Pam's Week 52: You Got the Kind of Loving that Could Be So Smooth....

That wasn't my first song choice but since Sharon felt it necessary to quote Kool and the Gang for her big blog finale, I figured I should choose an alternate for my finale (though to be truthful, getting this done is a celebration!).  Now to consider my spotify playlist after this post but before bed....

So I guess this really is it.  This blog post will be the final summation of 2017, the end of the weekly photo blog, and the true farewell to a year that I had high hopes for but that was much rougher for a lot of people than I had anticipated.  Here's hoping that 2018 will be bigger and brighter and happier and healthier!

Our house has been de-Christmasfied, undecorated, and nearly returned to normal.  It hardly looks like any other day around here today.  Other than the fuzzy blankets on the couch to indicate that the cold weather is upon us, the living room looks like it did a few months ago.  A good cleaning now and it will be as good as new.

Unfortunately, the de-holidaying that has occurred signals the end of my final vacation of 2017 and means that I must return to work tomorrow morning.  Oh to win a super large lottery and only have to work when and where I wanted to.....These people who complain of boredom in their retirement - I don't get it.  I have loads of things to keep me occupied from now until retirement and beyond.  Good thing there are long lives in my family as my bucket keeps getting larger in order to fit my list in it!

Glowing

Once again, this photo was taken on that glorious morning on Whitefish Island.  The sun was glowing brightly and reflecting stunningly off the water in the rapids.

Ornament

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, most of the ornaments on our tree have special moments or memories attached to them, whether it be related to where the ornament came from or who gave it to us.  I had attempted to take a photo of the Japanese paper geisha ornament I bought when I visited Tokyo back in 2002.  My trip to Japan was my first solo trip and I was proud of myself for taking it.  The ornament reminds me of that adventure but the photo was blurry and did not do it justice.  Instead, I decided to include this ornament that was put into my mailbox by a still unnamed Secret Santa.  Both the people I assumed were responsible deny it vehemently so I still sit wracking my brain but appreciating the sentiment.  Clearly someone knows me well.  If that someone is reading this, I thank you.

Dessert

I actually intended to bake these for the kids' school vendor and bake sale back in December but the request for baking didn't go out until the day before it was required and I didn't have time to make them by that point.  Instead, I baked them for the birthday of one of their swim team coaches and I can't say for sure whether Anna got one but I know their teammates enjoyed them!

A Gift

As you may have noticed in previous posts, we had a few gifts under our tree this Christmas.  You probably didn't notice that I actually had nicely wrapped gifts with coordinating paper, bows, and ribbons once all the other gifts got placed under the tree too.

Starts with F

Frigid, frostbite, frost, frustration, foolish....so many choices and I have photos for all of them!

This first photo is Riya in a position Sharon knows all too well.  Apparently she doesn't like her pj's any more than she likes her harness so in a frustrating and foolish fight, she lays down until you drag her into submission or take off the offending item.

This was a photo I took from my parents' deck of the frosty trees on a frigid afternoon, just before the frostbite settled in.

I also rather liked the frosty look of the Queen Anne's lace at Whitefish Island on that same frigid, frosty morning of so many of the other photos...This was just prior to Riya jumping, knocking my camera out of my hand and into the deep snow.  Lucky for her I was able to retrieve it quickly and it still seems to be working.

Smooth

Don't judge - this is a rather uninteresting and uninspired photo of my bagel with smooth peanut butter on it...

Celebrate

As mentioned earlier, we celebrated the New Year at my parents' house with family and close friends, eating appetizers, playing games, and drinking beverages.  It was casual but lots of fun.  Who knew Clue, Rummoli, and Bugger Bridge (aka Screw Your Neighbour) could get so competitive?  My husband has been working double shifts all week, early mornings at the hospital and evenings bartending at the restaurant.  Needless to say, he has been tired.  As we had attempted (and failed) to do some family bonding over bowling in the afternoon, he didn't have a chance to nap.  At one point, I glanced up from the card game I was playing and saw this and as much as I know he will kill me, I thought the opportunity to take the "Celebrate" photo was too perfect to pass up.

And that's all folks!  I did it!  I finished the blog challenge this year!  I didn't abandon Sharon!  2017 was a year of ups and downs but overall, we survived and maybe even thrived.  Here's hoping 2018 is amazing!  Wishing all the best to you and your loved ones for 2018.  Happy New Year!

Pam's Week 51: When the Lights Go Down in the City

I guess the lights are more accurately coming on these days though, aren't they?  There are always some stunning light displays around town.  There are also those must-sees that aren't necessarily beautiful but awe-inspiring because of the time and effort they must take year after year.  Luckily, we don't live next to one of the more popular ones though as I couldn't imagine the traffic on a normally quiet street, the impossibility of getting into and out of your own driveway, the lack of parking if you wanted to have friends or family over, never mind the lights shining and blinking in your bedroom windows all night long.  I actually prefer the simple, tasteful displays, myself.

Anyways, we are getting so much closer to the end of these blog posts but now the photos are getting closer to being taken when they were actually supposed to be taken and we are approaching the holidays!  I mean with the photos, of course, as the holidays seem to be long past us now as I prepare to return, rather unhappily, to work in the morning.

Red

Last week we had red and green and this week just red.  Hmmm...  Santa it is!  His suit is red and my kids are both wearing red too.  I liked how Danica was playing with the fur-trim on Santa's suit when it was her turn to see him.

G

Those of you who know my brother know there is no other G in his life.  Since his team was playing yesterday, he was all decked out in the green and gold replete with multiple 'G's but he changed before I had a chance to photograph any of them.  Sharon kindly pointed out his phone case next to me on the table while we played Rummoli last night (it cost me a play that I missed while taking the picture, I might add).

Lights

I considered including pictures of some of the fabulous or at least interesting light displays I mentioned earlier, but decided this picture would be more original.  Last year, our friends told us about these glasses that their daughters had that would change the shape of the lights on the Christmas tree when you looked at them.  They had cool gingerbread men and snowmen but when we got to Sears to purchase some of our own, all that were left were snowflakes.  They were still pretty cool though, at least until Riya got a hold of them...

Festive

These are good friends of ours who showed up to the Filipino-Canadian Christmas party donning these rather festive outfits.

Tree

No doubt after reading 7 blog posts in a row, all of them including numerous photos of my house, tree, and kids, the last thing you actually want to look at is another photo of our Christmas tree.  It is your lucky day - you don't have to!  The kids and I attended the Festival of Trees and just happened to have taken photos of the entryway to the venue (the kids were standing much closer to each other than either one wanted to in this picture as they had been and were continuing to fight until the camera snapped).

Hands

Duncan got a Harry Potter Christmas at Hogwarts puzzle for Christmas so I set up a table in the playroom the other day so we could start to assemble it.  My children are not very patient when it comes to puzzles, I've realized.  I did manage to snap a photo of their hands trying to fit pieces together though.  I think this is Duncan's hand.

Wildcard

Guess where I took this photo?  If you guessed Whitefish Island, you would be correct.  If you also guessed it was during that frigid, frosty, morning walk with Sharon, you would also be correct.  Too bad there wasn't any money riding on your answers.

One more week....can you handle the excitement?!?!?!

Pam's Week 50: If We Took a Holiday, Took Some Time to Celebrate

We are getting so close to the end now.....Really, this post is just a smidge late at this point.  If it was a school assignment, it might be docked 10% but that would be all.  If I was only 3 weeks late (technically 2 as I didn't have to post last week's blog before last night or today) back when I started falling behind, everyone would just think I'd been busy or distracted.  At that point, no one would have thought perhaps I abandoned my dear friend.  So fast forward 6 weeks, and we are back to this point again!

Prepare

I feel like I perhaps used the photo I had considered for this topic for another topic.  Oh well.  Instead, I present a picture of our table, prepared for Christmas morning breakfast.

Candy Cane

As previously mentioned in another blog post, our Elf came back again this December.  He and Holly thought it would be fun for the kids to grow candy canes.

Sparkly

One morning this past week, I texted Sharon and asked if she was brave enough to catch frostbite with me at Whitefish Island. I truly thought I was going to lose some of the fingers on my right hand for a bit but I ended up quite pleased with how this picture turned out so maybe it was worth it.

0 (zero)

I may or may not have taken a picture of the letter "O" instead of a zero by mistake....who can really tell them apart though anyways?

Red and Green

I tried taking photos of our stockings as most of them are red and green but it just wasn't working how I envisioned (I'm sure that is shocking to most of you).  Then I saw the lovely poinsettia that one of my friends/colleagues gave me for Christmas and decided to play with my little phone macro lens again.  One of these days I will figure out how to use it...

Holiday Tradition

We have a couple of holiday traditions.  One of them is to go to church as a family on Christmas Eve and watch my children in the pageant.  The pageant this year was told from the animals' point of view so Danica was a sheep and Duncan was a camel.

Another tradition is for the kids to open up one gift before bed and that gift is always a pair of Christmas Eve pajamas.  I carefully wrapped them all and set them all together under the tree so that come Christmas Eve, I would know which ones they were to open.  Fast forward a couple of weeks, a few gift rearrangements and a puppy who decided to eat some of the gift tags, and we ended up opening 2 pairs of pj's and a trip to New York (not at all intended to be worn to bed and not for the disappointed boy who opened the gift to learn it wasn't for him).  Luckily we found Duncan's pj's the next morning during our unwrapping.  In this pic, he is still pj-less.

Wildcard

This was another one I liked from that beautifully sunny but painfully (literally) cold morning on Whitefish Island - the frosty trees against the clear blue sky were gorgeous.

We are heading into the home stretch now.....

Pam's Week 49: Like a Candle in the Wind

I can't believe how close I am now to the finish line!  Woohoo!  To all my runner friends, is this how it feels to finish a marathon?  The adrenaline is coursing through my veins.  I am ignoring all the pains, chills, and other signs of discomfort I am feeling.  I must complete this challenge.....

Okay, enough with the craziness.  On with the photos....

Hot Drink

I actually planned on dropping it like it was hot (do you like the extra music reference for those who are paying attention and up on the music the kids are listening to these days) and using the Frosty the Snowman cocktail photo from the other day.  Yesterday, though, my dear brother offered me a hot chocolate with Bailey's, added in some marshmallows, and his lovely fiancee delivered it to me in one of my mom's fancy new mugs.  And thus a hot drink was born....

Hat

I considered stealing a photo that my sister-in-law took of Danica on Christmas morning modeling the new hat and scarf my mom crocheted for her (it was pretty stinking cute) but instead thought I would use this photo of Riya with what used to be a chicken hat from Wacky Wings.

Candle

We just celebrated my brother's birthday this week and my dad's was in November so we did have some candle photos I could have used.  I actually googled "candle photography" for some inspiration but a lot of them resembled Sharon's photo and looked like they would require more time and effort than I had to put forth.  I saw my mom's fake candle centrepiece and thought it would be a prettier look than the not-so-great cake candle photos.

Abundance

Everyone who came to our house this holiday season commented on the abundance of gifts under our tree.  I am not going to deny that we tend to go overboard and are all a little spoiled at Christmas, but it also had to be considered that the gifts under the tree were from 7 different people and a dog and were for 9 different people and a dog (we had sent the gifts for my brother and Renee and their dog over to my parents' house ahead of time since they weren't going to be here on Christmas morning or there would have been even more gifts).  Once Santa visited, the tree was certainly overflowing, as were the stockings, with an abundance of gifts.

Cookies

We usually have an abundance of cookies and other baking as well as I enjoy baking and can never decide on just a couple of recipes so end up trying like 6 or 7 of them.  These were cookies I considered using for my "citrus" photo last week but I saved them for this week.  I had never made them before but they are likely to go into my regular rotation.  They were chocolate orange cookies and tasted just like one of those chocolate oranges.

Reading

I thought I was so clever with my idea for this photo.  I asked the kids to get out the Monopoly game so I could take a picture of the 'Reading Railroad', only to find out that the Cityville edition that we have doesn't have such a thing.  Plan B was then to take a picture of reading our Christmas book called "The Girl Who Saved Christmas" with the kids but it seems to have been misplaced when my husband did his before Christmas clean.  Lucky for me, and you I suppose, my mother was reading a book on her ereader yesterday afternoon.

Wildcard

I think Sharon has included a similar photo in one of her recent posts but since I am trying to convince myself that winter is pretty since it seems we are in for a long one and I nearly froze to death to take the photo, I should be able to include one in my blog too.

And then there were three....

Pam's Week 48: Making Love Out of Nothing at All

Okay, so maybe the lyric doesn't quite fit the photos but it was the song that came to mind as I reread this week's topics.  I seriously think that I will make a spotify playlist of all the songs that formed my 52 weeks of blog post titles, after I post the final blog post, of course.  I am on a mission now!

Citrus in Fizzy Water

We have no fizzy water.  I had no time to buy fizzy water nor to research what would have to occur for me to take such a photo.  Instead, I recalled Sharon telling me I could just take a photo of citrus so that's what I decided to do.  I originally had a different idea but that is being used in the next blog post for a different topic instead.  I decided to pull out my new phone camera lenses and play with the macro lens a bit more.  Do you recognize this citrus fruit?

9

Our Elf on the Shelf, Rudolph, and his reindeer friend, Holly, made an appearance again this December.  I was very grateful to him for creating this '9' on his first day!

Cozy

Both of my kids requested, and received, multiple sets of animal onesies for Christmas.  This prompted them to host a onesie fashion show on Christmas Day and I did snap some photos, thinking they looked rather cozy.  Then yesterday as I sat at my parents' house in front of the fireplace, I began to think that sitting in front of a fire is always a cozy place to be.

Eyes

I should give the kids credit for this photo.  I considered taking a picture of the eyes on a potato but never got around to it.  I attempted to take a picture of the dog's eyes as puppydog eyes are seriously the best but that didn't occur due to a lack of photographic cooperation on the dog's part.  Apparently the kids got a hold of my phone on our way home from a swim meet in Saginaw, though, and took pictures of each other's eyes.  I should mention that we had a couple of extra kids in the car and this particular eye belongs to their friend, Teyah, who really does have spectacular eyes.

I

You wouldn't think an "I" or something resembling said letter would be difficult to find but it seemed to have escaped me for the past 2 months.  Luckily this apparatus caught my eye this morning during our frigid walk and an "I" came to be.

Made with Love

Prepare for the cheesiest - I could have taken photos of all the Christmas baking I did or even of one of the crafts someone made for me or I have made for someone else, but I didn't.  Instead, I decided to take a photo of my kids as they were made with love.

Wildcard

Every year, Robert plans a Filipino-Canadian Christmas party, which is usually held at the end of November.  In spite of his reluctance to do so this year, he planned another great event.  It is a lot of work and I'm not sure everyone realizes just how stressful it is for him or appreciates the amount of time and effort he puts in behind the scenes but I think these faces are the reason he keeps doing it year after year.

Pam's Week 47: What a Wicked Game to Play, To Make Me Feel This Way...

I am truly on a roll now....After this post, I will only have 5 more weeks to post so that I can consider my 2017 year complete and we can move on to bigger and better things!

Last night, we celebrated New Year's Eve at my parents' house.  It was pretty low key with a few close friends and family and appetizers and games.  Prior to dinner however, we planned on going tubing across the river, wimped out because of the cold and decided to go bowling instead.  Lo and behold - the bowling alley was closed yesterday.  We went to my parents' house early and I ran around like a madwoman trying to find the last few necessary photos.

K

My dad was very confused.  He didn't understand how I found a 'K' in a quilted hanging on their wall, but I did...

A Collection

At the kids' first swim meet this season, Danica amassed quite a collection of "Heat Winner" ribbons.

Of course, the kids were also proud to show off their collections of medals and ribbons from the same meet.

A Game

Initially I was going to use a bad photo of us playing Telestrations on Christmas Day (if you haven't yet played it, we highly recommend it.  It's a fun game for all ages, a cross between the old telephone game and Pictionary).  Yesterday, though, Danica requested a family game of Clue before everyone arrived at my parents' house for our New Year's Eve games night extravaganza.  I thought the composition of this photo was preferable.

Drizzle

The most obvious would be rain and boy did we have a lot of it this fall.  Grey doesn't make for very interesting pictures though.  I decided perhaps a salted caramel drizzle inside of the glass of my salted caramel martini at my dad's birthday party would be more drool-worthy.

In My Hand

At our annual preschool friends Christmas party, Robert made 'Frosty the Snowman' cocktails as the signature drink.  Here is a photo of it "in my hand".

Starts with M

I made a mistake when I took this photo.  I took it back in November when I was trying to play catch up, thinking the topic was "M".  I later realized it was 'starts with M' but you are just going to have to accept my "M" as befitting the assignment; I thought it was a clever find.

Wildcard

This was the week we finished decorating our tree so I thought a photo of it, taken in the appropriate week, would be a good one to end the week with, particularly since we have taken it down today.