It's a Christmas Miracle!!!

The Spawn got a car! 

She picks it up tonight & I'm so excited to not have to be a shuttle driver anymore!!

I don't even know/care what year it is - a 2017 or 2019 Nissan Altima. 

My Dad passed away back in 2009, but we still joke around about him haunting us if we don't drive a Big 3 type car (Ford / GM / Chrysler).  So we had a "chat" with him while we were in the parking lot at the dealership.   I'm sure he understands that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do! 

Speaking of Christmas....

no white Christmas for us! 

It's currently almost 50*F.

The weather on my computer monitor keeps saying 3 or 4 inches of snow on Friday, but Christmas Day itself looks to be fine.  Which is good, since we usually go to Zehnder's for dinner on Christmas and that's a good hour away.  

By the way - happy winter!  

Since it officially started yesterday.

This was my view out the window at work yesterday.  

I love my windows facing east! 

This area next to the driveway is what we call "the Mosh Pit" - this is where all the Halloween blowmolds and half the Christmas ones go.  It really looks like there was some sort of rave!  

(it was actually just a lot of wind)

Saw this at a Dunkin Donuts that I've never been to - how have their pumpkins lasted this long????  They clearly don't have the squirrel issue that we do.  

I also love the hay/straw bale wrapped as a present! 

Last Thursday was the Ugly Sweater Day at work.  We get lunch catered in and have a little gathering up in the dispatch office with games, mock elections and usually a slideshow showing the state of the company.  They skipped that part, so hopefully that doesn't mean anything bad....  

2026 is the 100th anniversary of the company so I hope they do some fun stuff off & on next year! 

I got the cheesiest award ever - "Best Cyber Attack Score".  

Between the quizzes during mandatory quarterly training and test emails they send out randomly - I've apparently gotten the highest score in the whole company.  On the flip side, our HR director got the worst score! 

I would have rather been acknowledged for being with the company for 25 years, but oh well. 

Friday was the company "happy hour" at a local bar.  

We went there, had a few beverages and snacks, played some games and just hung out for a couple hours.  

Decorations on my desk.

Saturday we went over to Sis2's house and we had our own little Christmas gathering with her, BIL & Sis1.  We just had a few beverages, finger foods, exchanged some gifties and just visited for a while.  It was nice & peaceful. 

How pitiful is this?  I still don't have skeletons put away out in the yard! 

The snow is gone now, but it's still really too stupid cold out there to drag a bunch of totes out of the garage to get to the back corner to hang them up.  I need to do something with them before they get ruined.  

I've been thinking about getting one of those new giant totes they have at Home Dept, it's advertised as being able to hold a 12 foot skeleton - but I need it for 2 skeleton horses and 1 pony.   I'm just not sure it'll fit in the back of my car! 

I'm clearly not too busy at work, since here I am!  

I have a half day tomorrow and then off until Monday. 

 

I'm pretty close to being done with shopping, but I still have to wrap - BLARGH.

Aw man - need to do some work.  If I'm not back on here before...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Mannequins at Target... 

Where has December gone ?!?!!

Why is it half over???

I don't know if it's because I'm getting (GASP!) older, or what, but not only does it seem to be dark insanely early, it happens really fast, too!  By the time I get home from picking the Spawn up from work, it's dark.  And she gets off work around 5:30pm!

Thanksgiving was weird this year.  First of all, the Sunday before, we met up with Sis2's entire family and Sis1 and went to this place called Glenlore Trails - I kind of want to go back for next Halloween since when I googled it, it was all about a haunted trail.  But they had it all done up in lights, which were pretty cool. A lot of "wizard" stuff, which I could have done without but neat otherwise. 

These lights were particularly cool. 

We went to dinner afterward and I was taken out by food poisoning!  I attempted to go into work late Monday but only stayed for about 2 1/2 hours.  I went home and slept the afternoon away.  I physically felt fine after that (other than sore ribs from throwing up), but it took a good week for my appetite to come back.  

Oh, and Thanksgiving?  We went out to eat.  There was a restaurant near Sis1's house that had a buffet, so that's what we did. 

The weekend after Thanksgiving, Sis1 & Sis2 went to see Bro2 in Ohio and we went slightly out of our way to a place called the Happy Dog in Cleveland - OMG. 

 It looked like a total sketchy dive bar, but the food was SO GOOD! 

I had a hot dog with peanut butter, bacon & a fried egg on it!  

Sounds gross, but it was delicious! 

oh, and to be fancy, black truffle honey mustard to dip my tots in. 

Since we were on the east side of Ohio, we popped into West Virgina to the Oglebay Festival of Lights. It was so pretty but also confusing since we drove thru approximately half of the display before we found the gate where you "donated" an entrance fee.   $30 per car was "suggested".  😒 

The grandson just finished up playing an indoor peewee baseball league.  

This is a multi-use arena, so the boards & glass are up for hockey, but they also play baseball & soccer here. Gravity is pretty strong for the green team.

That's GS over there after running into the boards (on purpose!) 

We have some great videos of someone hitting the ball and ALL of the kids on the other team running for it and piling on each other. 

Sis1 and I were in a Parade of Lights with our search & rescue team - we carried the banner and the other 4 people with us had their K9s. 

Santa came to the VFW!  

My grands are in front, she's sitting on his lap.  

They both chased Santa down afterward for hugs. 

We (Mom, Sis1, Sis2 and I) had our annual trip to Frankenmuth & Bronner's last week. 

We spend the morning in Bronner's, have lunch, then go shopping in some of the stores in Frankenmuth. 

There are several "seasonal" sections in Bronner's and of course I have to check out the autumn / Halloween sections.   This giant bell was pretty cool. 

I found this "missile-toad" in a store and bought it to smooch the Spouse under!

We had a good laugh - when we were piling in the car to leave, Sis2 noticed a man crossing the parking lot - he looked a LOT like Santa, but in regular clothes!  He was getting into the car next to us (a beat up old red Explorer) so she put her window down and we all called out hello to him.  He came over and leaned down to see us, with his finger up to his lips (like saying shush) and said that today, he was just known as "Chris"!   

After having the blowmolds in the yard for a good week, I finally went out & plugged them all in.

Normally I have one that I call "asshole" that won't keep its light on or keeps falling over.  

I've had none (yet) this year!   One of the snowmen above was in the running at first, since his was the only light out when the grandson & I brought them to the front yard.  But the bulb was just loose.  

The small snowman & gingerbread man by the bush are in a bad place, since that's where we throw snow when we shovel the driveway.  They are almost half buried in snow now. 

I bought a couple large snowflakes to go in the windows of the house, even tho they'll probably look like eyeballs. 

Whoops, forgot someone! 

We had a white elephant gift exchange at the search & rescue team Christmas party. 

I was happy with the ammo can (the Spouse has already said he's going to steal it for radio stuff) and it also had a Mason jar full of home-grown popcorn in it!  Even if I chose not to pop it (which I will) it's so pretty, all multi-colored kernels and with a pretty scrap of material over the lid. 

Anywoooo.  That's all the excitement 💀 around here.   

No further news on the Spawn getting a new car.  

No real plans for the holidays yet.

Just rolling with the vibe. 

Don't even have Christmas shopping done!

Woo.  

Glad it's supposed to be record high temps tomorrow - so I can go get all the salt washed off my car! 

SkyWatch Friday 11/21/25

I couldn't decide which one I liked better, seeing as how I took the pics approximately 1/2 second apart.

It's my favorite tree, but normally I see it in the early morning light - this was around 9:30 am when I took these. 

 linked up at SkyWatch Friday

 

Trying not to "woe is me"

Have you ever had one of those days / weeks / months where it just seems like everything is out to get you?  

First of all, the day before Halloween, they let one of my coworkers go from work.  So now there's only 2 of us in my department.  Doing the work of 3 people.  It's insane.  And a lot of the work we do (the 3rd person did this) should be done by operations, not billing!  But they whined to the Ops Officer so we have to keep doing their jobs.  Because "that's the way it's always been" wah wah wah.

Then - Monday 11/10 we had our first snow around here and of course the Spawn hit a patch of black ice on her way taking the grandkids to school and slammed into the back of another vehicle and was in turn hit from behind.  Thankfully they're all mostly OK, however her car was demolished.   The kids were fine, the Spawn was checked out in the ER because the airbag hit her hand / wrist and it was swollen and bruising fast.  It isn't broken, but she'll be wearing a brace for a while.   

So now... I was getting up early, working from home for a couple hours, taking the grandson to school and the Spawn & granddaughter to the daycare (Spawn works there), then going into the office.  I can't even work late to make up any extra time, since I have to be home to get the grandson off the bus.  So then I ~might~ have about 20 minutes when I get home from work to relax alone.  Then I have to head out again around 5:30 to go get the Spawn from her work.  

I'm tired.  I don't want to have my life revolving around being an Uber driver for the kids.   The Spouse has been helping where he can, especially since Monday I started having trouble with some programs on my work laptop and the IT guy is dinking around about getting it fixed.  

Then last weekend - Spawn sprung it on me Friday night that she had a CPR class Saturday morning.  It was already planned that the granddaughter was staying Saturday night with Sis1 (she's an awesome auntie that gives the kids coupons for one-on-one time with her for their birthdays - they love it!)  I met her halfway to make the child exchange.  

Sunday morning, I heard my phone ringing early - it was Sis1, crying & hysterical.  They'd gone out to the barn to feed the horses their breakfast & one of them had died overnight!  He was the youngest of the 3, too!  So I had to pack up Spawn & grandson to go out there and console her and be there when the neighbor came by with his backhoe to get the horse out of the stall and dig the grave (since we didn't let Sis1 be out there)  As sad as this was, it was also morbidly fascinating, since rigor had already set in. I won't go into details about that (you're welcome!)  But anyway.  The kids were a good distraction for her, plus she'd just adopted a new puppy.   She had to bring her 3rd horse home from the trainer's so he can keep the retired old lady horse company. 

Ugh. Then I had stuff from the VFW that had to be done - I'm the chairpeep for the Voice of Democracy / Patriot's Pen programs for the post and that involved making sure all the entries were done correctly & coordinating with other people to get together for judging, etc.  

OK.  I try to keep my posts positive, but sometimes everything just weighs on one's heart and starts to get to be too much.  There have been times recently when I randomly thought I was going to cry.

Moving on. 

It's so fun when my pictures load in random order instead of date order like I selected them!

The Spouse & I at my VFW post's 80th anniversary celebration.

Damn TSC.

Tractor Supply had entirely too many cool critter skeletons for Halloween this year.  At first, I was against their life-sized horse since they had it listed for $600, which is insane!  I got my other one from Home Depot at couple years ago for $200.  But then it went on sale. And more sale.  With 10% for picking it up in store and their veteran discount, I got it for $225. 

However, if I would have waited a bit longer, they put everything for 90% off - I could have gotten it for $60!!! 

  😢 

But I don't know if I would have actually gotten it before Halloween, tho. 

Real squirrel hanging out with the squirrel skeletons, nomming on the pumpkins. 

These pumpkins didn't even make it until Halloween.

The granddaughter turned 4 in mid-October. 

Trunk or Treat at daycare. 

Grandson was Link from Legend of Zelda and Granddaughter was Chase from Paw Patrol. 

Top Lights Trunk or Treat with a whole lotta first responders. 

We didn't plan decorations for the car very well, so the caution tape, orange nylon webbing and magnetic emergency lights came in handy!   It was appropriate, tho. 

I've had this on my Kindle forever and I just can't get past the style of writing.  

I've read the first couple pages a bunch of times and just had to stop.  

So ~ HERE ~ is the rest of my Halloween display.

This pic above was taken Sunday afternoon.  It was 35* when we got up Sunday so we waited until noon before taking stuff down.

Which - btw, there are still skeletons in my backyard!

We haven't gotten them put away yet. 

I mentioned TSC having too many cool skeletons?

Storage is definitely now a problem.

At least the horses break down into pieces but I have some that don't.   

And now going in the other direction....

I couldn't pass up the Tim Horton's Christmas ornament when I saw them in the drivethru! 

You have to grab them when you can, or you won't get them! 

I think the jack o lanterns are going in the yard waste this week.  

They've gotten scattered all over the front yard.

So, what do I have to look forward to?  Hmm, we're meeting up with the family this weekend to go see an "interactive light show" at some park - you walk the trail and look at lights.  Sounds fun to me!  I'm sure dinner will happen afterwards, and we'll plan the Thanksgiving potluck.  I'll have to check with the sisters, but I think there's a trip to Ohio to see our brother sometime soon, too.   

Signing off for now!

SkyWatch Friday 11/14/25

Whew, it's been crazy around here!  

But that's for another post. 

I took these at the nearby park on a beautiful clear, sunny day. 

I love these trees!

SkyWatch Friday

SkyWatch Friday 10/9/25

 Last weekend was a very warm, but beautiful weekend in lower Michigan! 

I was camping, but not in the normal way!

Halloween Camp 2025

Just to be warned, some parts might be a bit gross / graphic but for the most part it's not.

Trees are starting to change color a little bit.

Check out more fantastic scenery here....

SkyWatch Friday