Happy New Year!

Here's hoping you had a very pleasant Christmas!

Chocolate Santa anyone?

we did know the real reason for decorations didn't we...

Especially the shiny ones ...
Mind you the fancy ones are fun too



And wishing you a lovely New Year!

Snow clearing this morning...

When the snow pushed aside by the graders that are used as snowplows becomes huge heaps or berms at the side of the road it becomes time for the road crews to clear the snow.

This involves grading/ploughing the sides of the road, so a huge berm divides the roadway.


Then the snowmachine a huge beast gobbles up the snow




and spits it out into a convoy of huge trucks that follow it in an every moving relay. They drive alongside and are filled



and the next truck takes over whilst the full truck rushes off to the snow dump to tip out it's load and then to rush back to join the convoy again and so it goes on... the noise of thundering trucks lets you know when they are nearby!

The third day of Christmas...

Ok it's the third day of Christmas and it's time for Happy families

I know this should be three french hen's and instead it's four wrapped up Robins
but if we're not to fussy ...they do look Christmas-y

It's s nice old pack illustrated by Racey Helps
more about him here


It just goes to illustrate that tradional games are still great fun!

Cutting it a bit fine...

Ha... we spent the day scrubbing the woodblock floor and painting the living room walls a very original white colour... and then scrubbing the floor again ...
it's now much cleaner but has an interesting occasional festive white snow footprint effect due to the fact as a household we are rubbish at being methodical, tidy, careful... all those useful qualities (and we've decided to refinish the floor in the summer).

I did have a moment of despair when I found out the cat had walked through the paint roller tray and then over the sofa (dark blue ...it was...well actually after much work with a wet cloth and elbow grease it is again..phew)

So now I just have to rehang the curtains and then we dive through the trap door into the basement and retrieve the Christmas tree... (yes sis we all know where it is!)..I can almost find the memory of the year when we lost ..ok I lost ..the darn tree funny ...no I can't it was awful...and my other half had to try and buy one on Christmas eve a nearly impossible task we found our tree but it was a tad pricey... still it's a nice tree, and it's said that memories fade...

Actually there may be a surreal quality to this post as the girls keep asking me to watch their entrance and dance instead of typing..their dad is playing carols on the keyboard and the girls are singing ..only the catch is, they're not singing the same carols that he's playing...and I haven't had a drink so it must be real... lol


Well if I can find the camera and have the energy I'll try and add some photos later!
for now it's Have a very Merry Christmas and I'm off to the basement.

Radio for Christmas

Ok this is a test post to see if I can manage to share older radio recordings.....

first attempt is a 14 minute reading
A Second Christmas in Kenya by Elspeth Huxley
(An Extract from The Flames Trees of Thika)
the reader is Felicity Kendal


Click here


if it asks for a password please email me alaskafurrycat [at] yahoo [dot] com no spaces

Snow

Razzy our Alaskan cat

After an icefog turning the city into a magical place for quite a while the fog has lifted and the snow started to fall. When I walked eldest d to school my hands got cold, I was wearing gloves not mittens and they don't work as well for me. Later when I set out to the store I was well wrapped up and it was beautiful. Not like living in the centre of a city at all! We must have had 6 or so inches of fresh snow onto of the base layer. It's light dryish snow that is easy to kick through when fresh. It was snowing as I walked and the only extra that would've been nice was a pair of goggles. I've tried to take a few snaps to give you an idea of how it looked. By the time I walked a few miles in it ..just there and back to stores and the postoffice, my legs were quite tired. Eldest d PE lesson consisted of sledding down the sledding hill at school...Eldest daughters "reading buddies" lesson at school was a sledding party..down the sledding hill .... Eldest d was a little tired last night..lol and I think it's going to snow again but hopefully it'll be warmer than they think or it'll be too cold to play in...


(The last photograph is our back gate)

A Carol for Christmas

My husband introduced me to George Winston's Music and I was smitten.

Tis' the season....


it's available to buy here... amazon
(the credit for the video goes to a kind creative person on youtube)

..............enjoy

Ice fog (pictures added)

We have been living under a cloud of ice fog for several days now. The air is still and very cold.
Each day the covering of ice crystals grows thicker like minute trees of frost growing everywhere making even the most mundane objects seem quite magical. The World sparkles. Chain link fences look as if they've been coated in crystal..soon the fog will lift,or the temperature rise or a breeze begin and it will all disappear but yet at the moment it is quite beautiful.

true love?

I think it's true love...