See Ya 2020! Don't let the door hit you...on the way OUT!

 The last day to work for the year! Good thing I was done by noon working and then off to relax! I had planned to cross country ski again this afternoon, but yesterday's 5 miles wiped me out. So much that when I got home from skiing, I slept solid for a good hour! It was a good thing I went on line to purchase a ski pass. When I got out on the trail I was met by a trail side cop stop, checking passes. I didn't have my tag, but I had the paperwork showing I purchased my pass. I was happy to see the park stepped up the ski patrol to stop walkers from wrecking the trails by walking all over them. It's sooo annoying! I did come across lots of unleashed dog walkers crossing my trail to the hiking trails. It was the busiest I've ever seen it in all the years. This was the first good snow amount and it was a nice day to be fair. The park was busy! 

I sure was glad to make it back to the car! 1 hour and 14 minutes to ski 5miles! I am a bit sore today, but not too bad. My plan is to ski New Years Day. Maybe have someone join me skiing? 

My new cell phone actually allows me to take screen shots. Unlike my last phone where I could never figure it out. My favorite fudge as the kid was this maple, walnut fudge my dad would bring home from when ever he was gone on a trip. We'd always get the same box but it was delicious. Thought I'd make some in memory of my dad. 

This is the perfect over hang on a cabin building I want for our lake property. I like how it's big enough to extend over the entire deck. The cabin just needs be a lot larger! Not sure what year this will be built, but my guess is in about 6 years maybe 7? 

We will all be home this year ringing in the New Year together. We have champagne chilling and some IPA beers for tonight with our take out deep dish pizza. The kids are picking up sushi. No thanks! We will watch the NY ball drop at 11 and see if we stay up till midnight. Happy New Year 2021!!

Mid week hump!

 There is some cross country skiing to be done this afternoon! We got about 4"of fresh snow yesterday. I'm excited to go out and ski! It is always tough getting going, but once I start skiing daily, I can not get enough! 

Yesterday, I was waiting till the snow started falling. I wanted to ski but wanted to wait till there was enough fresh snow. Well, it took all night so I never did get out yesterday. 

Since I had the day off from work, I cleaned our house, just the main level, kitchen dishes, and floor. I also cleaned the upstairs bathrooms and did some laundry. 

I took many breaks in between doing something productive and nothing at all. I did all on my todo list. Which was making copies and mailing out. My biggest goal of the day was to make dinner and crackers. I made fresh pasta and chicken for dinner. That was a semi fail on the cream sauce. It still tasted good even if the cream separated. No photos to share as I forgot! 

Today, is work, ski and make dinner again. Not sure what's for dinner yet, but something with Chicken since we have more to cook up! 

My after Covid is over list!

In no particular order, my list of what I want to do when life is normal once again!

1. Go get my teeth cleaned at the dentist!

2. Chiropractor

3. Hair cut and colored

4. Travel ....on a plane

5.  Sit inside at a Brewery and Restaurant

6. Get together with Family for our Sunday night dinners

7. Spend time with my grandkids

8. Visit with friends

9. Go shopping for an extended time, just because

10. Go see a movie

Simple things we took for granted, now seem like a huge luxury! Let's get this show on the road 2021! Or do we just need to skip ahead to 2022? Any rate, at least with the vaccine, we will start to return to normal. How soon or not so soon? That is the question!!

A Day to Relax!

 

Just a few more Christmas photos to share.

Celina tried on her big Cozy. Logan was the first to get one of these from a friend and now they all wanted one. Big, warm and comfy! 

My Zoey socks arrived the day after Christmas! Finally! I had been waiting for my socks. Give from me, to me! 

Celina's cake and a cake from Claudette, Steve's mom. We needed both cakes as one was too sweet and dry and the other was too heavy with the dark chocolate and paired with ice cream made it perfect with the dry cake. 

I always like Christmas night, after dinner when we drink and play games! Now that the kids are older, they can join in the drinking. 

Our gift game exchange! We roll dice, doubles you pick a gift, and can steal one from someone else. I had enough gifts for everyone to get two and one person to get three. After all the gifts were gone, we did a 10 minute round of steel a gift. You could end up with as many as time allowed. The last 10 minutes were pretty exciting! It was fast paced as everyone wanted to steel gifts from each other. The kids want to get their own game gifts next year. I think in all without doing any store shopping I did pretty good on the fun gifts. Most were food items with some scratch off's. 

Our last one, the dollar game. Don put in $50 the first round with all our 1's. I won the first round and Celina won the 2nd with my added $25 along with Don's $50.

Dinner Steve cooked a prime rib, mashed potatoes and green beans. Delicious! I should have grabbed a more middle slice, but I usually like my meat more on the done side with a tiny bit of pink. 

Sunday, will be spent cleaning up the house. I was recovering from having a little too much wine on Christmas and not enough sleep! So Saturday was recovery day and today is get the house in order! 

Christmas Night 2020

 More Christmas photos, night! 

Merry Christmas Covid 2020!!

 This is the Christmas 2020 (Covid) that we will all remember! It has been different and somewhat the same. Christmas Eve we are usually all together at Steve's brother, Tim's house eating appetizers and having a few drinks. This year, the only thing that changed is we stayed home and it was just the five of us. We ate, drank and played some cribbage, ending the night early at 10pm after a drive around to look at more Holiday lights. 

Christmas morning, I made the ham and cheese quiche, Steve cooked bacon and sausage. I had made my raspberry almond cheesecake coffee cake the day before, so all was ready for breakfast. Logan slept till 2pm, so he missed out on our morning breakfast. We usually have everyone over for a late Christmas morning meal, but this was much easier with just us all having a simple breakfast while the food was hot. I think we will continue this new tradition next year, just getting together for dinner at our house.

We have yet to open stocking. I buy all the stocking gifts, and wrap them for the kids and Steve. I didn't get anything for Zoey this year or myself, so our stocking are empty. I watched the Saturday night live skit where the Mom does everything to make everyone's Christmas special with all the gift and she only gets a robe. I can relate! I think all Mom's can! I'll just make sure to treat myself to a gift after the holiday! 

We will do all our gifts tonight. Steve and I decide to not buy gifts this year for each other, pretty much like every year, but I always get Steve stuff anyway. Not this year!  We gave ourselves an early gift of a washing machine. I'd like to do an 85" TV after the holiday purchase as a family gift. Most the gifts under the tree are for our game night gift exchange. Of course I know all the gifts since it was my idea, purchased and wrapped. I'm most looking forward to the games! Even though I know what they are! 

We realize in Covid times, the most important thing is not things, but people! We of course we all want our vaccine. Health is #1 and being all together next year celebrating Christmas with normal gifts under the tree and normal dinners and get togethers will hopefully be the best ever! Right now we are dreaming of a 2121 Christmas! 

Blizzard?

 Minnesota is under a winter storm starting at noon we could get freezing rain followed by up to a foot of snow and 50mph winds which would create blizzard conditions! 

 

A look out the office window this morning at 8:44a.m without snow, 44*F degrees. Not looking forward to the weather change! It's a good thing I have zero places to go! I'd better put away our chairs or they might blow away!

I love this idea of taking pallets and making a Minnesota sign. It might even be a good cribbage board using old pallets (which we have a few due to Steve's projects!). I'll have to save this to try and make this summer. 

The new basic washer is now in our house and I already used it to wash 3 loads of towels! Works great, but I do miss our other washer with the handy buttons. This basic washer just has the good old fashion dials. Well, they all work the same and last as we were told my multiple sales people 5 to 7 years max. No reason to spend $800+, so we settled for a $500 model that included a $20 fee to get rid of the old one. We also splurged on a $30 dollar water pan for under the washer. We've had too many water leaks over the years. I'm done with mopping up water! 

This is pretty gross. I woke up last night to Zoey eating something in our room. We have nothing for her to eat. So I turned on the lights to find out, she threw up all her food and was trying to eat it. So disgusting! She didn't want me to prevent her from eating it, I had to block her with the door because she was growling at me and was very serious about that food. Good thing she didn't pick the bed or the rug to throw up on, just the hardwood floor. Not sure what caused her to throw up everything, but she is back to just dry dog food today. I purchased new turkey and cooked up veggies last night, so not sure if that is the cause? I'll just put a pause on giving her turkey and veggies for awhile.

Looking out our office window. I put inside lights in every front room. 

Outside looking in at our front (old dining room/now my sitting room) window. Funny how my curtains look greenish yellow when they are white from the back side. 

Morning Surprise!

 Steve and I know what we are getting for Christmas! A new top loading washing machine! 

We woke up to water on the floor of the laundry room.  Not only was the floor in that room wet, but down below in the lower level was also dripping wet. It was an early morning of water clean up! 

I used every towel in our linen closet that I could find. Our washer was acting up the last 6 times we washed clothes. It didn't run through the entire cycle. So everything was always soaking wet, back it went for the spin cycle, sometimes two times. That should have been our clue to just get a new washer! Nope, we had to wait till this happened. Don't ask why we never invested in a $30 dollar water drip try for under the washer! Lesson learned again. Yep, we've done this before. Seems it's a 10 year or less cycle. I'm done with the front loading. It's a pain to bend down and stick in the clothes. Plus, this is where it leaks.  So Merry Christmas to us! Well, my next story might seem like our water/broken washing machine is nothing!

It was a nice 39*F winter day. Still no snow on the ground. We took a walk in our favorite area. On either side is private property, old military area. We saw a car parked in the trespassing area. No people. We thought maybe they were out walking too? We park in an area along a corn field. A cop drove up to us and asked if that was our car. We kept walking then turned around and walked back towards the car. We spotted the people coming out of an area clearly marked trespassing was illegal. We saw the cop driving towards us so we pointed toward the couple. We could hear the cop asking if they saw the signs. I couldn't hear what they said, but we were able to walk back to our car and we still didn't see the cop car drive away. Steve thought the fine was around $30. I Googled it 1000 - 3000 and up to 90 days in Jail. Wow, just Wow! Things have changed since he got a trespassing citation as a teen for walking through the cemetery at night after they closed. 

We still had a good walk and made sure to let our kids know the fine, should they ever think it's okay to trespass. 

Explore Sunday, Bringing that back!

 We used to do Explore Sundays when the kids were younger. Steve and I need to bring that back to give us something todo on a Sunday afternoon. We would drive to different parts of MN and just get out, do whatever. Time to start doing some more of that! Going to different parks, close to home places that we rarely visit. 

Celina made her best loaves of bread yet! She added salt and rosemary on top with a design of a tree cut on top. We all managed to eat almost the entire loaf for dinner with butter. So much for cooking any real food! 

We were all in the mood to have a few drinks and play some cribbage! 

Zoey was even hanging out close by. 

4 Things I'm up to today!

 These are the 4 things I'm up to this Saturday! 

1. Happy Birthday Evan! My grandson is 7 years old. How can he already be 7? 

This afternoon we will do a drive by birthday present drop off at the new house! 

2. More Holiday baking to give out to the neighbors. Celina is going to help so it should be all done today and we can drop off later. I just need a few more holiday type trays for the treats! A trip I don't want to make to the dollar store! 

3. Finish decorating my room for Christmas. I got a good start on adding a few holiday touches. I've never decorated my bedroom, only the kids for Christmas. I'm kind of liking the holiday feel. We spend a lot of time in our room at night watching TV so the kids can have the TV on our main level. So this is a perfect way to enjoy the holiday decorations. I'm usually a less is best kind of person when it comes to putting up holiday stuff since I'm the one putting it up and taking it down. This year I feel like with not shopping and being less stressed about all I need to do, I actually had the time and enjoyed the decorating. 

4. Obama posed a movie and TV show list of his favorites. I'm going to check some out this weekend. I also need to check out his book list of something good to read for the winter months!