Hodgepodging the last of 2015

 Beautiful visitors to our cranberry bush

Winter has finally come to Wisconsin. I can't say that I was sad, thinking we might have a snowless Christmas, but we did get snow just in time. And now we will enjoy it for the next four months, as we sit beside the fire and console ourselves with the beautiful photos in the seed catalogs, a reminder that spring really will come again...we hope.

Evening, December 28, 2015

And now it's time for the Hodgepodge!

Join Joyce and the Gang

for

Plug the answers into your own blog

and join in!

Here are the questions to the last Hodgepodge of 2015. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here to share answers with all the other revelers.

1. Share a favorite memory/moment from the week of Christmas.

Enjoying time with family and friends, and trying out the Christmas cake and Christmas pudding.

Christmas Eve (below), Grandpa (Mr. C.) reading the account of Jesus' birth from the Bible.

We enjoyed the company of Carla (from The River Flowing Blog) and her sweet family as well, for a Christmas tea to try out the Christmas Cake (lower, middle, above), but unfortunately my photo turned out blurry. :-(

Earlier, at our daughter's home:

Hungry, Hungry Hippo,

Son-in-law's Christmas pudding

We had a hard time getting that thing to flame! 

But it was delicious.

My dad made the icicles, bottom right

2. If someone wrote a book about your life based on the past year, what genre would it fall under? What would the title be?

Non Fiction: Stuck, But Hopeful

3. What made you feel patriotic this year?

That's a tough one, but I'd guess I'd say that every time I see the BNSF Railway commercial, it makes me marvel at how beautiful and vast this country is, and the amazing industry we once had. It also makes me sad that we have little industry that hasn't moved out of this country, that we have little access to quality goods or even the ability to purchase decent textiles at the store, and that our economy is not healthy, despite the mainstream media energetically pumping the bellows into a pile of dying embers.


4. What experience from this past year would you like to do all over again?

Spend vacation time with our daughter and son-in-law in England, meeting UK blogging friends, attending evensong service at York Minster, Durham Cathedral, and St. Paul's. I would never tire of this.

 York Minster in the distance
(York has Good Fences too)

York Minster Quire

5. What song lyric sums up or is a reflection of your 2015?
Song title, not lyrics: Walk, Don't Run
 
6. On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate 2015? (10=stellar) Why?

So far, I'd rate it a 6.  Ask me next July. Maybe it will look better in hind sight.

7. What part of the upcoming year are you most excited about?

Most excited and most apprehensive:  Hip revision surgery with a 90% hopeful outcome. (The original hip replacement was done in December of 2013.) That leaves 10%.  But I would think that the chair of  orthopedic surgery, Mayo, Rochester, is the best, which is why he's booked until June.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

 With Grandpa's Glasses

So 5 year old grandson was testing his 21 month old sister on her ability to pronounce words. 

'Lucy, say Paw Patrol.' 
'Papado'
'Lucy, say ornament.'
'ommamet'
'Hey, Mom, Lucy said 'ornament!' I'm so excited!  It's like she's an actual baby now, and not just a blob.' 

 The blob-turned-baby

with her grandpa

 Have a Happy New Year, Everyone!

***

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Linked to: Good Fences, Saturday's Critters, InSPIREd  Sunday, Mosaic Monday