My Favorite Holiday - Christmas!

This is the season the ancients chose to celebrate the birth of Christ.  Glory to God in the Highest, peace and good tidings on earth. 

I went to visit my sister for a few days and in addition to my sewing, her baking, feeding animals, garage-saling, and shopping, we managed to go look at the lights in the Ft. Smith, Arkansas parks...and best of all, a living Nativity at one of the churches. Actors and actresses dress up in costumes to play the parts. Sheep, cows, donkeys, goats and camels also make their debut in the live scenes. I forget the name of the church that put it on, but it was so beautiful and moving. We all loved it.

The final scene in the living Nativity - the wisemen bringing gifts to the Saviour.

The park's lighted Nativity display.

Ahhh...the belle of the Mississippi and other rivers - a lighted paddlewheel riverboat.  That's my sister and I standing in front of it.

We had a great time together and plan to do it again. 

A visitor and some sky...and Christian...

We had a visitor here last week.  And the fall/winter weather is finally starting - rain, clouds and the lovely gloomy days that make one want to curl up with a cup of tea and a good book.  Fortunately, I can do both. 

Our visitor - I've not been able to identify the genus, but notice he/she has had a full meal.

Love this photo - I took it at a garage sale we went to.  The photo is the only good thing I got there - LOL.

Christian is a never-ending source of amusement around here.  I've never had a cat that consistently cusses (yes, he does, if you heard it, you'd know).  And he sleeps in odd places, in odd positions all the time.  As you can see. 

Brisk, cold mornings...

Sometimes, I see a vision that reminds me of photos I've seen of England or Ireland, maybe even Scotland.  This is one...

Fog in the valley.  Within 15 minutes of taking the photo, it had burned off in the morning sun, despite the cold.

I've watched all the leaves fall off this tree, day by day.

A jet leaves a contrail.

Flint, walking along, as happy as can be.  Each day he wants to walk more. I let him, as much as possible, keeping an eye out for when he gets tired.

Lots of photos - been busy...

This morning's walk was a crisp 31 degrees.  We didn't go to the bridge, only walked about halfway due to time constraints.  Because its getting light later, our walks have moved to about 7 am.  Usually, we have places to be by 9 am. An hour walk gives us only 30 minutes to get ready when we get back.  Here is a conglomeration of photos from different days.

A honey-colored sky.

You can barely see the moon in the lower center right of the photo.

This photo was taken the same day as the moon shot above, about 30 minutes later at the bridge. The cloud spot in the center was a natural phenomenon - not a flaw in the camera.  It was quite unusual to see.

We couldn't tell from far away, but this is probably a falcon, not a red-tailed hawk. The photo doesn't show it well, but the beak was more curved.

This moth was on a bathroom washcloth one morning.

Richard is outside, and Echo and Buddy are keeping an eye on him.  When he chops trees, the dogs aren't allowed outside. Both were a bit miffed they weren't being let out.

The glow on Buddy's face is Richard's computer screen.  Note Buddy's paw laying over Christian.

I was sweeping the room and threw the dog beds together, one on top of the other.  About 30 minutes later, as I went to put them back in place, Christian crawled out of the lower bed.  I'd not even seen him there, and I guess he figured being snug was OK.

A rare picture of Emmy, with Dinah.  Emmy has become so feral she won't hardly let anyone touch her.  However, she has finally decided she likes Dinah and Christian, and will often eat with Dinah (but not Christian, because he steals her food).

An assortment of photos...

 

We are still going on morning walks, but the rest of the days are taken up with various things.  After weeks of traveling off and on, there are a lot of chores - mowing, grocery shopping, church, helping neighbors, and taking care of our own household/cars/property.  And walking the dogs. :)

Right in the road, between our house, and Mom and Pa's.

At the bridge, Echo contemplates the sunrise.

Flint is joyful he can now walk part of the way, and he happily explores the sides of the road, the bridge, and anything that moves.

On a walk with the neighbor we found this. An armadillo, snuffling in the gravel before making his way to the side of the road and into the brush.

Home again, Christian chose to sleep in a somewhat normal pose...except for his tongue protruding through his teeth.

Christian is perfectly content being unable to breathe, apparently.  It took him about 5 minutes to figure out he was being squashed by an 85 pound dog, and protest mildly.  We had to tell Buddy to move, Christian didn't seem too concerned.  We don't call him Dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks for nothing. Sigh.

Dinah decides laying on Christian is a good thing.

Echo tolerates the cats, who adore cuddling up to her, because she is very warm with all that fur.

Busy few weeks...in pictures...

We decided to take a little holiday and go visit Mammoth Cave.  We've been by it quite a few times and never stopped.  Well, this time, we stopped and took a peek.  We took the historical tour, which was 2 hours and 2 miles long.  Pretty cool. 

This is the entrance to the cave.

Some deer, hanging out by the side of the road.  They weren't the least bit disturbed by the car.   

Down there, somewhere in the cave.  It was very cool, about 45 degrees, so I stole Richard's jacket. 

This is what I did today - canned 18 pints of applesauce made from Jonathan apples from the local orchard.

A few days worth of photos...

We've been taking our morning walks every day, but the rest of the day has been hectic and I've not posted the photos.  Our walks have been a little earlier, too.  The sun is up, but hasn't made it past our horizon, so when we go down the road, it is barely peeping over the treetops.  Makes for great pictures! 

Barely there...

First blush of pink and soft blues...

The mornings are getting cooler - fog in the valley. 

This is a mother skunk, and there were little ones with her - I suspect the white spot is a sport - a genetic albino - people around us have reported several albino skunks in the area. 

This little snake was sluggish and probably dying in the too cool morning air.  He flicked his little forked tongue at us, but didn't move.  A day or so later, we found his dead little body, petrified by the heat. 

Dinah guards the porch...or else she's contemplating life through a rail post.

Gracie came to visit today, with her sister, brother and Mom.  She is about 3 weeks old now, and weighs around 7 pounds.  Look at that hair! 

Saturday...

Today's walk was in crisp, cool morning air, with low humidity.  Autumn is upon us.  It was a perfect morning.

The photo doesn't do the sunrise justice - the red tinged to pink and was beautiful. 

This young bald eagle was on this snag yesterday, I forgot to download the photo.  There are two nesting pairs of parent eagles, they've produced 2-3 chicks every year for the past 10 years.  This part of Missouri is known for its bald eagles' nests.

Buddy likes to check the water, in case he sees an opportunity to run away and get into it. He loves the creek.  We don't let him go down due to the copperheads we know reside there (see past photos of said copperhead).  Buddy's been bitten by a copperhead once, in our woods. 

Flint takes a break at the bridge. 

This was a photo from yesterday, too.  We went to KC and Echo was sad she couldn't go. 

 I opened the doors and windows today because it is lovely out.  Christian loves sitting in the window, watching birds and snoozing. 

The Afternoon Walk...

So, we decided to take an afternoon walk (and it was way too hot).  We walked out to discover THIS!  Actually, someone ran over an armadillo this morning right in front of our mailbox and the turkey buzzards were after that...EWWWW. 

Guarding his supper...

We continued on and went to visit a neighbor.  Our neighbor has a new little puppy...not by choice.  Someone DUMPED this little Shi Tzu puppy on the side of a main road and our friend rescued it...it is pointless to ask why - people still believe that domesticated dogs...oh yes, even puppies, can survive in the wild on their own.  FYI, they cannot.  Our road is a dumping ground and sometimes we don't find them in time.  We've buried a few, too. 

Hello, my name is Peaches, and I am loved. 

The Morning Walk...

We took our morning walk and came upon this...red sky at morning, sailors take warning...It was awesome. 

It reminded me of descriptions of "The Bloody Sun" by Marian Zimmer Bradley...It was gorgeous. 

By the time we got home, it was fully light and Dinah was perched on the railing, looking down at Christian, under the porch steps.  She looked so settled I snapped a picture of her. 

Hectic and our Monday walk...

I've been traveling - went off to a conference and only just returned last week, but playing catchup with home, family, animals, and chores.


However, our morning walks resumed and I have lots of pictures from the last few days.




 
This was Monday's walk. Richard, Buddy and Echo were ahead of me.

As we went further up the road, the clouds shifted and this was the view. 

I took a shot straight up the road.  You can see some of the 'God rays' to the right. 

Came home to the butterfly - a White Admiral - on the hoya carnosa. The plant is native to the tropics and was given to me by Richard's grandmother. This plant is over 40 years old. I've had it 20 years and when Grandma gave me the slip, she said she'd had it at least 20 years. After she passed, I took the whole plant because no one else wanted it.  So now I have two.