Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

From the Great Smoky Mountains National Park - We wish you a Happy New Year!

And a belated Merry Christmas.  As you can see, we were all tuckered out and couldn't get to the blog!

Photo with Santa

Here we are at the American Legion getting Scout's
picture with Santa.  At first, like all good kids she
barked and howled at Santa.  Then as the scariness
wore off she calmed down.  Along side of Scout is
her best buddy from our apartment complex "Zoe"
and her Mom, Lauren.



Say "Cheese-woof"

Scout says...

It hardly ever snows in the Mush...

Here we are, same Bat time, same Bat channel
as last year.


Chris on the walk home from the neighbor's
house. Notice the head lamp, courtesy of
LL Bean's shop.


The morning after the snowfall. Good thing
we moved the car down the hill this year. Live
and learn they say. No power outage this year,
but we made sure the solar batteries were on
"Full charge" this year. Chris also put some
spare water in jugs and we had our weather
alert channel on. We have learned to control
the heat in the house better as well, with the
radiant floor heat, the furnace and the wood
stove. Here's to staying warm and a mild
winter!!

Holiday photo

My workplace recently held their holiday party
out at Savannah Rapids Pavilion.

Happy Holidays to all!

Merry Christmas

Well, it has been a fast paced two weeks back in the US. We have logged almost 1,700 miles on the car since we have been back, but we have managed to get a lot accomplished in a short amount of time. Our latest conquest was at a car dealership. Chris is now the proud new owner of her dream car (well, excluding the Jaguar dear). Santa was good to us, she now has a beautiful 2006 Volvo XC70 Cross Country AWD Turbo wagon. The dealer let us take it out for a two day test drive and it is a great ride. Adjectives like: Comfortable, Safe, Zippy, Roomy, & Solid come to mind.


So, how did we spend our Christmas? Well, it wasn't a white Christmas, but it was a nice one nonetheless. Christmas eve dinner was special as Chris got to spend it with a girlfriend she had not seen in 22 years. It was nice for her to rekindle and old relationship and for us to spend a lovely evening topped off by a scrumptious prime rib dinner. And here is a picture of the "ruler" of the house that we stayed at.....Roxie is my name, getting pampered is my game.



And how was our Christmas dinner? Well, it certainly wasn't as plush as the previous night, but we still managed to pull off a nice meal of breast of turkey and acorn squash. Here I am enjoying the meal in Chris' new apartment.



Well, as you can imagine life will be busy trying to set up two new residences (one in NC and one in GA), but I will try to post updates as we go along.

And if I don't get to it....Happy New Year to all!!!

Christmas 2007

Christmas in Norway...


We have gone back and forth on the "real tree vs. fake tree". For a long time it was one of each, but as time moved on we have settled on convenience. Well, not to mention we really had a tough time cutting down a real tree, emotionally that is. Call us soft, but it was a sad feeling when we started to cut and finally drag the tree away from it's natural environment. Anyway, the artificial tree has earned its keep over the years. We diligently mark the locations that we spend our Christmases on its storage box.

Santa was good to us this year and even though we were far away from family, we managed to have a nice Christmas, albeit without a good snowfall. Besides a few snow dustings, Norway has been snow less this winter...very unlike our first winter here (The photo below is during Easter).


And here are a few photos from a winter's walk along a frozen lake this year.

















We hope all of our family and friends had a nice Christmas and have a super New Year!