A cold & snowy Saturday.

It was a could and snowy morning in Northside…

Good morning from Northside…

We went over to the grocery this morning. It counts as our Saturday activity…

Both the panda and train were on the shelf today…

And the football balloons still dominated the balloons…

And then we got coffees from Mad Llama

JAVA WHIPS!

After that we were pretty lazy…

We still had some flurries this evening…

Good evening from Northside…

You can see the snowflakes on Mack’s head…

We had a Kroger flatbread pizza for lunch with Caesar salad. It was really good. Somehow, I didn’t take a photo of it. I don’t remember what we had for dinner.

But we had tiramisu for dessert…

Michigan got thumped by Minnesota. And we watched Outside the Wire on Netflix. It was pretty good. We had another good pandemic Saturday. 😀🌄🌨️❄️🏀📺❤️

The last Saturday before Christmas.

Good morning from Northside…

We ran over to the grocery store this morning…

Jell-O just upped the jello game with Jell-O Play…

These might have been around for a while but they’re new to me. Both panda and the train were on the shelf in the international aisle today…

Check out the old-skool Doritos packaging…

And Kroger didn’t have any special balloons today…

What the heck?! After we were done at the grocery, we headed to Biggby for coffee

Day 19 of my Lego City Advent Calendar…

We were pretty lazy when we got home…

I don’t know why I found this so funny…

It was just the open bag of sugar in a tupperware container but the sugar was still in the bag and I thought that was really funny. But I’m weird… so, yeah.

I got this little serving of full-cooked shrimps at the grocery and ate them for lunch. Geri found this super extra spicy cocktail sauce. It’s so good. Such horseradishy goodness…

The shrimp are just a delivery vehicle to get the spicy cocktail sauce into my mouth.

Good evening from Northside…

We made some White Russian drinks this evening…

And Oscar was just like, “Are we going to go upstairs any time soon?”

Sorry, buddy. We had another pretty good Saturday. 😀🌄🛍️☕️🐾🦐🥃❤️

Another pretty good, low-key Saturday.

Good morning from Northside…

We ran over to Lowe’s this morning…

We got some more Christmas lights but not the lights we wanted because most of the lights were already sold out. And we got paint for our third-floor bedroom.

On the way home, we stopped at Mad Llama for coffee and a Java Whip!

When we got home, I got to open day five of my Lego City Advent Calendar…

Genifer worked on painting our third-floor bedroom. She’s been on a real painting kick lately. She had it looking really good. But she’s really good at painting. I am not good.
At all.

We had a really late lunch. And we just had leftovers. We ate the rest of the delicious chicken marinated in Trader Joe’s Island Soyaki and Genifer made more stuffing. And it made so much stuffing…

I’m guessing we’re going to have stuffing with every meal for a while. And I’m really good with that. Because I love stuffing!

We watched Western Michigan lose their unbeaten football season to Eastern Michigan. Bummer.

And then, we took the dog’s out on a walk around the block…

Good evening from Northside…

We added these lights around the banister on our front porch….

Later, we watched Don’t Listen. It was one of those really weird movies that just left us with a lot of unaswered questions. It was weird. But other that Western loss and the silly movie, it was just another pretty good, low-key Saturday. 😀🌄☕️🐔🏈📺❤️

We did a lot today.

Oscar was getting his hair cut today, so we were up pretty early on a Saturday morning before his grooming appointment…

Good morning from Northside…

Oscar’s appointment was set for 8am but we were running a bit early so we stopped at Biggby for coffees

And then it was back over to Petsmart in Oakley…

Oscar had gotten so fuzzy…

We kind of wanted to get him a haircut before we headed out to the coast but we just ran out of time. Sorry Oscar, today’s the day…

While we were sitting in the car, enjoying our Biggby and waiting for Petsmart to open, the sun started to rise above the horizon…

After we dropped off Oscar, we ran over to Lowe’s…

After we got some more Christmas lights, a new wreath and some odds and ends stuff, we headed over to Home goods in Rookwood…

We got the boys a bunch of new dog beds and some other stuff. And then we went next door to walk through T.J.Maxx…

While we were in T.J.Maxx, we got the call from Petsmart that Oscar was ready to be picked up…

And Oscar looked so handsome!

Western Michigan-Northern Illinois and Michigan-Penn State were both on at the same time. We put Western on the TV and Michigan on the tablet. I thought the Western game was going to be the one more worth watching…

Western beat Northern Illinois and Michigan lost. Again. After the games, I went out placed some holiday lights in our front yard along our bricks…

And then we went to pick up some hoagies from NYPD

Deliciousness. NYPD’s hoagies are out of this world.

Later, we took the dogs on their evening walk and the moon was huge…

Good evening in Northside…

As it started to get dark, we kept going outside to check out our lights…

And we finished putting the lights on our tree…

Genifer did amazing job with the holiday decorations inside the house…

We had a really good Saturday. We got a lot of stuff done today.

Later, we watched some Netflix and chose Hometown Holiday, which was a very bad, poor man’s version of a Hallmark Christmas movie and Falling Inn Love, which was actually really cute.

Long weekends are the best. 😀🌄🐾🛍️💡🎄❤️

And it was a rainy Sunday too.

Bleh. Good morning from Northside…

When I was putting this blog post together, I had a hard time figuring out if these were photos from this morning or yesterday evening. It all just looked the same… very, very grey and awfully damp…

We ran over to Lowe’s this morning…

Lowe’s had all their Christmas stuff out in full force…

Christmas trees are silly expensive at Lowe’s…

It must be the frosted tips or maybe the lights…

We got our artificial Christmas tree for a fraction of that a couple of years ago. We found it on one of those deals and discounts websites after Christmas. And I guess we got a really good deal. I liked this wreath…

We’re thinking about replacing the carpeting in our bedroom with this embossed wood plank laminate flooring in Seaside Chestnut

We want to remake our third floor bedroom to have a coastal cottage feel. Genifer wants to paint our bedroom. Here’s the colors she’s thinking…

And I really liked this rug…

And then we went back to Biggby for coffee

I tried this new Biggby maple waffle breakfast sammich…

It was really good. I would definitely eat it again.

And after some football, it was good evening from Northside…

We watched my Minnesota United host their first home playoff match tonight against Colorado Rapids. Andhe Loons earned their first playoff victory with a 3-0 win over Colorado led by two goals from Kevin Molino…

Take that, Stan Kroenke.

Two years ago, we were in Dallas for Thanksgiving. And I ate the spiciest chicken sammich I have ever eaten. It was so delicious but soooo spicy…

Thanks for the memories, Timehop.

It was just a low-key weekend with all the rain. 😀🌄🌧️🎄☕️🏈⚽️🦕🐔🔥❤️

A rainy Saturday.

The weather forecast said was supposed to be a rainy weekend…

They weren’t kidding. Good morning from Northside…

We dodged the raindrops and ran over to the grocery store…

It’s hard to believe that next Thursday will be Thanksgiving. There were some great Thanksgiving balloons at the store this morning…

They had Christmas balloons too… because why not?

After the grocery, we stopped for Saturday morning coffee at Biggby

It was a rainy day and we all just sort of laid around today…

We ate leftover pizza and watched the MLS Cup Playoffs play-in matches. And another exciting match was sullied by nonsensical MLS officiating when the match went to penalty shoot-outs

And the result was a 22-minute shoot-out that involved the Orlando City’s keeper getting sent off for his second bookable offense…

Upon review, he was judged to have clearly come off his line to make a save…

And he was sent off as a result. After all that on the very next penalty, NYCFC’s keeper came off his line in the EXACT same manner to make the save to force sudden death…

And ridiculously enough, he was not booked. The kick was not retaken. Nothing. Fine as you were. And Bob’s your uncle. But that’s MLS for you. No consistency. It was one of the most unnecessarily bizarre penalty shoot-outs I’ve ever seen.

After all that mess, we took the dogs on a walk around the block…

It was still rainy. Good evening from Northside…

And later we watched Michigan take over 4 1/2 hours and three overtimes to finally get the W at Rutgers

It was a pretty good lazy Saturday despite all the rain. 😀🌄🌧️🎈☕️🍕⚽️🏈❤️

And our basement is still completely dry.

It’s nice to be home.

Our first day back home and of course, it was a cold and rainy morning…

Welcome back to Ohio and good morning from Northside…

We ran over to the grocery because we didn’t have any food in our house…

It’s the middle of November and there were Christmas display all over the store. I chose to ignore all that nonsense. I could ignore this giant lion…

Kroger had the panda bear and the train back on the shelf again today…

I forgot to look at the balloons. I bet there were some great Thanskgiving balloons. Hopefully, I’ll remember to look if we go to the grocery store next weekend.

After the grocery, we stopped at Mad Llama for Sunday morning coffee…

One of my favorite sayings is, Comparison is the thief of joy. On our way home, we had a discussion about which was better: the Espresso Shake from Sunset Ice Cream in Duck OR the Caramel Java Whip from Mad Llama. They are both really good. I think I like the Java Whip from Mad Llama better because it’s soft serve, coffee AND caramel, which is a good thing because we can get to Mad Llama a lot easier than we can get to Sunset Ice Cream. But why compare? Why not just enjoy both?

We have some leaves to rake in our backyard…

But it was so rainy this morning that we’re not going to be able to rake them today. The leaves were so wet. That’s fine because we just wanted to be lazy today. And the sky still looked pretty ominous…

I think Mack was really happy to be back home again…

Later, we took the dog’s around the block and the sky was so pretty…

And good evening from our backyard…

I took all the photos this evening with my little DJI Osmo Pocket. And they turned out really nice, even in low light. The contrast was much better than my mobile’s camera. I think I need to find a different Android camera app to try. However, the DJI Osmo Pocket struggled with these night clouds that we saw from our backyard…

It was really nice to be back home. We pretty much laid around all day and watched football. I worked on my photos and videos a bit. We did laundry and got ready to get back to work tomorrow. Later, we finally finished The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix. For a show about chess, it was really very good.

It’s fun to go place but it’s also nice to be back home. 😀🌄🦁☕️📺♟️❤️

Our Halloween.

Halloween should’ve been perfect this year. It fell on a Saturday, with a full moon and with daylight savings time everyone got an extra hour of sleep the next day. But unfortunately, 2020 had other ideas.

Halloween got off to a very frosty start…

Good morning from Northside…

And for the first time this fall, we had to scrape our windows this morning…

After the windows defrosted, we ran over to the grocery…

And then it was on to Mad Llama for Saturday morning Halloween coffee…

After Michigan State shocked Michigan, we rolled over to Taft’s Brewpourium for a delicious pizza dinner…

As we were walking across the parking lot, a train was rolling by…

Taft’s had a Halloween special this weekend…

We had a Maple vs Amburana double imperial stout before we ordered….

While we drank our beer, we watched our street view WyzeCam to see if there were many trick-or-treaters out and about…

And it looked like there were a few on our street…

There’s our cotton candy….

And there’s our pizzas…

After we devoured our delicious pizza, we took the dogs on a walk and couldn’t help but admire the Halloween full moon…

Good evening from Northside…

All things considered, we had a pretty good Halloween. 😀🌄🍕🎃❤️

A big sports Saturday.

Dang! It was another beautiful morning…

Good morning from Northside…

And we walked down the path by the school to look at the sunrise again

We drove over to Oakley to go to the grocery. But first, we stopped to fuel up Genifer’s Audi. The sun was just coming up over the buildings…

And then it was on to the grocery…

Kroger was completely sold out of both the panda bear and the train

So somebody does actually buy them. I wonder if they are any good? Someday, I’ll manage to sneak them into our cart.

Kroger did have a very nice assortment of great balloons today…

With it being so close to Halloween, I almost got this Monster POP!

And then we got our Saturday morning Mad Llama coffee…

Good evening from Northside…

Genifer made a slow-cooker pot roast for dinner tonight…

I made mine into an open-faced roast beef sammich…

And it was awesome! I’d been craving a sammich like this for a whlie now.

Mack kept bringing me his football. He must really be ready to kickoff another season of Michigan football as well…

Later this evening, all my teams kicked off at exactly the same time…

On the TV, I had with my Louisville City hosting Tampa Bay Rowdies the USL Eastern Conference finals. On the iPad, I had my Minnesota United versus our FC Cincinnati. And on the iPod, I had the opener of the Michigan football season as they played away to Minnesota.

LouCity lost 2-1. MNUFC stole one from FC|C 1-0 on a late scramble in the 90+2′, and Michigan whooped Minnesota 49-24. I guess two out of three isn’t bad. Louisville had a wonderful season that included a run of 13 games unbeaten, with eight straight wins that ended with tonight’s loss. 😀🌄❤️

UPDATE: USL made the determination that the season will conclude after Tampa Bay Rowdies and Phoenix Rising FC each progressed through the playoffs to win the Eastern Conference and Western Conference titles, respectively. USL announced that the 2020 USL Championship Final will not be played after multiple persons within the clubs tested positive for COVID-19. The final was scheduled for Sunday, November 1. Tampa Bay and Phoenix will explore the possibility of a 2021 Season Kickoff game between the two clubs prior to the start of the 2021 Championship season.

Wow. A season without a champion. 2020 just keeps getting better.

Pure Michigan.

We drove up north for a long weekend in Michigan to visit my parents…

Even though we’re still firmly in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic, we still managed to get out to do a surprising amount of stuff…

We sampled some terrific beers that my parents gathered on their travels like New Belgium’s Atomic Pumpkin. We went out to VerHage Fruit Farm and Cider Mill for donuts and fresh apple cider. We had lunch at Bell’s Eccentric Cafe and Presidential Brewing and COVID Carryout dinner from Four Rose’s in Plainwell. We also got Biggby Coffees and Sweetwater’s Donuts. And most importantly, we got to hang out with my parents because it’s been way too long since we’ve seen them. It was a great weekend. We hope the powers that be can curtail the pandemic soon and we can get up to Michigan more often next year. 😀🗺️⬆️❤️

Click to see all the photos we took on our long weekend in Michigan.

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