Sunday

 Fourteen inches of snow was our final total. It collected well on the fake tree on the deck. The wind has bent up the top of the tree and I have to do some straightening operation on it. 

 The winds whip around the items on the deck and it gives us some good drifts. The patio table doesn't have fourteen inches on it but it is out of the way against the house. 

 Our mini forest includes the two of my neighbor's trees along with my blue spruce. The snow didn't actually stick to the trees so much even though there was a lot of it. 

 We are in for the day as it is cold and there is a lot of snow. We watched church on line this morning. We sent our oldest son off this morning with him heading back to Chicago on bad roads. His trip was better was he got out of Iowa and was in Illinois. He had to use the snow blower when he got home to get things ready for going to work in the morning.  We are home for the next couple of days and will have a funeral on Thursday. We may have to make a food run once in a while but it is best to stay in for a while  Melting will take place on Friday. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Snow Day

 The nine year old grandson is crazy for Legos. He has a wonderful imaginations a he just keeps creating all the time he is with us.

 

 

 

 

Teddy had added his vehicles to the small tree and finally on the last day he remembered. He brought a lot of them to put under the tree and he put a few on the tree. 

Our daughter-in-law returned yesterday with the grand kids to Chicago. Our son stayed for a friend's 50th birthday party last night and he is now snowed in with us until tomorrow morning. He helped me snow blow the driveway this afternoon. I will probably have to do it again tomorrow after he leaves. We are getting a lot of snow. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Friday

 

It is a cretive adventure when the grandkids put together the gingerbread houses. Their dad does get it all organized which cuts down on the chaos. Grand ma and grand pa watch and assist if they are needed but the process is a lot of fun.The oldest guy is thirsty and moves with less excitement but he still does participate. 

 They are all on their way hone now trying to beat the snowstorm heading back to the Chicago area. There is evidence that they were here as we have lego ornaments now in our tree. We had a good Thanksgiving dinner. We had the company for the whole day and they later returned to there motel and went swimming. 

We spent the morning helping with the plans for my wife's brother's funeral. He has had some tough years with alzheimers and passed yesterday. With the weather and the holiday the funeral will not be until Thursday. He lost his wife two years ago and she at that time was his care giver. He was under nursing home care.

Thanks for stopping by today.  

 

Thanksgivng Day

 Cold and clear morning sky before the snow moves in to the area. Our family is here from Chicago and they are wondering when they should leave before the storm hits.

 The table was set with its added leaf and the two of us were sitting at a very big table. By supper time seven place mats were in place and everyone was eating pizza. Four adults and three kids fill it up nicely. They will be back again from the motel late morning and spend the day with us. Our oldest grand son is now taller than me and the other brother and sister have grown too. They can tell you how many inches they have grown in the one year since they have been here. 

 I have the one Christmas tree up for the grand kids to see. The items under the tree sit in their positions to cover the wooden base of the tree. The doll looks like she is watching out for the soldier. 

 The collection of items were unboxed from last years display. Things get moved into different arrangements and some new items are added each season. The bears were from my mom things when I closed down the estate. One of her grand girls sent her a different one each Christmas. 

 The frost was very heavy this morning. We don't have snow yet and I am not sure when to expect it to start. Our winds have been so strong that the leaves have all been blown to the back fence. I will have to rake them out this spring as the rot otherwise and shut down my iris plants. We are also very cold now and it looks like it will stay around for awhile. 

I wish everyone to have a good Thanksgiving day today. 

I Am Back......Miss Me?

 We visited a cafe near us that decorates for the holiday season. It is quite a draw with thousands of lights and many reflective decorations. There are three maybe four different rooms for the cafe and each room was decorated differently.

 One room was decoartaed with these trees and the ceiling of lights. It is quite a show. 

 We have company coming for Thanksgiving. To add to the efforts of getting ready for company we decided to get our shingles and flu shot on Monday.  It was not a good thing to do as we have two sore arms. We do have a friend that has a bad case of shingles right now.so we thought we won't be messing around. We both feel like we have been hit by semi trucks and drug down the road for a while. 

 We like to have at least one tree up for the kids. My wife also put up a portion of her Christmas village. We can put the rest of the trees and the village after they are gone.  The final house cleaning comes tomorrow and we have groceries bought. It will be fun to see them all with five all in total.  The grand kids haven't been here for a year so they will have grown a lot. We have plenty of milk and cookies ready to go and our adult kids will like that too. We will keep the coffee pot going and have fun. We have a threat of a snow storm which seems to be the normal for Thanksgiving week. I hope it just doesn't get too bad.

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Stuff for Today

 Sooth has a great effect early in the morning. We actually had sunshine today after having two gray days. 

 I did get the ornaments on the tree. It is the only one we will put up until after Thanksgiving. It is up for our guests to enjoy over the turkey holiday. 

 The one lone tree left in our front yard looks like it has gone through a storm. The other tree that was taken down was the larger tree. You can see the sun from yesterday's view as it is peaking through our gray clouds. 

 I have a blurred photo of one of my next projects. It has layers of paint on it and I had to sand a lot of the flaking paint. It has a history of coming from an old school that was going to be torn down. I tauaght in that building for four years until I was moved to a bigger room. The shelf unit was in the janitor's closet next to an extinct boiler and the janitor said take it as it will just be crushed and taken to the dump. It looks like a teacher's perfect set of shelves for a teacher in an elementary room. I have the first coat of paint on it.  I got too busy to finish it but maybe on Monday.  The old building was built in 1918. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Friday Final Day

 It is standing and ready for ornaments. I can put things on  quickly and some years I make a game of it and put twenty on and then walk away, repeat off and on all day. 

 

I walked the property this morning to find some things to shoot. The yellow leaf is a rarity and I don't have a clue where it came from, I suppose up the street. I mowed up leaves again this morning and it wasn't too wet. It was vert cold. I had to wear layers. 

The burning bush in the front is dropping leaves quickly. I saw one single leaf float to the ground while I was taking the shot. I guess it goes fast as they drop one at a time continually. Things are looking pretty dead outside now and these reds are really welcomed. 

 The mum was amazing. It had all the blooms on it die when I first planted it. It then just rebudded and bloomed again. I am glad that it is still alive. Sometime they just die when I plant them out this tine of the year. 

 

The one rose and the buds are frozen in time. They will eventually dry up and never bloom but the plant has shut down with all the freezes.

 

 

It costs a lot of money to get all these tubes and vents. The furnace is sucking air in for combustion and the one pipe is doing heat exchange. The new air conditioner also get two tubes and thermometers.The furnace is space age tech and I do like it a lot. I manage it with my phone as well as the wall device. We have no loud blower noises and the change of temps is gradual and consistent. 

 Thanks for checking in today.      The neighbors did get moved in, late in to the night, and all the trucks are gone. 

Thursday's Things

 We are boxed in as our new neighbors are moving in today. It is the same company that we used to move here eight years ago. I am not getting paid for this ad. The men who moved us in were such great guys who treated us with respect. They loved our dog Barnie as he kept track of them as they moved things out of our old house. He was older and he wanted to wander out into the truck. 

 It is a blank canvas ready to be painted. I put this one small tree up for the grand kids to see over Thanksgiving.  I don't have any new ornaments to add to my collection for this year's tree but I did get some really fancy garland for it from the great crafts store.

Tomorrow I will do some more mowing around the tree. I just need to mulch the leaves under the tree as I don't need to mow the yard. I had to wait for the neighbor boys to get out of the photo before I shot it. They were out playing basketball without any coats.  We are suppose to move into a warming trend again. 

Thanks for checking in today.
 

Not My Fault

 It isn't my fault that I bought six donuts today. They were marked down to fifty cents for the whole batch. They sucked me into their sale. A diabetic is not allowed to buy such a thing but once in a while I can have a half of one per day. My wife got the other half and I had fresh brewed coffee with mine. 

 Even though we moved in over eight years ago, we are still shifting things. I ran across the plate that belonged to my wife's family. It has the calendar displayed all around the rim and the year of the calendar is 1913. 

 The center landscape displays the country home and the cows being tended by a young warmly dressed boy. The hat looks European and in the background is a stone tower. It is an amazing antique plate. 

 I had a doctor's appointment this morning. I lost my GP three years ago as the one I had moved on to another clinic. Life got busy and I had not found another but now I have a GP again.  I had two other specialists keeping an eye on me but Medicare really require me to get this new doctor. He is a mature doctor and communicates well at my level. It was nice to ask questions about the drugs that I am taking as I was using the pharmacy as a source for information. I return to see him in another month as we need to get to know each other better. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Today is Almost Done.....

 The outdoor tree doesn't always hold its ornaments. The fallen one was returned to the tree this afternoon. The grass is still green at this point of time. 

 The other red color in the back yard is almost gone. The cold weather has encouraged the burning bush to drop most of its leaves. It keeps looking like snow is the next thing to happen back there.

 

We had a rain early night and everything is still wet. I didn't mow up the leaves today as I want tit to be dried out so they will mulch up well.. 

 The morning panoramic view didn't include the sun. We were gray most of the day and we were cold too. I hope we would have some warmer weather tomorrow.

I have been doing battle getting the company to come pick up our old washer/dryer set, When they brougt our new ones they claimed they didn't have room to take the old ones back with them. I didn't understand that and I didn't understand why I had to  spend most of the morning getting ahold of the company to schedule a pick-up.  I normally don't give bad comments on the evaluation but I left them negative comments on the evaluation. I told them I wouldn't buy anything from them ever again. I probably would but I was mad at the time. Anyway, we have to wait until Thursday to get the old pieces out of the garage. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Move On

 The Sunday morning view has an interesting shaped set of clouds. The sun isn't quite up but maybe it is as the house blocks my view. I could crop this down so one could see all the great colors on the clouds on the left but then I woul have to cut out the cloud formation. 

 The sun causes an orange color on the red burning bush. I have neighbors who never park their cars and truck inside. The neighbor across the street has five or more vehicles and the garage is full of tools and a beat up old truck that doesn't belong to him. So there seems to always be a truck next door, or the cars across the street, or two vans up the way in the opposite direction, which are always out for us to see and be in my front yard photos.

 

While messing in the basement store room, I was looking for the toy storage tubs to pull out for our visiting grand children when they come next week. I saw the train and pulled it out. It is one of my grand daughter's favorite and I thought I would just sit it out on the table. I know she is getting too old for it but she likes to look at it just like I do. It is a magical toy. My neighbor next door had hers out in the garage sale and I should have bought it. Two iare better than just one.

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The deck had to be built around the above fireplace so extra support poles were put in to keep procthings sturdy. I had the brackets from and old house that my dad tore down 65 years ago and I thought they could be put on display in between the two posts. The house was my uncle's house and before that my grandfather's house. It had all sorts of ginger bread decoration on the sweeping front porch. The glass panel with four panes was from my neighbor's porch that he tore down. They all fit together great. I should put a swinging porch swing under it. Maybe I can do that next spring.

 Our economy has come back after four long miserable years.  The woman next door did sell her house. The house behind her east, also just recently sold. They had five dogs in the yard yesterday. The house across the front of my neighbor's house, west, has also sold now. All three sold in the last two months. There is a house down the street that is still unsold but I am going to keep watching it. I kept telling the neighbor next door lady that she just needed to wait as things in the country would settle down. The new people are a young couple with many dogs. The one next door are a couple closer to our age, who are downsizing. I have yet to see the age of the people who bought that other one.  The moving vans are keeping busy. Maybe it is because we are bad neighbors but the ones who moved in south of us two years ago seem to be sticking around.  Thanks for stopping by today.