Went out shopping for groceries this morning and we missed all the crowds which was good. So last minute grocery shopping turned out to be fairly painless.

Here is a photo of our back garden at the moment – plenty of snow about.

And here is our resident Hairy Woodpecker

The next time I write Christmas will be over.

So, MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL.

The forecast for the coming week is wetter, colder and the possibility of mixed precipitation at the weekend, but we will wait and see. Often they cannot predict the next day, let alone a week ahead.

The deer are still coming into the garden, but we have to keep looking for them as now it is getting dark so early we don’t see them wander in. We have loads of dark eyed junkos (snowbirds) around as well as both the downy and hairy woodpeckers making frequent visits to the feeders. The squirrels are very funny collecting nuts and then hiding them under leaves or a tuft of grass and as soon as their backs are turned the blue jays just take the nuts. The jays are very clever and watch the nuthatches, woodpeckers and squirrels to see where they put the nuts snd then steal them.

TV at Christmas was really crap, so we rented several films from Blockbuster to keep us going. One we thought was really good was Eagle Eye. I also bought several games for my Nintendo Wii and have been playing those quite a bit, certainly more than I would normally play on the Wii. I tend to play on Sunday’s whilst hubby is watching football – trouble is the season is coming to an end soon, so my Wii hours may be reduced! I really like one game that I bought almost by accident – Zack & Wikki. One of the stores I found another game in had an offer of 2 for $40 so I got this game and it is really good. I also really love Rayman Raving Rabbits – it is hilarious.

So that is what I have been doing over the holiday period – playing games and watching films.

Some snowy pics.

Recently we moved one of our feeders to a tree outside the kitchen window and we have been leaving food on it at night in the hope the squirrel will find it – well he did.

Last night we had one of the flying squirrels in the feeder box and because he is much closer we finally managed to get some decent photos of him. Now is he cute or what?

Flying Squirrel

Flying Squirrel

I just adore him. You can just about make out the flaps of skin along his front legs which form the “wings” he uses to “fly” between trees.

Onto a completely different subject – we only paid 65.9 cents for gas yesterday. That is the cheapest we have ever paid since being in Canada. even when we first arrived 2.5 years ago it was 72c. See miracles do happen at Christmas time!

On that subject.

I want to wish everyone a really lovely Christmas – here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2009.

We did some grocery shopping and I also wanted to buy some hair curlers. I ended up in Walmart as they had them on sale and I purchased some. When I got home I opened the box and found that the electric cable was all over the place instead of being tied neatly as you would normally find. I then noticed there were no instructions etc in the box. When I looked at the product itself I found lots of long dark hairs wrapped round it – yuk! Talk about turn my stomach – I had been sold a second-hand product. On Monday, once the second storm has passed I will be taking this straight back with a very big complaint. I am furious about this and someone there is going to get an earful from me. Just imagine if this had been a present and I had not checked inside the box first – I doesn’t bare thinking about.

Whilst out I also purchased Animal Crossing: City Folk for my Wii (sealed and definitely new) so I will be playing on this over the weekend.

Anyway, I’ll calm down now and tell you about a new bird we had in our garden. The other day hubby noticed a large flock of birds swoop in but he did not have time to identify them before they flew off. Well, they came back and we managed to get some distant photos of them, but it was enough to identify them. They are cedar waxwings and there were lots of them. Strangely they were accompanied by quite a few robins. They were obviously all together. Here are some pics which are not very good due to the distance.

We also spotted a meadow vole the other night. We knew we had them in the area as they tunnel under the snow and leave trails which you can see when the snow start to thaw. The other night was the first time we had seen them but it was too dark to get a photo.

Speaking of photos, I bought hubby a new camera for Christmas and these are some pics he took yesterday of chickadees.

And this one looks like he has had a bad hair day!

We have been having a roller coater of weather here. One day warm (above freezing) and sunny, the next -10c and snowing. The night before last we had a good dump of snow and they are forecasting “snowmagedon” over the next couple of days. Apparently we are getting a huge storm starting tonight and into tomorrow, then Saturday will be okay and then another huge storm on Sunday. Over the two storms we are expecting up to 25 cm. Hopefully it will go round us and we will escape the worst of it. We made sure we have the generator filled, just in case.

One of our squirrels is truly crazy. I took this photo after he had managed to dance around in the snow. The prints here are from one squirrel in less than one hour. The larger prints are not the squirrel!

The last week or so has been busy as I have been going to meetings and other such things. I also had the stressful time of going to the hairdressers. I hate going to the hairdressers for some reason. I have been toying with the idea of a change of style as I have had the current style (I think it passes as a style) for a while and wanted a change. Trouble is I could not decide what to do, so she ended up tidying it up and basically leaving as it until I decide what to do. I might go curly for a change! Anyway, enough of that excitement!

Hubby and  I have been agonizing over Christmas shopping this year – okay I lied – we have not at all as we simply sent his daughters money via PayPal which they love as it means they can shop online. I love this type of shopping as I am not your average woman who can spend hours shopping. I like to know what I need and get it  – the end.

I went out the other night with some of my girly friends and we had a great evening stuffing ourselves with Italian food and chatting about nothing in particular. Great fun.

We did have one nice unexpected present – a new animal in our garden. It was a long tailed weasel in its winter colours of completely white with a black tail end. At first I didn’t see it because it blended in with the snow but then it started chasing one of the rabbits in the garden – boy can rabbits run! They were both so fast i couldn’t get a photo of it, but downloaded this from the internet.

We also had our Hairly Woodpecker visit us.

Now a puzzle for you – which of these two is the intelligent squirrel – baring in mind it is very cold out there and snowing.

BTW the bathroom is almost finished and the last bits are also being done to the laundry room so almost there.

They say we will have flurries on Christmas Day so it looks like a white Christmas both on the ground and falling are in order – I think it will be my first, I certainly cannot remember a white Christmas before.

We will not be doing anything special as we have no family over here so it will just be the two of us – how sad! There will of course be a few phone calls flying across the seas to the UK and Spain, but otherwise I expect it will be very quiet.

In the meantime I am becoming addicted to two games, both stemming from mymuchmor.com. The first is a game called bubbles which you get access to when you join and it is excellent. Lots of bubbles (balls) appear and you have to shoot at them with same colored balls to make them disappear. The further you get the harder it becomes and it is completely addictive. The second can be found at this link and is a bit like Sim City. Every time anyone goes to the site the city gets a bit bigger – great fun on a winters day!

Anyway, that’s all for now. If I don’t speak again before Christmas I wish everyone a good one. Don’t drink or eat too much and have fun.

Merry Christmas

The weather is getting steadily colder although yesterday it was 12C, but the rest of the week is forecast as around 5C with possible snow flurries at the end of the week – we will see.

We are getting more rain now, which is very welcome. Lots of homes around the area are suffering from dried up wells, so far we have been lucky and have not been affected, but you can never be too sure.

Recently we have managed to meet up with several people around our area who we met online on mymuchmor.com. It has been really interesting as some are born and bred Canadians and others immigrants like ourselves, although they have been here longer than us. Because we work from home we do not meet as many people as we would under normal circumstances, so it is really nice to get out and meet a few locals. We love to hear the stories and advice they can offer.

Yesterday because it was a little warmer, Chris did some gardening. He tided up all the flower beds and cut back all the shrubs etc. It looks a little bare now, but there is no use planting anything else as it will probably all be covered in snow in the next month or so!