Jeez, what's with the weather? After more than a week of freezing conditions, well, at least at night, the rain and sleet and hail started hitting us.
In comparison to last year this is quite the winter we're having!

We're nice and dry and warm and cozy and I have a bunch of things to do inside but it's not very nice for the Casita-owners group that's having it's rally here this week.
Yes, they're baaack! 



They had about 15 cancellations because of the weather but the rest are real die-hards and are making the best of it!

                                   

They're having a busy itinerary and when I walked by our neighbors the other day I was invited to come taste some food they had made during a dutch oven 'class' they were having.
I was just having a go at some real good chicken-rice dish when someone came up to me and asked if I was Bridget?
Turns out they were fellow blogger Jerry and his wife Wanda from 'Eggrollings' and they were delivering a 'hello' from Judy, the Bird-lady from Blogger-land whom they also happen to follow!

What a nice surprise! They're only the second Bloggers I've met, so far, and really nice people.



Because of the rains there's a lot of moisture in the air and some mornings start rather foggy.

Always nice for some 'moody' pictures ....

Now, if I were a bird, I would head for this hot-water pond behind the am-phi theater during this lousy weather!

 

The water comes from one of the two hot-water springs we're having on the property and is a whopping 140 degrees!

I seldom see any ducks here though, which makes me think the water might be too hot (probably around 115 or so) for any fish or for any algae or water plants to grow and therefor of no interest to the ducks.

This female Lesser Scaup had the pond to herself.

Smart girl!

          I'd think it would be a nice place to warm up my flippers too!

Talking about ducks, we had some new visitors in the (cold) pond behind the golf course again:

I was excited to see this Cinnamon Teal with his darling wife!

And these American Wigeons:

Purty, purty, purty

Despite the weather the Yuccas are now completely in bloom.
Totally odd!?

         

But pretty!

And since there's really not much else to talk about lets bore you with some pictures of our 'special' child.
He's still doing great despite his diabetes and seems stable on his two shots of insulin a day.

Because of the cold weather he's staying indoors more than usual and has a knack for finding the tightest spots available. Here's some examples:

 

Behind the (warm) computer and the (cold) window ...

..... with your head stuck under the curtain ....

Really?

Or maybe behind the TV slide-out shelf ..... must be something about those nice new curtains!
            

Well, I hope your New Year started out better than ours did!
Due to 'inclement' weather, read ice-storms, in the area just north of us, we lost power for almost 5 days! 
Courtesy of a truck that hit a sagging, ice-covered power line last Friday, which than triggered 67 (!) poles to fall down like dominoes!
The sleet and ice kept coming down for 2 more days, followed by slippery muddy soil, which made for nasty repair conditions.
At one point they had 7 crews working on it!

Fortunately we had enough gas for the generator and propane for the heather to keep us warm and we even had lights and TV in the evening.
Still, it gives you a different perspective. It's amazing how life changes without electricity!



Fortunately all this happened after New Year's so we had no problems baking our traditional 'oliebollen', while sipping Martinelli's and watching the Rose-Parade:

                                          

James was Manager-on-Duty for a couple of days, so in return we got to dine in style again at the restaurant for 3 days in a row!

We enjoyed some delicious and beautiful food and of course the festive ambiance.

 

Like I mentioned, the weather has been extremely cold for the last couple of weeks, many a night has been below freezing. 
Makes for 'cool' lawn chairs:

 

                                       
 
The days warm up quite a bit, IF the sun is shining, but when it's windy (and the wind picks up at sometime almost every day) the 'chill factor' makes for some very chilly hikes!




The ducks in the pond don't seem to be bothered much by the cold, I even spotted a 'new kid in town':

It's a female Hooded Merganser, taking her Sunday morning bath:



Not a feather was left unpolished!

So pretty!

One thing you can't do without electricity? Baking! As soon as it came back on, I made sure to get something in the oven:

                      

Left over (and frozen) sugar cookie dough sprinkled with (more)(like you need more, right?) sugar and shredded coconut, and two round 'water'-breads :

Well, just listened to the weather forecast; another 'arctic' blast is coming down! 
Cross your fingers it won't include any more icy rain and trucks slamming into electric poles!

Good luck and make sure to keep warm everybody!

                        
Cool winter mornings seem to have the best colors, especially if there are some clouds around, and this Christmas morning sure was a pretty one!

It's hard to believe that this is our 5th Christmas in the RV already, but off course that first one was only a month after we started.

Just like last year, some of the 'Snowbird' ladies put together a Christmas Potluck. This year they took care of the decorating as well and as you can see they did a great job!



                   
                               

As usual, at these potlucks, there was food for an army and it was all very, very good!

Merlin has been such a good boy this year; only one 'Tree incident' so far!

Oops!

 

                           

He loves to snuggle up close to James in the evening, on one of the big throw-pillows, to watch TV.

And what were they watching? Off course, a Christmas classic (and Holiday tradition):


            

Since it's hard to get my hands on a traditional (Dutch/German) 'Kerststol' here in the States (in Holland you can buy them everywhere) I decided to bake one myself this year. 
The Internet didn't disappoint in giving me thousands of recipes to choose from. The hardest thing was to pick the best one!

The actual making and baking turned out to be fairly easy also, and it came out looking just like the real thing!  Even better ... it tasted just as great!
Just for fun, I also baked an apple-cranberry pie, another tradition, which was, as always, equally delicious!

Although there's no way it could possibly make up for all the food we ate, we went for several short hikes. 'To walk it off'. Yeah, right ....

   

Most of the desert vegetation is dormant at the moment and everything looks rather grey and washed out. 
These Yuccas were a nice surprise, they were actually sending up some colorful flower stalks! In December?

And what about those Ocotillos! The cold nights have turned their tiny leaves a fiery red. When the morning (or evening) sun hits them just right, they practically glow!

Amazing how something so nasty and thorny can be quite pretty!

   

And besides that, they're just the right spot for the desert's 'Little Brown Birds', to perch on.
         

I think that's a Song Sparrow on the left and the pretty guy on the right is my good friend the Loggerhead Shrike.

I might have talked about the Shrike's nasty habit of impaling its prey on thorns or barbed wire before eating it, because it does not have the talons of the larger birds of prey, which has earned him the nickname 'butcher bird'.
I'd never seen any evidence of that firsthand though, until this week, when we came across this:

       

I've read that in Spring the male decorates its impaled victim(s) with feathers and bills in order to attract a mate.
Yes, ... very enticing indeed! Yuck!

Another surprising encounter, on one of our early morning hikes, came in the form of this small group of Javelinas! 

    

I was hoping to see some little ones, since December is the time for them to be born (here in the south), and as it happened, we were in luck:

I thought they would have a whole bunch of them, like pigs, but apparently they have only one or two at the time.
The more proof, I guess, that they're not pigs!

What a cutey!

Well, that will do it for today. 
For some reason I just lost half of the text and had to re-type it 'all' (@#!$%&!) so I'm going to post this real quick! Forgive me for any typos!

Since I started with a sunrise, I'll close with a 'set'!