Leslie, To get full enjoyment of the cedar waxwings, you need to watch them after they've eaten fruit that has fermented over the winter. Let's just say they get tipsy and have trouble walking, much less flying. It is pretty entertaining. Most of the birds we have that I cherish most only really started coming in large numbers in drought years. Once they figured out we were a reliable food and water source, they began visiting regularly. The worst the drought (or the colder the winter weather), the more birds we have. My favorite bird sightings since moving here include the two golden eagles I watched for weeks in the spring and summer of 2004---they finally flew right over our house together one day while our friend, Ken, was here working on the roof of the barn so he got to see them too. I had mostly seen them when I walked the dogs on a road that runs between us and the river, so having them fly right over our place was real convenient. Other favorites are the Chuckwalla's Widow, which you hear more than you see, and the Whip Poor Will---common in our childhood but rare now. The bird we see least on our property but all over the neighborhood, running the roads naturally, is the roadrunner. They can forage for all kinds of food so rarely come here to eat or drink. That means that on the rare occasion a roadrunner is here in the yard eating or drinking, you know that the drought is just about as bad as it possibly can get. We have a lot of wooded acreage and it is full of birds. We get woodpeckers, flickers, nuthatches, brown creepers, phoebes, bluebirds....just all sorts of interesting birds. I've had my fill of snakes for the year already, in or out of trees. Last week I had a close encounter with 3 different snakes, and one of our cats is acting sick and listless as if he was bitten by a venomous snake. For a few days I wasn't sure he was going to make it, but he seemed to show improvement today. The snakes seem terribly prolific this year and I'm not happy about that. Dawn

I love your house...especially the den and sunroom. What a wonderful quilting studio I could have in the den! May you and Wayne have many, many years of happiness in that beautiful home. I love seeing the flag there (I assume that was from your father's coffin), and I hope you will get a case for it so you can keep it displayed permanently in that beautiful room. Thanks for sharing--I love seeing your pictures.

I had a horrible day with my computer as well!! I checked my emails and saw that all of them were dated 2010. All the 2011 emails were gone...I checked the "deleted" folder and nothing there either. I looked in the other folders..nothing. I checked C drive, program files, Outlook..nothing. After a couple of hours of this, I called my server tech. He said he'd check my account and see if they were still on the server...NO. He said I (or someone else) had to have deleted the emails, therefore putting them into the deleted folder. Then deleted them from the deleted folder, thus deleting them from the server..permanently. I absolutely did not do that!! DH said, "Well, maybe you did it and forgot." I can't even tell you my reply. :( I do delete the unnecessary emails as I read them. I flag the ones I need to save. I publish a monthly newsletter for our little city and have people who write some of the columns for me via emails. I try very hard to get the paper out by the end of the month with the details of activities for the following month. So as I was preparing to start the paper for January, my writers had emailed their articles. See? Now I'm rambling, of course. The episode ended about 4 p.m. with 2 Excedrins, coffee and a nap. Pulled the cover over my head and decided I'd surface next year. But, oh no, someone mentioned that Christmas had not come yet. Deep breath...I am now wrapping zillions of gifts, preparing bedrooms for DD and grands who will come home with us after Christmas & making cookies. Yep, all at one time. No stress...

When my last dog died, my sister got me one of those signs with the ribbon that people hang--it says "Heaven is the place where all the dogs you ever loved greet you." I believe that. So sorry about Hannah. My goodness--she was a beauty. So sorry for your family. It really is devastating a loss.