kitchen, making sure everybody is taken care of.
Happy Birthday Heather, I love you!!
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
My favorite trail on our recent trip to southeast Oklahoma’s Beavers Bend State Park was the Lakeview Lodge Trail. We hiked a little over 4 miles. The trail had some up and down, some water views, and was in generally great shape. The woods were opened up and it was very enjoyable.
My wife, son, and I had a pretty good time.
I’m linking with My Corner of the World
My wife Heather and our son Logan in the shadows at the Idaho Falls, Idaho Zoo during a visit years ago.
Happy Mothers Day to all Mothers!!
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.
Heather and I had our 33rd Anniversary the other day. We didn’t feel like celebrating much because our dog Rascal was not doing very well at all and we ended up putting him to sleep the next day. So things were not very happy at our house. Last night though we went to the Michael Buble concert here in Tulsa.
We’re glad we went. We love the guy and he always puts on a great show. This was the fourth time we’ve seen him. He sings an updated “Great American Songbook,” standards from people like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and others. One of my favorite songs is, “I’m Feeling Good.”
Another favorite is “Home.”
Over the years, he has mellowed quite a bit. He used to have kind of a bad boy persona and his shows could be quite raunchy. He’s now married and has four children and seems to be quite the family man but he still looks has that playful smile.
And we were happy. That is about as smiling as it gets for me. We had a good time.
Big news is that last week I took my brother Bob out for another outing. This time we grabbed some burgers and headed to the RiverParks trails to have a picnic.
And then we wheeled him up and down the trail for a mile. He’s a former marathoner who participates in his sport by riding his chair in the halls of where he lives. About 16 laps to a mile so 48 to do a 5K. He loves entering virtual runs and has finished a bunch of them. He is one amazing guy.
I don’t run any longer but I walk and ride my bike quite a bit. This is at Lafortune Park which has a nice 3 mile path around it. I prefer trails but it has been raining too much to walk on dirt.
My favorite tree at Lafortune Park.
Heather and I went on a bike ride earlier this week on a rail to trail route north of Tulsa. It was beautiful and we covered 15 miles or so.
And I had to stop at the Rexall Drug Store in Sperry that was a movie scene in The Outsiders movie filmed in the early 1980’s in Tulsa. I love finding and checking out old movie scenes (and new movie scenes as well.)
It has been a windy spring so I have not been flying my drone. It weighs only 249 grams and I could just see it heading to Arkansas in the high winds. The other day the winds died down and I launched the drone and caught an ok but not great sunset at about 50 meters.
And here is the view looking straight down. Our home has the four blue chairs.
And a drone selfie of yours truly.
A day or two ago we had big thunderboomers in Tulsa and a Tornado Watch. So time to go outside and take a video right?
Wednesday night was more of the same. This was later in the afternoon.
Sorry for the scattered nature of the post. Too many photos and not enough posts.
I hope everybody is having a peaceful time. Lots of drama going on both nationally and internationally. Everybody just breathe okay.
I’m linking Skywatch Friday come join in. Let me know of other great memes you have seen. Don’t be shy if you are the host of one!!
The Full Wolf Moon came up over a week ago. I love the full moons and all the different names for them.
We have had several storm fronts move through. Not too bad though and if the wind isn’t too bad I launch the drone and here is a sunset from about a week ago or so.
I’m a sucker for a meandering trail. Here is one at Washington Irving Park in Bixby just south of Tulsa.
And I like to find the quiet shots during busy events. At Oktoberfest last week I moved away from the crowd and got this skyshot. You wouldn’t know anybody is around.
And I said this is a Halloween post. Here is my bride Heather and son, Logan, at a pumpkin patch some years ago. He’s a college man and will be graduating this fall (we hope) and is even taller now. With him gone we don’t do much for Halloween any longer. We’ll turn out lots off and not pass out candy. Talk about a couple of old grouches, uh. Sorry, that is the way it is.
I also promised a Tree Troll, didn’t I. I found a dead one on a recent hike on Turkey Mountain.
It’s very gruesome, with his eyes bulging out and mouth gaped open laying sideways on the ground. Poor mountain tree troll 🙁
That’s is about it for today. I’m linking with Skywatch Friday, come join in the fun.
I was at mil’s house visiting earlier this week in the afternoon and noticed the late afternoon sun coming in through her blinds was causing interesting patterns on her table and flower pot. Along with flowers and greenery in the background. You can see here to know how to get the perfect assortment of flowers as a gift for someone you love.
Son and I went on a walk at a local park. I liked our shadow selfies down below.
A little bit later we passed by some shadows from some redbud trees. The redbuds have a brief spectacular show for a few weeks in March and April and then they kind of retreat into the background.
Here are some of the flowers that my wife purchased for her Mother’s Day. She loves gardening and happily bought some for our yard and for her mother’s garden as well.
We had a pretty good Mother’s Day Meal at my mother-in-law’s place. Here are the two honorees. Both of them are great mothers.
Here was my contribution. I love smoking chicken. I would rather eat smoked chicken than eat steak. Heather purchased the sides (since we didn’t want her cooking on Mother’s Day) and we had a nice meal together.
I am linking with Shadow Shot Sunday 2
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.
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.
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.
I am linking with Our World Tuesday, come get in on the action!