Merry Christmas, Everyone!

I admit being guilty of pushing the real meaning of Christmas into the background. At least Santa has his priorities straight!   

Today we're celebrating the birthday of Baby Jesus and the joy of having so many kids in our lives!

What Do I Call This Girl?!

Sometimes I call her sweet... 

Sometimes I call her sassy...

But today I call her Birthday Girl!!!

Happy 6th birthday, Cate! 

New Little Ladies In Our Lives

Our neighbors across the street have two little twin girls about 16 months old. When they were outside with their mom this summer we visited them a few times but yesterday was the first time we stayed with them while Mom had a doctor's appointment. Meet Alaina and Sarina!

Christmas Projects

We don't do much holiday baking and neither does Mom anymore. But we had them come out yesterday to help us with our Thumbprints and...

...WHAT?!...is that that Dad's doing?!!!

Well, we have this one warty pumpkin that's still good and Jill thought it might be cute dressed up like the Grinch. So we turned Dad loose with the paint brush in the morning and everybody helped with the Butterballs in the afternoon.

Elegant Dinner!

Mom and Dad treated us to dinner last night in their dining room.

They certainly know how to lay out a fancy spread! :)

Update

I suppose it was operator error but I've had trouble uploading to YouTube. This morning I was finally able to get Natalie's piano recital video to load as expected. I know in my previous post it had come up as "private" but I think it's okay now. Visit http://lifewithlaurie.blogspot.com/2014/12/christmas-is-coming.html to see Miss N put on her show!

Some Holiday Lights

On the way home from Miracle on 34th Street at the Rochester Civic Theatre the other night we made a point of driving by the Plummer Building lit up spectacularly for the holidays.

Yesterday we drove over to Mankato for their light display at Sibley Park. We met up with Brian, Kate and Maya and had quite a little entourage as we walked through the lights.

I don't think the big tree in the middle was quite as tall as up in Bentleyville but it's just as colorful!

The tunnel of lights was fun to walk through...

...and wouldn't you know, Santa was over there too!!!

Christmas Is Coming!

Santa came to Mantorville on Saturday! How he finds these little burgs I'll never know! Natalie and Harvey tried to convince him they're on the nice list...

...and I'm sure they're right, but not so sure about this gal!

They were giving horse drawn wagon rides again this year so we took a little spin around the block.

Later in the afternoon Natalie was in a piano recital in Dodge Center.

Her holiday tune? Deck The Halls!

And crazy as it sounds....Santa was at the Dodge Center Community Center too! I think he must set his sleigh on turbo to get to all the places he needs to be! ;)

Jill's In Florida And I'm In...

...my sunroom! But thanks to an alert from Tricia it's like being on vacation because I just watched the Tregurtha come through the Canal on the LSMMA live stream camera! Check it out sometime...
http://www.lsmma.com/webcam/webcam_st.html
Maybe you'll see a ship come through too!

NOW Where To?!!!

Jill should be racking up some frequent flyer miles this year. Of the trips I can think of there's been three trips to California, one to Texas and today she's on her second trip to Florida!

The California trips were to watch her niece, Taylor, play soccer for Stanford. She and her team have done well enough to now be in the national Final Four for women's collegiate soccer! The games are actually in Boca Raton and if they win tonight they're on to the championship game on Sunday. So wish them the best!!

Two Trees Are Better Than One!

For years Dad has said just the ceramic tree is good enough for holiday decor but I think there was only one year when we let him get away with that. We decorated at their place yesterday and Dad has his ceramic tree...

...but the rest of us will get to enjoy the (almost) real thing!

Thanks for hanging the ornaments, Jill!

There's Tailgating...

(We've all seen cars that appear to be hitched on for the ride.)

AND THEN THERE'S TAILGATING!!!!!

We've seen two ships come through the Canal without the Bridge going down in between but never have I seen them travel this close together! (You may have correctly surmised this isn't a picture I took!)

Cutting Back?

Christmas decorations get to be a lot of work. We've already stopped putting lights up on the peak of the roof. And I'm thinking maybe I don't need to be up on a ladder another year even for across the porch. There is some other outside decor we've eliminated this year and it's carrying across to indoors. I've ALWAYS had tinsel on the tree but this year...no tinsel!

One of the things I've always believed is that there's no such thing as too many Christmas ornaments or too many magnets. I don't know, what do you think?

I'm changing my tune on both counts! But one tradition we haven't eliminated yet is going to the Festival of Trees on the night before Thanksgiving. This year there were a couple new displays that were pretty cute...Santa's Workshop...

...and the reindeer about to take flight with Santa's sleigh!

My favorite tree was the one with the Grinch creating his havoc.

The other part of that Wednesday night tradition still in effect is a meal out on the town. This year it was Chester's with a couple fancy cocktails.

Even the one Princess Martini I had was plenty to make me hand the keys over to Jill! 

Merry Chri..... Er, I Mean...Happy Thanksgiving!

Not sure we saw this coming but it's definitely a white Thanksgiving! Old Tom Turkey had to be wondering about it too.

He might be making some brand new friends today!

Wherever you have to be, please drive safely and have a wonderful holiday! For that I would be thankful!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Not Quite There Yet

I'm giving fair warning to anyone that might visit here over the holidays. Our tree lights may look like this!

We're having a heck of a time with them this year. Even two sets of new ones had half of them go out in the middle of stringing them. So we'll be into at least a third day of trying to get the tree lit by the time I go to Menards...again!...to get more lights.

And On To The Holidays!

You may have heard that the Christmas tree for our nation's Capitol was cut in northern Minnesota this year. It's touring many towns on its way there and last night we went down to Duluth to see it.

Pretty impressive, huh?...on its 100 foot trailer? Not! How about this view?

The best view of all is probably the one my neighbor sent me. The tree was cut from right up by their cabin. This shot gives you a pretty good idea how big and impressive it really is!

I would NOT want to be the one driving that big trailer!

So while we were there they had a promotion that for a small donation to the local food shelves you could get a look inside the 140 foot, 200,000 light tree they have set up for Bentleyville, their annual Christmas light display.

Also while we were there ships we didn't know were on the schedule kept sneaking in and out of the Canal. And I mean that literally. I was fussing around looking out away from the Bridge trying to take a selfie of Jill and me with it in the background. When I finally figured out the lighting wasn't going to work I turned around and here's this guy coming out of the harbor.

Cher was down on the end of the pier looking out into the lake waiting for an incoming ship because of the lights we could see out there. The first she noticed this guy was when she looked over to the right and there's his nose starting to exit the Canal! So these boats may be behemoths but they're very "light on their feet!"

At our cabin this year there's a gigantic log timber the owner has dragged up onshore and he says it's a popular spot for pictures. So I made the girls come down there this morning for our group shot...

They seemed to think it was cold. I didn't know what they were talking about.

It had to be at least 40 degrees!! :)

Since then the sun's come out and I'm headed out on the deck for a little last enjoyment of this fine weather. Next week doesn't look so warm!

Bonus!

We've not been seeing the amount of ships that are usually trekking by in November. In fact, yesterday only one went by our cabin. Today, here came one and right behind came another! Jill and I went down to the Canal to see the two 1000 footers come through within ten minutes of each other.

I wouldn't have wanted to be in the traffic line waiting to get from one side of the bridge to the other because it stayed up for both to pass through which was probably 20-25 minutes.

On another note, the pressure's off! I cooked my mystery meal last night so my time in the kitchen is done!

Good Morning!

It's looking cloudy today but if you look hard there's a big ball of sun in there!

Morning and evening are the coziest parts of these days!

I Was Wrong!

It DOES keep getting better!

Minnesota! The only team in the NFC North to win this week! ;)

Getaway

November's here and it doesn't get much better than this!

3 Years!

It's getting late in the day...maybe the celebrating is done. But we still want to wish these two a HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

More Travels

October has been a big travel month for our family...day trips for Tony and Tricia, Duluth for Mindy and then for Brian, Kate and Alan, Disney for a bunch of us. But I think the most exotic is Jon's work trip to Germany.

After flying from Cologne to Amsterdam he's on the last leg home!