Merry Christmas!

Beautiful family, thoughtful gifts, and delicious food resulted in a love-filled Christmas.  Merry Christmas!!! 

Projects Complete

These are two of the larger knitting/crocheting projects I have embarked on this year.  I started the granny square afghan in the summer and completed it just in time for Christmas.  I am very glad to be done these projects.  

Fresh Holly, Snow and a Warm Fire

We picked fresh greens from the yard to put together wreaths and swag.  It sure felt like Christmas as we set up the tree accompanied by eggnog, snow, and a warm fire. 

Almost Home

We were so happy to finally be back on the Pacific Ocean.  We quickly found a beach near San Francisco to read, relax, and play backgammon.  All tension and fighting stopped the moment our feet touched the sand.  After spending three months in a car together, a certain amount of tension builds.  :)  

Fields of Elk in the Redwood National Forest

We took the scenic route

Castles of Montezuma, AZ

Grand Canyon - Absolutely breathtaking.  Difficult to maintain any type of perspective. 

Death Valley in the Mojave desert.  This valley has some of the hottest recorded temperatures in North America.  It was stunningly beautiful and like nothing I have ever seen.  It felt like we were driving on a different planet.  The next four photos are of Death Valley. 

We spent three days in Las Vegas and this is the only photo we took.  Las Vegas was incredibly overwhelming.  We were thrilled the first night, but were soon turned off by the gambling and partying culture.  A fun and interesting experience that we do not feel like we need to repeat.   

Saguaros and Sunrises in Arizona

These Saguaro are amazing.  I have never been to the desert before and was amazed when I first saw this cactus.  They can grow up to 60 feet and can be over 150 years old.  So different from our Canadian forests.

This caught our attention!  One of the many unique shapes of the cacti.  ;) 

We just had to take turns sitting in the hole in the rock. 

One morning we woke at 6:15 and promptly left for a sunrise hike.  We didn't quite make it in time to a point where we could see the sun rise directly over the horizon, but we nevertheless enjoyed the growing light and fresh air.  

Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS)

Here are the lovely people we had the privilege of working with this past week.  It was such a pleasure to get to know everyone.  Pictures always turn out funny when five cameras are going at once - no one knows where to look!

This is one of the houses we worked on this week.  When we showed up on Monday, all that was complete were the pillars.  By the end of the week, the roof was up and windows and doors were being installed.  

World War II Memorial.  Each gold star represents ~1000 people who died in the war.  This is about 1/8th of the wall.  

It's still Autumn here and the trees are so gorgeous.  We have been chasing Autumn for the past two months.

Closest we could get to the White House.  I checked the Canadian Embassy website several times for tour opportunities, but they were not accepting applicants.  

We were super tourists today.  We took the MetroTrain to downtown Washington DC and walked around looking at Federal buildings, museums, and monuments for about 7 hours.  My legs hurt!  But we saw some pretty cool things.  The National Museum of Natural History was incredible.  We thought we would wander quickly through the exhibits, and ended up perusing for over 2.5 hours.  We even saw the Hope Diamond.  The National Mall is pretty incredible.  Definitely worth the one day trip!

Newfoundland and Labrador - Everyone must see this place!

We stayed at a B & B in PEI and they were beach combers.  They were always excited about finding blue sea glass.  

Most Easterly point in North America

Shout out to the Badger Family

A cold walk in Sydney, NS resulted in warming booze and interesting photos.