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'!                     

The Barton Warnock Visitor Center for the Big Bend State Park put out their annual Christmas Celebration and since we'd liked last years event, we went again!

We arrived early enough to score a seat but by 6.30 the small auditorium was filled to standing room only!



The Terlingua Community Choir and the Roadrunner High School Band led us into singing a whole bunch of Christmas songs after which the little kids from the Terlingua elementary school performed two songs from the immensely popular Disney movie 'Frozen'.




All the girls were dressed as the movie's character Elsa while singing 'Let it go', and all parents were appropriately proud of their little princesses.

The teens of the high school choir, being teens, were almost to shy or embarrassed to sing and were barely audible .... awkward!




But fortunately the only 3 men in the Community Choir made up for them!

There was a quiet moment during the telling of every bodies favorite

story, 't Was the night before Christmas', by the local Librarian ....

Followed by a whirling show of Mexican dances by three High School seniors!

 And off course Santa made an appearance!

 

 

All in all, this is one of those typical small town celebrations; full of unexpected moments, some hilarious, some awkward and some endearing but all brought with such enthusiasm! 
It's just the perfect formula to get you into the 'spirit'!

And afterwards there's hot chocolate, apple cider and loads and loads of cookies!!
I ate waaaayyyy to many!

Other than that it was a quiet week. Time for some 'To-do-list' activities. 
I sewed a few sheer curtains for some of the windows in the RV living area. The curtains are left-overs from when we had our sticks-and- bricks house and have been stored under the bed all this time for this purpose.
I've always thought the windows could use 'something more' so there you have it. The before: 
        



And after:

Maybe that's hard to see, but I think it's much cozier!

In the meantime, James worked on framing and hanging our newly acquired map of North America.

We're talking about our travels a lot, past and future, and are forever digging out maps to figure out where to go and how.

This will give us a much quicker overview. Besides, it looks kind of fun there, especially after I'll put some markers or flags up at the places we've been.

Oh, The Places We'll Go! 

  - “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”  -  (Dr. Seuss)

And because all that hard work always makes us really hungry, I started some Holiday Baking!

These (insanely) sticky dough balls became:

(Insanely delicious) Chocolate Crackles!

And, just for the heck of it, I threw some cranberries and cinnamon in the oatmeal-chocolate-chunk cookies, and some anise and lemon in the sugar cookies.

Decorating is an art. I'm not a decorator ..... I'm more of an ... eater!

And than there's some of us who just can't be bothered.

 

And fall asleep in the tiniest spaces!

Alright, I think I've covered it all, once again. I'll leave you with some pretty clouds. 
Aren't skies something else?