Annual Family Thanksgiving Cocktail Hour

Here we are at the Tavern on the Square in downtown Lansing. This is one of our favorite holiday traditions, always on the Friday night after Thanksgiving. Many orders of the Tavern's version of tapas, and everyone's favorite cocktails.

Family is pulled in many directions on Thanksgiving Day, but no one would miss this event. Our faces hurt from laughter the next day (and there are usually one or two hangovers).

Great season at the cottage

It was unseasonably cool this summer. Tom Turi says it's the oddest summer he's seen in 30 years of living/visiting there. But no complaints here. We had so much fun. Friends and family all summer long - including three visits from Grandpa - and the highlight was the few hours of sunshine we had on the morning of October 10 when Michael and Jen got married on the edge of the lake.

Next year, we'll have some interesting doings as we attempt to make a couple of fun improvements to the accommodations - starring a new bathroom in the spare room in the garage...er....Kenny's Klubhouse. Ken is still planning to go up a time or two more to get that started and wring out the last of the cottage season. For my part, I am looking forward to the holiday season and trying to bring some of what we love about the cottage into our lives in DeWitt.

The next vacation blog posts here will be from....let's see: Manhattan? Chicago? Aruba? Stay tuned.

This one is a favorite from my photo shoot today

Next year, people under 40 will remove the dock.

OK, this was fun to do once. But next year, the weekend before Halloween, we will have offspring here to do the heavy lifting. Once again, we had help from the Kreugers and Mark Miller, and Tom Turi came along with his 4-wheeler to help pull the boat lift out of the water.

Tom is spending the winter in Georgia, near two of his kids. Mark will be up all winter; Kreugers come up off and on, and Ken will be up a time or two more before he has the cottage winterized. But this is my last weekend - unless we have a miraculous Indian Summer weekend in November. Not holding my breath.

I spent some time around sunset standing in the water, rummaging through the landscape to see the beauty of the fall up close and personal. Got some photos I really like.

Fire in the fireplace now, and ratatouille on the stove. Ken left around 4 or 5; I'm staying over to make the most of my last weekend here. Just about to uncork a bottle of wine.

We make these waders look good.

Don't we?