Caught up (mostly/almost)!

moving on to part 3 of the "catching up" series !

My niece's baby turned 1 at the end of November, so we went to her birthday party.  Her & my grandkids had a good time - as well as the dog! 

I call this photo "chaos summed up in one shot".

Then we took the grands to see Santa at my VFW.   

Both of them willingly went to sit on his lap.  

This guy was in someone's yard a couple streets over from us.  

He's not one of the 12 footers, altho I have seen them in various places. 

LittleMan's favorite thing to do at stores is to pose with the mannequins. 

Meijer's isn't as fun as Target, tho. 

Maddie and her hooman watching videos. 

These little antler clippies were quite the find!  They are sparkly & clip onto the hair really solidly. 

My SAR team walked in the annual light parade in Lapeer again.  

People sure love to see the K9s! 

Our director manages to always get horrible pics of me! 

This is actually Team Naughty & Team Grumpy.

I found out in early December that I had 60 hours (7.5 days) of vacation time at work that I needed to use or lose!  So I took a couple full days & a LOT of half days off the last 2 weeks of the year.

We spent Christmas Eve at my niece's house and we had a good time, decorating cookies & playing games & visiting.  We also had a white elephant gift exchange.   I was sad to find out that we weren't allowed to do gag gifts!  I would have put much more effort into a gag gift.

They're so cute!

BabyGirl got presented-out about halfway thru and was ready to just stop and color.  LittleMan was all into it, tho.

This is the White Christmas that we had!  

We started going to Frankenmuth on Christmas the year my dad passed away.  At first we stayed at the Bavarian Inn and went to the water park, but now we just go to Zehnder's for their chicken dinner.  I was so happy that my body decided to get its sense of taste back that day!  We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast & couldn't taste or smell much then.  But I ordered the portobella ravioli for dinner and that first bite was a literal flavor explosion in my mouth!  

The Spouse left for Arkansas the Wednesday after Christmas.  He'll be working mobile from his mom's house until the beginning of February.   So that means I spent New Year's Eve with the Spawn.  We went on YouTube and found last year's ball drop in NYC and played that for the grandkids before they went to bed, so they could have their own celebration.  They had no idea what was going on. 

We'd gone to the store earlier that day and she found a bottle of gingerbread wine so that's what we used to toast with. 

As of January 2, we have a 4 year old in the house!  

Since he got a literal truckload of toys at Christmas, I'm going to plan on gifting him "experiences".  There's a place called the Reptarium not far from us so I'll take him to go see the critters that you can touch.  In mid-February, they'll also have an aquarium built across the street, so we'll have to go there sometime, too!  

So that's pretty much it for now.   

I haven't put it out there to the universe yet, I do plan on blogging more.  

And do the A to Z Challenge again in April.  

But let's see how that really turns out! 

This is a house that's nearby - a modern day Clark Griswold!  

Except with LEDs so they don't burn anything down. 

They're on a corner lot, so this is only like half of their yard!

Fall catch up

....and moving on!

I'm so glad I saw this totally by accident that Tim Horton's had Trick or Treat Buckets!  And they glow in the dark!  And you could get them with or without the 31 Timbits inside!  So the grandkids had  some snazzy new buckets this year.  

This skeleton cracked me up - raising his arms apparently threw off his center of balance so he started to lean and eventually fell over, being help up by a twisted ziptie on top of a fence post.  We thought he was funny, so he stayed that way!   

In early October I went to the annual Halloween Camp put on by the search & rescue team, K9One.  

I did a full post about it over on my Maple Grove Cemetery blog.

It's always a lot of fun!

I don't care about college sports, but I was asked to draw on the conference room wall for the MSU/UM football game.  Of course its a big thing around here. Everyone wrote what they thought the final score would be and the one who was closest got a gift card. 

I'm pretty proud of my Sparty!  At least it's recognizable.

We got the official Tball photos back from the grandson's first season.  

So stinkin' cute!

As of October 18 - we have a 2 year old in the house!

So the Spawn signed the kids up to attend the trunk or treat at their daycare.  Forgetting that she can't be in 2 places at once!  At the trunk / taking them around!  So Gramma stepped in to save the day.  Some quick shopping in the front yard and called it good to go!

Oh!!  That's the awesome news around here!

The Spawn got a job!!  Long story short, she's working at the daycare where her kids attend!  

It was rough at first, surprisingly for LittleMan and not so much for BabyGirl! 

They're liking going there now. 

Getting our last minute pumpkins!

The ones we ended up getting may have already been past their prime, but that's OK, they only needed to last a couple days!  I thought it was hilarious that the 2 we didn't actually carve are the ones that deflated!

My SAR team attended the "Top Lights Trunk or Treat" again - still feels pretty cool that we're grouped in with other first responders! 

Halloween came down November 1, and what little Christmas I do came out the weekend after Thanksgiving.  

I like my blowmold collection!

This guy showed up to my VFW on Veteran's Day.

I was supposed to be there to help out, but the plague hit our house before Halloween and we've all been sick off & on, with varying symptoms.  I think I was starting to come down with it on Halloween and I'm still fighting with the after-affects (coughing).  I've been to the clinic twice & last time they said I had a sinus infection and was on antibiotics.  

On Thanksgiving, LittleMan was supposed to be feeding the apples to Sis1's horses, but he stole a few pieces!

That's it for now!