Hope you don't mind Susan that I am including this on your post. Today, I took pictures of this Christmas topiary that this man maintains year around. This is a live, ivy topiary and as you can see, quite large. During December, he always adds the red, ribbon bows around the dog's neck. I love driving by that street and seeing it year-around! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Thank you so much, and we wish great times and good birding for all of you this coming year! Thanks Konrad-DuBois' Christmas tie was a gag gift from me that plays "Jingle Bells". By the way, our neighbor, Michael, who first saw the jaguar on our property, set up a trail cam and got a photo of it. Unfortunately, he knows little about computers, so he printed the photo and put the SD card back in the trail cam! I just found out that we're attending two family reunions in Dallas this weekend, so we decided to camp in a State Park. No big deal about winter camping since we camped last night in a snow storm, and it was a blast (literally)! The wind was driving ice particles into our eyeballs so we chickened and pulled the cover over the screen tent, but I stuck my head out the door continued watching the sky by pressing my face against an open zip window in the loose cover. We'd planned to celebrate our Dec. 29th anniversary with another camping trip to Fort Desoto in FL, but Dallas has some great birding places as well. I've been holding out on buying a Canon EOS 7D, hoping the prices will drop after the holidays, but it's been everything from $829 to $1700, so I'm still waiting. I have a "buy price" in mind so if it reaches that today, I'll try to get overnight shipping since we're leaving Wed. night right after work. From what I read online, the Canon EOS 7D has 300+ page manual and very steep learning curve so it might not do me any good in the short term anyway. They say the focus is soft and photos noisy but that as you learn the settings the photo quality slowly improves, so I doubt reading the manual on the way down will result in great photos. Still, after the poor performance of my Canon 40D last trip to the fish hatchery, I'm hoping against hope the 7D price will drop today.

Had to share one of the tables set for Christmas Dinner... Only true Plumerians would see the beauty in the background!! My family and guest don't say a word!! Lolololol! Merry Christmas!!

Great table and family, love the shirt and wonderful of the Geezer to admit you are the dream life. We had a quiet Christmas with just two of the kids. The other two will arrive Sat. for the family open house and then we'll actually celebrate on Sunday. Being one of 7 kids, I always thought you had to have a crowd to have a great time. Not so, yesterday was lovely with just the four of us. I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe day.