It's That Time...

I hope everyone has a new year filled with love, hope, courage, kindness,  peace, happiness, good fortune and good health!

Christmas With the Cats

On Christmas morning the kitties get their stockings... 

Well, the contents of the stockings. 

They used to get the entire stocking, but it's expensive replacing stockings each year. 

Also, cat-sized Christmas stockings are hard to find, and replacing them each year didn't allow for a continuation of tradition.  They all reveled in the catnip stuffed, squeaking faux mice...

For five, brief minutes.

Then they went back to playing with their, apparently, favorite toys. 

The plastic rings from the milk bottles! 

They play with these things 24/7, 365.  Mom and Dad Santa thought they'd love their catnip squeaky mice.  Not forever, but we sure thought the new toys would hold their attention for longer than five minutes! 

I give up.

Christmas Collections...and Two (so far) Earthquakes

Teapots...

Toy animals dressed in their Christmas best. 

And Santa figurines (there are lots more that aren't in this photo)

And, of course, ornaments...

The pink bell is nearly as old as the blue glass ornament (hanging from the wreath in the photo of the animals on the mantle).  Grandma Edwards gave my mother a set of four to give to me three months before I was born.

My husband and I bought this one for our second Christmas together.  We had one from 1977 but that one met it's end at the paws of a cat around 1983. 

And this darling little squirrel is the newest.  She came to live with us this December.

Well.  There was just an earthquake here.  The news said it was a 4.3 centered in Devore, which is to the south west of here.  And an aftershock just now...I hate these things!  Boy, they feel like they're really close to the surface.  I think the tree would have fallen over if we hadn't already wired it to the ceiling to stop the cats from knocking it over, it was such a sharp, strong jolt.  California...I'm thinking seriously of severing our relationship!  (Update, aftershock was 3.8). 

Monday's Quote

There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want. ~~ Bill Waterson

Sunday Sunsets

Taken July 26, 2008, Lake Gregory.

Christmas Wishes and Hopes

It's very cold here today, and the wind sighing through the tall pines and cedars makes it even colder.  All the decorating is done.  Cookies baked, fudge made, presents wrapped.  It feels like it could start snowing any minute, and that is what the weather people are predicting for tonight.  I hope they're right, even if it makes getting to midnight mass a little tricky.  I wish everyone a peace-full, joy-filled Christmas. ♥ 

A Thief and His Accomplice

When I set the teapot, plate of cookies and cup down on the little tea table by the fire, it looked so pretty I thought I'd take a photo.  Well.  I couldn't find my camera anywhere in the house, so I trudged out to my studio.  There it was, right where I'd left it.  By the time I got back to the house and the fire and the tea, someone had stolen one of my cookies!

Penelope (on the left) is doing her best to look completely innocent, while Merlin is disposing of the last of the evidence.  Oh, well.  The tea was good, anyway...

Winter Solstice

And so the shortest day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow white world 
Came people singing, dancing
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees,
They hung their homes with evergreen,
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, fest, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule.  ~  Susan Cooper

More Christmas Cheer

More beautiful Christmas lights down in San Bernardino.

Strange Lights

I kept seeing these pesky lights when I was photographing a cute chickadee...

Little blobs of orange, or gold or red light...

How strange!  Were there chickadee assassinating squirrels lurking around with laser scopes on their tiny  rifles?  Were there radioactive bugs flitting around?  Were they minuscule alien space ships? Had I hit my head really hard on something and didn't realize it???

They didn't show up in this photo.  

I finally realized, after amusing myself with a couple of other ridiculous reasons for the lights, that they were reflections of Christmas tree lights on the window that I was shooting through, and they didn't show up in the photo of the Steller's Jay because I shot that one from a different angle.  But, now I can't get the image of gun toting squirrels stalking through the trees out of my head....

Wordless Wednesday

Acorn Woodpeckers

More SB Christmas Lights

Is that the Ghost of Christmas Past haunting the carolers? ;o 

The walls of this house are actually cream colored... 

The home owner must have used a different type of light on the right...it's the only area on the lower level of the house that didn't skew green!  I took several exposures of this, changing the settings on my camera for each one, but the false green color was in all of them. 

And...is that a buffalo wearing a Santa hat? I didn't really see it when I was taking the photo, and I still can't tell for sure after looking at the photo...

Christmas Lights in San Bernardino

Some Christmas lights around San Bernardino.  Enjoy!