Great Lakes Crossing: Rainforest Cafe, Legoland, and Sea Life Aquarium, Post 1

While downstate we took my grandson to Auburn Hills for the day.  We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and visited Legoland and the aquarium.  I must say that Keened was somewhat overwhelmed, but we all had fun.

First, a sunset the day before I left.

A view of two of my lamps taken by looking through my front window.

My grandson with his speed McQueen car...

Great Lakes Crossing mall (the largest mall in Michigan).

First we had lunch...

Continued tomorrow...

Christmas Photos

I hope that everyone had a safe and merry Christmas.  I went down state to spend Christmas with my son, Jonathan, and his family.  We had a blast.  Thanks to everyone for a great time.

On Christmas eve we went sledding.....

We were at a park in my son's neighborhood.  Of course we had to check out the play structure.

There is this cool library at the park.  It is a little building.  You donate books and then get to pick some new ones out.  Great idea.

Next door to the park is a train caboose.

Christmas eve we had dinner at one of Jess's aunt's.  Keenen learned about nut crackers...

The gang on Christmas eve....

Christmas morning....

Buzz Lightyear was my grandson's favorite toy....

Keenen and his cousin....

Gang # 2....

On Sunday we made a snowman....

Winter's Progress and Children's Book Progress

Work on the children's book is going along great!  It is a lot of work, but I am having a blast.  The biggest challenge was getting up the learning curve on the newest version of Photoshop.  I finally broke down and bought a subscription from Adobe.  My version of Photoshop was six years old.  What a difference.  I must have watched 30 hours of YouTube videos and tutorials before I finally was able to understand the software enough to proceed.  I must admit the software is like magic.

The book uses a poem and graphics to trace Earth's geologic development featuring nine rocks through time.  The poem was written first, which was a lot of fun to create.  Then I searched for graphics needed to tell the story.  I am using a combination of my own photographs and diagrams as well as images I purchased licenses through Shutterstock.  I am using Photoshop to develop my own graphics, page layouts, and covers.  In the back of the book there is a rock cycle diagram, a chart explaining mineral evolution and how and why the number of minerals on Earth has changed over time, and a glossary.  I am almost done with the preliminary page layouts for the poetry pages.  Then I'll work on the pages at the end of the book.  I have read the poem to a few people so far.  Feedback has exceeded my expectations!

Since we have been socked in with on and off again lake effect snow for the past two weeks, I wondered what the snow coverage in the U.S. has looked like over the past month.  The maps are from the webpage https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/snow-and-ice/snow-cover/.

November 15th...

November 30th....

December 17th...