Thursday, December 24, 2009

Twas the night before Christmas




Twas the night before Christmas and under the tree
CC and Santa sit side by side you can see!

The presents are tossed round the room far and near
In hopes that the Boys soon will be here.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter
We looked out the window to see what was the matter.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But three funny boys dressed in summer sports gear.


Away to the backyard we flew like a flash
Dined on 2 kinds of soup our holiday bash!

More rapid than eagles the boys ran to see
Who could hit the ball harder, well as it happened it hit camera man, me!


Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Let it Snow!

These pictures were taken last time we were in Flagstaff. I think there is at least 2 feet of snow there now! I've had the last 2 days off and it has been great, time for a little cooking, baking, partying, bird watching, relaxing, reading and shopping. Thank heavens very little shopping because parking is crazy out there. We saw the movie Julie, Julia last night and it is so, so funny! So, if you haven't seen it, go check it out as it is now in the video stores. It's about Julia Child and a woman Julia who decided to cook every recipe in her book 524 or so in 365 days and blogs about it. Two true stories put together. I think I would like to read the book.
Bare aspen tree against a blue Flagstaff sky. I love taking pictures looking straight up at trees. I think I'll put a bunch together on a blog one of these days.
Kids sledding with the greatest view of the Flagstaff area. I bet they didn't even look at the view, probably lost in the sledding experience. Isn't it wonderful being lost in the moment, enjoying yourself so, so much that you are not aware of anything else. Those are little miracles I think. I try to remember those moments sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I think that we remember more when more senses are involved. I wonder if any studies have been done on memory and senses?
Clouds tend to come and go very quickly in the high country. The whole sky can be clear and a half hour later the whole sky can be cloudy. There are often clouds hanging out over the peaks even on sunny days like you see in this picture.
This was a snowy day and the sky looks snow gray. This was taken when we walked around the golf course after snow. There was a few inches of fresh snow on the ground, still easy to walk around the golf cart path.
Merry Christmas to you all if I don't write again before Christmas!

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Tis The Season! Let there be light!

I decided that today I would put up the lights outside. I thought I had learned all the lessons from other years and would get them up in a snap! I even told Jules to watch the game, that I could handle it. I flew through putting up those lights as the hummingbirds buzzed and dive bombed around my head. I got to the last string and realized 2 things. First the last string had a section burned out and 2nd I didn't have enough lights to go to the end of the house.
So I thought, I'll just run down to Ace and get another 2 strings of lights. I did that came back and spent a half hour unwinding all the icicles from one string. I went outside and plugged in the new string and realized that the lights instead of being a warm yellow color were a harsh white light. I call Julian to see, he takes one look at the lights and says these are LED, green lights to save the planet. So I disconnected it and reconnected the broken to see if I could fix it. Jules says, you know you can get just as big a shock from that little broken bulb, I don't know why you do this with the lights plugged in. I say because I don't want to get them all up and realize that some of them are burned out (a lesson learned from other years). Or get them up and realize that I put them up backwards and couldn't plug them in (another lesson learned from other years)
So, I said, I'm taking these back and getting the old kind. So, I take them back to Ace but of course they don't have any old kind. So I return them and go somewhere else to get the old kind. I did find them, got them home tried to plug them in and realized that they had the new plug with one prong bigger, so I couldn't connect them to the end of the light strings. By this time, I'm about in tears, so Jules says, We can take them down move them and connect the new lights up to a different cord. I say that will take so much work. We finally decide to disconnect the first 3 strings and attach them to the end where we are short.
Then of course I didn't have enough because I thought one would be enough just for the end. Anyway we took the lights out of the carport, but will get those back up attached to another extension cord, which will probably be better anyway because last year I kept blowing fuses because I had so many strings connected together. The Christmas smile is back on my face and the lights are magical!