Another wintry pic to illustrate the mood here. We've had exceptionally cold temperatures lately (how about a -7F during the daytime?), but the snow on the ground has shown us each morning just how many night visitors we get. One day, it was clear a raccoon had gone around our house (and many neighbors' homes) trying to get in at every door. He had even come up our back deck and down a 360 degree turn at the top of the staircase.

Today, Sweetie noticed deer tracks(!) leading to a bush right outside our kitchen window. We often drive to other, more isolated neighborhoods to see deer in the evening, so we had no idea that they are in our own backyard during the night.

Moving in

First of all, huge thanks to VegetableJ for reminding me about her amazing cornmeal pancake recipe that I can now dig out of my collection of recipies!!  Our "STUFF" finally arrived -- literally SIX months after we had it all packed up in Israel, and after shelling out an additional $900(!) to US Customs authorities so that they could X-Ray it and rifle through it at their leisure.  What a wonderful country!

So, needless to say, we've been knee deep (literally) in unpacking, though thanks to Sweetie's errr, encouragement, I managed to get my tea room set up for all intents and purposes, adorned now with an amazing scroll sent to me by one of my unbelievably kind and generous friends in Kyushu.  I will photograph it soon.

Winter has arrived with a vengeance here, and any illusions I had about this part of the US being considerably less-wintry than where I grew up have been handily shattered by the two ice storms we've had recently.

The fruits of our Christmas Day excursion to our favorite neighborhood are above.  Sweetie and I often take evening drives to a nearby neighborhood that tends to have deer out and about.  We did that Christmas Day.  No deer this time, but plenty of peace and quiet and gorgeous ice formations.