Cold Morning / Warm Hoodie

Coldest morning walk so far this Fall!

(Hey-Hey, the chicken, actually is animated and runs at the phone screen to peck on it)

But Sam was kind enough to upload her artwork to Redbubble so I could take advantage of their Black Friday sale and invest in a couple more hoodies by my favorite artist. More impressive, I ordered them Friday night and they were here on Tuesday without any upgraded shipping!

Thanksgiving Holiday 2016

First up: the making of the Snickerdoodles

before

midway

after

Dad and Regal

no Snoopy this year. Just CB

 

Thanksgiving Waffles!

  

 our spread

Ali sent me these!

 

And the day after, in our only photo together while she was here . . . seeing Moana with my girl in the new all-recliner seating AMC theater. 

The New Front Door

ta-da!

Ordered this thing in August, got the delivery date pushed back over and over from the factory only to have it arrived damaged and have to go back yet again. 

Before: 

(I had to scrounge to find one)

After:

And the very first people to come through my new front door!

Sam and Jason are home for Thanksgiving week, thanks to Jason's mom who could not bear the thought of them being on their own. So, of course, their Thanksgiving is with the Wall family. 

It'll be the smallest Thanksgiving we've ever had at Mom and Dad's, since Nick and Ali are with her family in San Antonio. We'll probably have leftovers for weeks not knowing how to cut down recipes. 

And so it goes.

11/18/16 Snow Fun

Evan LOVES the snow, almost as much as I do. 

Living here, I'm always amazed at the number of people who don't like it and bemoan winter. Then I remember how many years I lived in Texas and bemoaned summer so, fair enough. 

This is my climate. And Evan's. We're happy today. 

So we went out this morning around 9:30 when the sky had turned that impossible blue that it does set against snow, me pulling on my boots and not worrying about anything else, because it's so sunny and lovely. Just stuck with the hoodie, pj pants I'd not yet shed, and those aforementioned boots. 

After about 20 minutes Evan grabbed his toy and headed for the door and I thought, "Yeah, it's still a little chilly without my hat."

Once we got back upstairs, I checked the temp out of curiosity. 

oh, well, that explains it. 

There is really no way to convey to anyone used to what 28° feels like in Houston how different it is here. If I came close, it might be one of those really rare very low humidity days when the breeze is lightly blowing and the sun is shining and your temp hovers around 70°. 

I snapped what I thought were a few pictures of Evan bringing me his toy and, after temperature checking, looked those up on my Google Photos. My phone syncs immediately with the photo account, so I don't have to transfer them, they're just automatically there to download and share. 

Today, however, I realized it had downloaded way more photos than I knew I was taking. First screen: hello pajama pants.

Anyway, here are the more sharable shots:

From earlier this morning, second floor, a survey of the backyard:

I'm gonna have to put that poor little tree out of its misery soon.

And at the time of our romp, with the blue, blue sky and partial moon:

Most of the backyard stays in shade until afternoon. 

It finally occurred to me to make our way over to the little corner in sunlight to throw a little more illumination on those adorable brown eyes.

or lack thereof . .  still adorable

11/18/16

zoomed in on the pink sky!

FINALLY!! First Snow

We broke the all time heat record yesterday at 80°. It's nearly 50 degrees cooler today, hurray!!

The cats are not big fans.

yes, that's a heating pad

but the African violet is loving it as much as me

11/14/16 Moonset

A Day in Breckenridge

Today is Deana's birthday, and it worked out that I was able to get the company condo for the weekend, so we had a lovely Saturday roaming around Breckenridge. 

This was supposed to be opening weekend for the ski slopes, but the lack of snow pushed it back. As you can see, there is only snow on the very tops and nothing on the slopes.

Views from the balcony. Every structure around us is a shade of blue. 

the little Methodist chapel across the street

this was Father Dyer's cabin, not far from the chapel

the masons were really into this building, even in the stained glass