Hi Rachel, and Hubby! I haven't been here for so long, but sure remember how sweet you are! Merry Christmas, and a Wonderful New Year. I'll stop back more often .. And, although we are in a BLIZZARD right now, I 'feel' spring is just around the corner.

Still lovin' my House Finch!

Best to you and yours,
"Elke444" ;)

and to you to! God bless you both! You bring so much to this forum, Thanks!

Happy Christmas kids!

-O-

And may the New Year bring lots of great birds!

Claire

And a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family, Rachel.

Thanks,too, for your graciousness all year in sharing your beautiful photos and knowledge with us. It has been very helpful and encouraging to me.

May your new year be filled with lots more exciting bird sightings and photos of them - for us as much as for you!(LOL)

Donna

Merry Christmas to you and your family, Rachel! Happy New Year, too! :-)

Merry Christmas to you Rachel and your dh. Those are the cutest birds you've ever posted photos of~lovebirds!
Robin

Thank you!...the same for you and family and a wonderful new year, you both are looking good, love your hobby's tie.

Konrad

Thank you. What a great picture!

Hope you have a wonderful year together.

glenda

Hope you had a great Christmas and have a wonderful new birding year ahead! I've enjoyed your contributions to this forum very much. :)

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.