Winter in New England

Some pics from out storm last Friday. It pretty much snowed all weekend.
Enjoy!

But we were warm and snug inside.

Christmas Dogs

Dogs are really like furry little children when it comes to Christmas.
The cattle dogs especially like to unwrap. Jackaroo is so fast I couldn't get a good picture. It doesn't matter how many gifts each gets, they all want the other guy's gift.
Kindle has not yet mastered unwrapping but this was her first Christmas I am sure but next year she will be ripping and tearing with the best of them.
Tugging wars often break out as they vie for ownership.
Alas this little snowman took the worst of the battle.
Then there is the need for regeneration.
We wish you a very Merry Christmas and hope yours was as much fun.

Merry Christmas!

The ice world

Whew Christmas Open House is over. Everyone had an awesome time.
I just have to get a few stocking stuffers for Scott and I will be set for Christmas morning. Well except for all the baking I will be doing since I could not do that last weekend with my electric stove (I hate that stove!)during our ice storm and power outage.

I told you I had more pictures of the ice storm of last week so I wanted to get those up here. By the by, there are still scads of people without power, especially in the little town of Lunenburg just a few miles down the road from us. The Governor has launched an investigation into the delay and I saw about 25 electric company trucks while on my way to church today. The worst part is that it is snowing here today. In fact it has been snowing since Friday. It started about 2:00PM Friday and I really think it has not stopped since. From flurries to blizzard like conditions it has just been snowing.

First here is what we saw when we got up Friday 12/12.
This is the top of a birch tree used to be totally just outside our fence. We're lucky it fell in the fence and not on it.

You can just see the top of the broken tree in this pic. Pretty tall huh?
and here is a close-up of that, the rest encased in ice.

Scott and I usually go and cut down our Christmas tree each year. We go to a tree farm in Lunenburg but they had to close down this year due to ice damage. We set out last Saturday and were astounded by the absolute devastation we saw in that little town. I keep saying it looked like a tornado went through and left a wave of ice behind. This was a typical look down a side road. The glare from ice everywhere made it difficult to take pictures.
This was also a far too common site for the whole week.

This video shows what it was like when the sun came out and melted everything that day.

I have more pics I will share later on. But for now I'd like to focus on Christmas. Uh oh, the lights just flickered. I hope we stay in the current century. I am not much of a pioneer woman.

Front Yard Backyard Meme & Ice!

It has been quite a week. Last Friday we woke up here in Central Massachusetts to a world of ice and no power. I was reminded of Narnia except we really only had a touch of snow but most of our world was encased in ice.
Here is the front yard:

and the back yard:
We were very lucky just some minor tree damage and only one tree fell into our fence instead of on it. but we were without power from Friday at 2:00 AM to Tuesday at 3:30 PM. That was way too long but again we are lucky. There are many who still don't have power and won't until Christmas or after, because of downed trees like this one. It is amazing to see what ice can do to our modern convenience filled lives. I came to the conclusion that I am way too spoiled but really I am ok with that.

I love this picture.

There is so much more to tell about this week and I took lots of pictures but thankfully we are able to have our annual Christmas Open House today so I need to get going to finish preparations. I will come back to give you more of a taste of what this week was like. Have a great day bloggy friends.

The new look

So bloggy friends how do you like my new look? I have winterized the blog.

Come on I know you are visiting and not leaving a comment. Comment!
Hal? Sheila? Irene? Nancy? Mom?!

I know you were here! Comment!

Do you love Christmas?

I absolutely love Christmas! I love all the decorations and lights. The shine, glitter and greenery and how it warms up the leafless landscape. I love carols and sing, listen and drown myself in them for the few short weeks we get to hear them. I love the preparation for our annual Open House cooking. cleaning, baking and planning. I love gathering to see friends, relax and catch up. I even love the tug of stress getting it all accomplished.

The dogs love it too!This is a preview of our Christmas card though not the picture we picked.

So do you love Christmas too?

Thank our Troops

Regardless of how you feel about the war in Iraq I think we can all agree the soldiers are making a huge sacrifice of their time.

I was trolling my favourite blogs this evening and came across LetsSayThanks.com at Chronicles of a Country girl. (Her photos are gorgeous!)
This is especially important to me because my niece Lauren is serving in Iraq right now. Go visit her blog Laurne and say hi. LetsSayThanks.com is a program Xerox created to send Thank You cards created by children to our troops. You just click on the card of your choice choose a message and your card will be sent to a soldier.
This is a great season to let them know we are thinking of them and thanking them for their service.
Go send a card!

What a cutie

Look at this little dog! Isn't she one of the cutest dogs you have ever seen?!
I am still not feeling well so enjoy this little cutie for today.

Black Monday

When Dlyn and I (by the way go check out her 1 year of daily blogging celebration give away!) went shopping on Black Friday I think I picked up the black plague somewhere in the mall. So today feels like Black Monday and I am on the couch napping, doing a bit of work and making lists. I will leave you with a few pics of the recent trip to Springfield and the largest AKC agility trial in the country.

Kindle our baby had a wonderful time staying in the motel. We usually take our travel trailer but it is put away for the winter. She did stay in a motel before when I picked her up in Pennsylvania at 9 weeks but she was not allowed free range at that time cause, well cause she was 9 weeks old. This stay she made good use of her time.

She hung out with the other cattle dogs and watched TV.

She was very intrigued with the bathtub, I kept finding her standing in there, just looking around. The other dogs were scandalized since they have to be dragged into the tub!

You can't see her in this picture because she is checking out what is under the bed. I really didn't want her under there and Tyler doesn't look to happy about it either. He is enjoying his new travel pad I got for him though from Comfy Critters of Cape Cod. I have 10 of their pads. They wash up just beautiful and as long as puppies don't chew them up they last for ages.

Ok, I hope you enjoyed that, I am going to nap. Go visit Dlyn.