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Since the pandemic, we've done our best to make sure we don't waste any food. Some food is tough not to waste, like that 5 pound bag of potatoes don't always get used up. However, today I spied the box of pretzels. I was dared to make them. It was fun.

Here we are mixing up the ingredients. We almost never use the dough hook, but we did today.

After letting the dough sit, we rolled it out...

...put the glaze on...

...and a dash of salt.

They came out very nicely.

They passed the taste test.

After that, we spent some time at the yellow playground putting out fires and playing around on the slide. When the temps are about 30 and it is 1:30PM, you don't need to worry about anyone else being there.

In the evening, we worked on making a paper chain.

For a special treat, we watched the Disney Holiday Singalong at 7PM.

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Yesterday when we went to the tree farm, we stashed some small evergreen branches in my pocket. They made good for our Advent Wreath craft. 

At 9AM we had church with Father Mario. We like the side view of the alter.

At noon, we went to Epic for lunch and a walk. The waterfall was still going, so it was an easy choice for our picnic.

There are so many fun adventures here. This long bridge is always a fun way to look down at the ravine.

Time for a little beach volleyball.

It has been a long time since we went to the actual front office of Epic, but we were pleasantly surprised with the red globe lights.

This Humpty Dumpty photos is one of my favorites. After this photo, we started back to the car, but then he turned around. he wanted to sit next to Humpty again, but not too close. It was kind of like meeting one of the people you have heard about for a long time.

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Today was a good day to get some of our Christmas lights up. We decided to start easy by putting the glowing balls on the pear tree. 

 We also prepped the front porch so we could put up our wreath.

Will tackle stringing the lights on the spruce tree at a later date. I think it is about 21 feet tall, and I still don't have a cherry picker.

Around 10:30, we decided to go to Summer's Christmas Tree Farm. Unlike most of the people there, we had no intention of buying anything. Here they are stringing up a tree.

I actually don't think the prices are too bad, but we will use our artificial tree again this year.

It made us think of what trees cost in Hawaii. The trees at this place in Hawaii are from Oregon and are shipped to the islands. They are a bit expensive.

Back to Wisconsin, here are a bunch of photos from today. It was really a nice walk. We played hide and seek quite a bit. We had a small blue-green car we brought with us. We took turns hiding it from each other. Just a nice walk on someone else's property.

Here is a man completely engulfed be the tree he cut down.

Try to find the blue-green toy car in this photo.

At night we took a quick walk at Goth Park. 

More fun tomorrow.

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Not exactly a breakfast picnic, but we did start our day at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center. We decided to do the scenic hike to the back of the center.

 On the deck, he likes to play "house." Here he is chatting with the neighbor.

We took a loop out back by the tamarack trees. There is a bench there that made for a good photo location.

On the way back, we drove by the mall, Best Buy and Kohls. I would say there about half as many cars as normally there for a Black Friday.

On our afternoon drive, Enchanted Valley had some customers for their Christmas trees.

In the evening, we had Thanksgiving food again. He got a chance to have pumpkin pie for the first time....not a fan!

At night we went for a brief walk around our neighborhood. See how the lights reflect off the pond.

Thanksgiving

I'm reading the book called "The 99% Hidden City." The main point is there are a lot of things you aren't seeing because you aren't looking close enough. This a Knox Box.

 I've probably seen it a bunch of times, but never asked myself what it was. Basically it a system where if there was a fire, the Fire Department has access to the box to get a key to get into your building should they ever need to.

So where was the Knox Box?....it was at Greenway Station where we took a walk this morning. We were mostly by ourselves, which is why we went.

Before our big meal, we read some new Thanksgiving stories...

...and did our little Tree of Thanks.

Since we got our meal at Hy-vee two days ago, it was just a bunch of microwaving, which was the recommended way of making the food.

Our meal all microwaved and ready to eat.

Then Zoomsgiving commenced.

We then went on a ride through the countryside. There will be some trees chopped down tomorrow.

The Little People also had Thanksgiving.

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Today was just a tough day with light rain for most of the day. We didn't really get out, which is something that helps overall.

In the morning we got to see how our snowman is doing. He calls him "Snowbie." I don't think he'll make it through another day.

 At noon we went to Target to get some Thanksgiving stuff. Hy-vee is good, but then they gave us sugar-free Jello. It just mean we needed to order from Target to get the actual sugary Jello. They at least do dry groceries, and you don't need to spend $30 for free pick up.

After Target, we were out looking at Shoveler's Sink while waiting for Walgreens pharmacy to get off their lunch break. Gloom weather...

Here is the chef making the Jello for Thanksgiving.

We were going to draw a cheetah, but he ended up drawing a volcano instead.