A person 62 and then some should have better things to do with her time, right? But I like to play on our computer. Thus, the birth of my blog. Thanks for staying with me into 2017! Feel free to leave comments... good or bad, silly or smart. If you're anonymous I'll just have to guess who may have left them!
Retired for ten years now I still have a little job I absolutely love! You'll see some pictures of my "clients", my family and a mish mash of other things from day to day at our house.
We don't get many trick or treaters at our house so last week on one of the days when the girls were up early I got a picture of them when they wanted to try out their costumes.
Claire is a dinosaur (I think she said her Uncle Mike wore that) and Cate is a fairy.
Then on Sunday Natalie and Harvey stopped in because you just can't get to all the places you want to go right on Halloween.
Natalie is the Tooth Fairy and it's not too hard to guess about Harvey! Tonight our neighbor boys stopped over and that'll be it. I wish I would have gotten a picture of them as Batman and an alien with really bugged out eyes. Now......what to do with the leftover candy. Hmmmm.........
I had a coupon for a free sandwich from the new Cousins Subs shop down on 2nd St. so last night for supper we got a seafood sub and a chicken cheddar deluxe one to split. We both really liked the bread. It was almost like a hard roll. But they forgot the bacon on the chicken sandwich and the choice of extra toppings wasn't as good. We took a vote and, especially since we always choose the flatbread anymore, it came out in favor of Subway 2-0!
I better post a blog about our last vacation before the next one rolls around! Two weeks ago we went up near Brainerd for what has become a traditional gals golf getaway and to enjoy the Fall colors. Keep in mind this was early October. When we planned it we thought it'd be about peak for foliage up there. Of course, we all know how that worked out. Everything was thrown off by being so dry. We weren't totally skunked though. The oaks still held their deep bronze leaves and there were patches that were quite brilliant.
The first morning we were there dawned clear enough that the morning light was beautiful on the trees across the lake.
The weather soon turned on us though. It clouded up, was quite windy and not that warm so we scrapped our plans for the first of two golf days. We're constantly hearing train whistles at the cabin so I decided to go lay in wait for one...sorta like watching for ships on our North Shore vacations! I was headed for the crossing where they toot quite impressively when I came across one just firing up that I knew right where he'd go through an underpass. So I got turned around and in position for when he'd be coming 'round the bend. He tooted his whistle just for me!
I had a book with me so I went back down to that other crossing and waited for the next one. They seem to come through sometimes twice an hour. It wasn't too long and here he came.
I figured that's enough for one day but I checked out the other side of the tracks since I never had and spotted this little church tucked in along the road.
Most of the places we're used to going for our meals when we're up there had already adopted their winter hours which meant they weren't open on a Tuesday! So we drove to Brainerd in the afternoon for a little shopping and supper. I don't want you to think we ate at McDonalds but...
...look at the style of their restaurant! It must be one of the originals. We ended up going to Black Bear Lodge and Saloon where Jill had ribs and Cher and I had Hungarian Goulash. There's a huge store right next to it called Christmas Point that's fun to browse through but I also found some interesting coffees to buy and....shhhh, don't tell Jill and Cher...a couple things for our November vacation coming up in about two weeks!
The next day it was about 20 degrees when we got up so we were pretty sure we'd be aced out of golfing again. But it was sunny and not as windy so by the time we stretched out a little more shopping until around 1:00 we decided 45 degrees was warm enough to give it a go. But when we paid our greens fees they were warning us about frost still being in the shaded areas on some of the greens. It really was quite nice for most of the round...until the clouds moved in and the wind chill started dropping. One thing about Fall golf, there are LOTS of leaves on the fairways that you just can't do anything about.
And the guy told us that because they can't keep the greens free of leaves we were free to golf as many holes as we wanted as compensation. We had a couple holes that turned into do-overs but another reason we did that was because there was, essentially, NObody else out there. There was one group of three that played through on the 11th hole but that was it! Even though they'd warned us about the leaves on the greens they never said anything about the wildlife!
There were some pretty patches of color all around the course.
And on the 18th hole there are these landscape features guarding the green we always call the boobs. They showed up better this year with all the leaves scattered over them.
Seemed like a perfect setting to take our group photo!
We hadn't seen my little great-niece, Maya, since her birthday party in early September. We went over yesterday to spend the day since her daddy's on a camping trip and her mommy had to work. Maya was napping when we got there so it was a surprise to her when two strangers peeked in when she woke up. It took about ten minutes for her to warm up but it was all smiles from then on. She found a spot on the steps where she was comfortable until she figured out we weren't so bad.
We pulled out a lot of toys but the lens cap on my camera seemed to be a big attraction. We had a little lesson in the fine art of tripod photography...
...but this was the best smile I could get for our group picture.
It wasn't long before Maya and Jill went out to the kitchen to see about some lunch.
She really didn't eat very much but we had fun talking about it. I just love the way she coos!
I've decided Maya might be angling towards being a dentist. She seems quite interested in putting her fingers in people's mouths!
I know you're not supposed to do that, in whatever context you use this phrase. But today I did. I went to the library looking for some music CD's but it's hard for me to walk out of there without SOMEthing new to read. I didn't have my wish list with me so I picked an aisle with no one in it, picked an author I'd never heard of and looked for a cover that seemed interesting. So here it is!
Aside from being a somewhat dubious combination of colors it just looks like a fun book to me. We'll see.
A couple Fridays back Harvey's daycare was closed so us three girls took turns staying with him. I went to Claire and Cate's that morning so Jill was with Harvey when everyone else left for school and work. Mid-morning I went up to take over from her so she could get some sleep since Friday was her night to work. But before she left we got out some homemade playdough.
There were tiny snowmen...
...and elephants...
...before we moved into the toy room where Harvey showed us some of his tricks...
...and a lot of his toys.
And, oh yes...we talked him into a group picture with the promise of pushing the button to make the little orange light flash.
Then Jill had to get going so it was just Harvey and me until Grandma Cher came with lunch and to take him home with her for the afternoon.
Not to be alarmed. It was just some rain....GLORIOUS rain!
We hadn't had rain in so long we'd almost forgotten what it was. Between Friday night and this morning it looks like we got almost a half an inch. It's a start. Another good thing, the leaves are wet right now and I can start hauling 'em away!
Ever since I'm not sure when, we were watching the calendar for an open date when Natalie and Harvey could come stay over. So about a week ago everything fit together and they came for a Saturday night. Their mom and dad dropped them off on the way out on a date of their own. I think it was a treat for the kids to have such an open non-traffic area to ride their bikes.
That was a lot of work! So we had to have a snack before we went in for supper.
We decided to have them earn their keep so we all made our meal together. Pigs in a blanket!
Since it's getting on towards Halloween we all painted a pumpkin.
Natalie had brought a Strawberry Shortcake video but I think she was more interested in braiding the fringe on the afghan. She told me Ashton taught her that.
We were worried that Harvey might not like being away from Mommy and Daddy but as long as Natalie was there he was just fine. I think we all slept pretty good. We had a date to meet the rest of the family at Old Country Buffet so there wasn't a lot of time for stuff in the morning. But one thing we talked about was 3D movies. There're some good animated ones coming up and we did a test run to see how the glasses would feel.
In the middle of playing with the softee dough Harvey was amused by our sound-activated laughing skull.
I hope the kids had fun because we deemed it a success on our end!
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