December 2023

Christmas! That's mostly what I think about when I think about December and in the spirit of Christmas here are pictures from Emily's winter orchestra concert. She's a very talented kid and plays multiple instruments, moving back and forth between marimba, vibraphone, bells, drums, cymbals, etc. throughout the songs. It's so cool to be able to hear her playing, especially when we don't get to hear her playing at home.

Decorating the tree! Fern came over to help and they did not skimp on the decorations.

Done!

Cynthia making cinnamon rolls for our Christmas Eve celebration:

Each year we have our own family Christmas celebration at home before we celebrate Christmas with our families. This year we got to do that on the 24th. 

Emily drew that color pencil portrait of Cynthia:

Then on Christmas we drove to the Conrad's. Remember when they were little and they used to ask us if we were there yet? Maybe that wasn't so bad after all.

November 2023

Cynthia and I celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary this month! We went to Black Sheep for dinner and Rose was working there that night, too. It's cool to see her working and being all grownup.  

When we got home, Emily was playing guitar. She was teaching herself a Violent Femmes song. She's very musical.

For my birthday we went to the Quarter Barrel cuz I'm a kid and like eating pizza and playing video games. 

I put the Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving and a week later we had snow:

Daniel's Park with the sun setting behind the few surviving trees:

And as is our tradition we went to Sharon's to help put up the tree and decorations. Her Christmas tree base was junk and didn't keep the tree upright very well, so I built a new one:

Alice and her weird obsession with the bathtub. For a cat who doesn't like to get wet she spends a lot of time in there. Weirdo.

It was a very mild and sunny November, perfect for being outdoors.

October 2023

Fall has fell... and it was a mild, colorful fall. The pumpkin crop was lean, but our garden did produce three pumpkins. 

Alice is not crazy about being cradled like a baby, but she lets Emily do it. If anyone else tries she'll bite your face off.

We got front row seats at a Rough Riders game! It's fun when players get body checked right up against the glass. Makes ya feel like you're part of the action. And we ducked every time a puck came flying our way. Reminds me of when me and my friends used to go to hockey games in high school.

Fall colors! We hiked around Palisades one morning as the sun was coming up, right at the peak of the bright foliage.

There were three eagles circling near us and I managed to get a shot of one.

"The warm October wind gusted strongly and great shades of light and shadow seemed to pass across the world."

Carving pumpkins!

Cynthia finished carving her pumpkin first. This was the only pumpkin from our garden that got carved.

My pumpkin:

Are they too old to be trick-or-treating?? 

You don't mess with Rick Grimes. CORAL!

It was a cold, windy Halloween and we only got 2 trick-or-treaters. Later that evening we burned our pumpkins as is our tradition at the end of Halloween.

And then the glass table they were on broke, but I had already put my camera away and missed it. Guess we'll be burning them on the patio next year!