My favorite place in Ohio

A oak savanna in Madison County has captured my heart with its stark beauty and remote location. I find myself wanting to visit it at least once each season. There is always something special to see and you never really know what you might see. Today the sky was bright blue and it was very cold and windy.  We saw a red tail hawk and a whole lot of bittersweet which was just beautiful against the blue sky. I got a new hat for Christmas, a snowy owl from Knit Wits of Canada, and I wore it for the first time and found it to be very warm and a good choice for this outing.

The Other Side of the Family Christmas

Visited hubby's family on Lake Erie today. A very relaxing day and my sister in law made beef noodle soup, herb bread and shredded chicken sandwiches. The food was really good. Our nephew liked the long underwear and Amazon gift card we got him.  (He's the only kid and we don't exchange gifts among the adults). The day was over shadowed by the extreme sadness we all felt in not having hubby's mom with us this year. It is said the first's following the loss of a loved one are most difficult and it was definitely difficult and very sad not to have her physically with us and also missing all the things that she did for her family that made Christmas special.

 Our nephew with Nolan

Our nephew modeling his new coat. I had a coat exactly like this in the 70's so I got a kick out of it.

Rogue One

Annual Christmas get together with my best friend and her sons and hubby and his mom. We had lunch at Redlands and then went to see Rogue One which was really good. The boys dressed up as Jedi and Storm Trooper and were quite a hit in the theater. I ate way too many sour skittles during the movie but other than that a very enjoyable day.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve

We went to mom and dad's for Christmas eve.  We had pasties and some other goodies and visited with my aunt and uncle too. It was a nice day.

Eve before Christmas Eve

Our friends texted us this afternoon to see if we want to go up town to see Rich Burns, a local musician that they went to high school with, who was playing at Jimmy V's restaurant uptown.  We went and had a great time and it was nice to get out of the house and back among some people.

Ice Sculptures

As seen in uptown today.

Christmas cookies

Andrew and I made Cornish pasties (using a recipe from 1943 that was in a Wisconsin outdoor magazine) and Christmas cookies. He did a lot of the work but I helped as I could with one hand.  We made molasses cookies using his mom's recipe, noft kifle from my grandma's recipe, date bars and iced cutout dragonfly cookies from the cutter my friend Robin gave me.  We were baking fools. It was icy outside and we really couldn't go anywhere so we cooked and watched a bunch of Netflix Christmas movies while we were baking too so it was a fun day.

S N O W !!

We had a decent and beautiful snow fall on Dec 13.  Since accumulating snow is rare in Central Ohio these days and it was just prior to the holidays it was pretty exciting. Unfortunately since I am recovering from surgery I wasn't able to "play" outside but instead had to live vicariously through the pups who reveled in the fresh snowfall and Andrew who built a cute snowman. Yes I know there are a ton of Nolan and Lacy pics here but they are so cute and photogenic so please bear with me. (-:
My brother was over hanging out with me and the pups while I was recovering so he got in on the fun too.

CMC Surgery

I got my left CMC joint replaced at Otsego Memorial Hospital in Gaylord, Michigan on December 7.  Same procedure and place as before.  Since it's an 8 hour drive we left Monday morning as I had an 8 am pre-surgery appointment on Tuesday.  We met friends for dinner  Monday evening at the Snowbelt Brewing Company where we enjoyed pizza and some fabulous porter beer. My appointment on Tuesday was at 8 am which left us the day to kill before surgery on Wednesday. We went hiking at Warner Creek Trail off Michigan 32 in Gaylord. It had snowed the day prior and it was really pretty in the woods.  We drove into East Jordan and stopped at Deer Creek Junk for a quick look and then went on to Petosky for lunch at the Parkside Deli.  My surgery was Wednesday and we got started about 1:15 pm and I woke up in recovery around 3:15 pm. After I got released I was ravenously hungry (since I hadn't eaten for 20 hours) so Andrew took me to get my prescription for pain reliever and then we picked up Nolan and Lacy from Snips and Snails K9 Daycare (a fabulous place, by the way) and then I went back to the hotel to recover while Andrew went to the Snow Bowl for takeout wienerschnitzel (their specialty). On Thursday I had an morning dr appt. We stopped at the Elk Park in Gaylord and the elk were at the feeder since it was very cold and snowing, and we got to see them up close.  We got out of town in the nick of time as they got 15 inches of lake effect snow that day. All is well and Andrew even "bedazzled" my cast for the holidays.

 Outside the hotel

 Enjoying a porter beer for dinner

 Inside the Snowbelt; decorated for Christmas

 Garbage pizza (very good!)

 Our friends Dennis and Laurie

 Winter berry at Warner Creek

 Sweet Birch

 Jelly fungus

 Deer Creek junk

 Creative use of crates and minnow buckets to make a Christmas tree

 Alpine chocolate house

 Apples decorated like snowmen

 Me with my doc prior to surgery-he wore his Christmas hat.

 After surgery-still out of it.

My new thumb joint-cobalt 

 Schnitzel

The Elk Park in Gaylord

 Recovering in the hotel room

 No swelling this time

 Coming out of Gaylord on the way home.

 At home with my therapy dogs who didn't leave my side except for potty outings.

"bedazzled" for Christmas.