POST CHRISTMAS
I trust everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I know we did at our house. As I had hoped, Santa was very good to me this year and brought me a new camcorder/camera. It is a very nice one with all the latest technology. Now my job is learning how to use it! I have been "studying" daily, trying to learn at least one new thing each day. I have never seen a camera that has so many bells and whistles. But I am slowly learning so please bear with me and I promise my pictures will get better. One of the first pictures I took with my new camera was this one below.
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| The best little present that was under the tree! |
Summer Girl really enjoyed her first Christmas as being the resident mostly-indoor cat. Last year she was only allowed in the den, but now she has the run of the house (except the bedrooms because we don't want her hiding under the beds.) Her favorite spot was under the tree, so she could alternately nap and look at birds. Santa even brought her a present, although she is scared of it! It was a pair of plastic balls with bells inside, so when you roll them on the floor they make a noise. Oh well, she has decided to donate her balls to the Yakima Humane Society (
that sounded a bit odd, didn't it?).
PUZZLES
We spent a lot of our time before Christmas putting together a jigsaw puzzle. We have done this off and on throughout the years. We find it is a good activity to do especially during the winter months because there is always a lot of "hanging around the house" time due to snow and cold temperatures. When we lived back in North Carolina, Linda and I put together several puzzles, one of which was shaped like a butterfly. It was beautiful. We glued it together and hung it up in the mobile home we used to have at Holden Beach. How I wish we still had that puzzle (un-glued, of course) so we could put it together again. We still have several puzzles in the closet that we have put together once or twice already, like the one below. It is titled "The Tower of Babel" and is the one we finished two days before Christmas.
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| 1000 pieces |
Have no fear, Santa was aware of our plight of not having any new puzzles to put together and he brought Linda no less than
FIVE new jigsaw puzzles. She is really the one who put together the majority of the above puzzle. I usually wander in after it's about 75% together and put in some pieces. One of the best things about jigsaw puzzles is you can get up and leave them and come back later and pick up where you left off. And you don't have to boot anything up to do them, either. No wonder Linda likes them so much! This below is the puzzle we are working on now. I will post a picture of it when it is finished.
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| "Readers Paradise" also 1000 pieces |
SNOW!
As usual for Yakima, we had a White Christmas. We got a bit of snow on December 22rd and 23rd, and some more on Christmas Day, so we were glad for that. I must admit we have become spoiled for having a White Christmas as there have been only a few years when we haven't gotten snow. I took a walk down to Kissel Park in the snow one day and it was so beautiful. Of course, along with all that snow comes cold temperatures. This was the temperature on Christmas Day when I got up.
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| Yikes...brrr! |
At least the snow does offer photographic opportunities. However, I am still in the process of learning how to set my new camera to take good pictures of snow. My first snow picture is this one below. It was very dark that day and the picture was taken in deep shade, but I wanted to see how it would look. I think it came out pretty good considering the conditions.
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| Someone's been walking on our driveway! |
Judging from the size of those footprints, I am guessing they were made by a California Quail. We do have them here year-round. They like to get beneath the feeders and scratch around in the dirt (or snow) for bits of seed. We also have a multitude of sparrows that like to forage around underneath the feeder as well. I saw this little guy below hopping around on Christmas Day. I looked at him closer and noticed that he didn't have a tail! I got a picture of him although it was pretty dark. But I figured a dark picture is better than no picture at all.
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| Tail-less Sparrow |
CHALLENGE
For the month of December, Linda and I have been participating in a fitness challenge sponsored by our local newspaper, the Yakima Herald-Republic. Each day in the month participants have pledged to complete at least one 10-minute activity. You can do more than 10 minutes if you want, but that is minimum for the challenge. For most of our activities, Linda and I have been walking down to the park. A few days we haven't wanted to get outside in the cold and have opted to follow an exercise video on YouTube. Points are accessed to each participant for how many minutes you exercise and whether or not you post about your activity on social media. At the end of the challenge, each participant who completes it will get a "swag bag" full of goodies. It has been a lot of fun and I hope we have established a habit that we can continue after the challenge is over. This was our social media post picture for Christmas Day.
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| Bundled up! |
PARTING SHOT
Birds are not the only animals walking on the snow on our driveway. Can you guess which animal made these cute little tracks?
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| Tracks in the snow |
I just realized that next week's blog will be the first one for 2018! Here is what Summer Girl thinks about that...
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| "In your face, 2017!" |
See you next week!
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