Happy New Year - looking forward to wandering the wonders of 2021!

After a wonderful Christmas with our children and grandchildren, we headed a couple hours north to pick up Mark's Mother. She was staying with Mark's brother, but she needed a ride back to her house. At 92, she's still living by herself and taking care of everything. But she enjoyed a three-day vacation as they treated her like a queen.

We were there for a day of smoked heaven. We had smoked ribs, smoked pulled pork, smoked bologna, and this platter of smoked pork shots and smoked jalapeno poppers. What a feast!

We were only there 24 hours, but we got to play with all the toys that their grandchildren were enjoying. They had go-carts that even the adults could fit into . . .

and smaller ones for the younger ones. Denisa found that this seven-year-old go-cart driver was a great chauffeur as long as she held on tight. Ashlyn was also Denisa's driver as we did drive-by laser tag.

When they got tired of go-carts, the kids could go horse-back riding. What a fun day we had with more of our great nieces and nephews!

We were also trying our skills on the ninja course, and playing piano duets. We had a very eclectic group of fun activities with our great nieces and nephews!

We were taking pictures at the end of the day, and someone snapped this one of the two of us. It's not a bad picture considering Mark had ran into a porch column and hurt his shoulder during a laser tag sprint. That's a forced smile because Denisa forgot about his new injury and grabbed his sore shoulder. Maybe we're getting too old to play with six children all day?!?

Then we were off to the panhandle of Oklahoma to take Mark's Mother home. We are enjoying our natural Covid immunities to spend some time with more of Mark's relatives who all just recovered from their own cases of Covid at the end of November. We spent eight days with Mark's Mother, but realized that the only pictures we took during this time were of the western Oklahoma sky.

The panhandle of Oklahoma is relatively flat and relatively tree-less. Both of those make for big open views of the sky. The only thing prettier than that lovely white rolled cloud above, is that same cloud tinted in pink as the sun started to set in the western sky.

One afternoon it was warm enough for a walk through the pasture. The sun was low in the sky when we took this picture of our long shadows.

We stayed all the way through New Year's Eve. It was a beautiful evening, with the sky ablaze from another beautiful Oklahoma sunset. As we looked back on the crazy of 2020, we're already looking forward to the wonders we may wander in 2021. Happy New Year!