A New Year

Well, Happy New Year to one and all although so many things have gone wrong this year I may want to go back to 2014.
Where shall I start? Christmas, I think. We went to Gary's parents (Gary, David and I) for the Christmas Holiday. David flew in Christmas Eve and left the following Sunday morning at 6:00am which meant we had to be up at 4am. Now, you all know me, that hour no longer exists for me since I have retired. Gary will tell you that 9am no longer exists either!!! True!!
We had a nice quiet Christmas with the five of us and caught up on all of David's news.
December 30th saw my Mother-in-Law's 90th birthday. We celebrated with the Freytags by having cake and a small birthday party.

 Czerna, being princess for the day.   Uncle John, Czerna's sister's husband.     

                                          Cat, Czerna's sister

                                         Gary, my lovely hubby.

                                          Gwen, Gary's cousin

                                          Gary's, Dad, Eugene
New Years was spent with Gary's favorite Aunt and Uncle and half of their family (the other half lives in Alabama). We had a great meal together and reminisced about times gone by (too quickly I think).

                                           A Zumalt family photo

                                                   Father and son

                                          A Johney family photo

                          Mom and Dad-in-law, married 66 short years

                                                 The two sisters

                        I, myself think this is a lovely photo of Cat and John

Yours truly and Gary (man. do I look fat or what? It must be the camera angle!!).

Kera, our half niece having fun with hats and blowers (what do you call those things?).
OK, so this is boring for all of you reading this and not knowing who the heck I am talking about. You could have skipped the first half of the blog!!!!
We spent time in Florida with David around the middle of January to see him run the 5K, 10K, 1/2 marathon and marathon. He was given Disney medals for each race completed and for completing all four he got the "Dopey" medal. Well named, I thought. I have to confess I did not think he would manage all four, the marathon being the last race but he astounded me by completing all four in good form. He ran as "Nemo" which brought nice comments from the radio station at the end of the race.

                        The winner. He will always be a winner in our eyes.

David proudly holding all his medals. He was grumpy because we have just had a barney about me not using the camera right.
What I haven't said about that trip was Gary and I got the flu which really spoiled all our plans. Luckily, David never caught it.
We left David and visited the manatees at Silver Springs. It was a cloudy, cool day so the photos are not as pretty as last year.

                            This guy blew his nose just as I took the photo.
Ok, one of my blogs would not be complete without bird photos, sorry Dad. We visited Merritt Wildlife Refuge and took the following pickies.

                      Aren't they coot? OK, so I've used that joke before.

I tracked this little guy quite a way down the road. I did not seem to bother or frighten him.

Not too many alligators to be seen. We had quite cool weather for Florida at that time of the year for the duration of our stay.
On the way back to Missouri we stopped at Elvis Presley's home "Graceland". It was very expensive to tour the home and a little disappointing (I never saw Elvis!!!).

 This room was most interesting. It was covered wall to ceiling with pleated fabric - over 300 yards of material. Boy, I bet that job was a "sew and sew" to put together!!!

                                A real, live waterfall in his jungle room.

I think that has brought you up to date with our January adventures. If you do not like birds, click off now because all the next photos are of birds seen in my back garden

 I have a lovely family of about ten bluebirds. I give them meal worms and they reward me with a lovely display.

 Ok, here come the puns - good mourning dove!!

Try and "wren"ch yourself away from this feeder.

 Now, you need eyes like a hawk to see my hawk. He is there in the middle of the photo - I promise. He sat and waited for any of my birds to pass within his flight range. Luckily, it was not his lucky day.

                                               Robins galore!

                                             A cardinal and a titmouse                            

                                                 A fast flying flicker

                                                  A nuthatch

A woodpecker (ha, ha, ha, har har, get it - ha, ha, ha har, har)
Now, where there are bird feeders there are usually squirrels. I am no exception. They got to a feeder I hung outside my bedroom window and did this to it...

They chewed a whopping great hole in the top. So, to stop them I got them their own feeder-

                                     They are quite funny to watch.
We have had really frigid weather since I have been back in Maryland. The wind blew from the North for several days moving the water out of our creek and into the Chesapeake Bay. I have never seen the water so low.

Today, we had snow so I drove to a local park and took the following photos.

The Chesapeake is tidal and this was a rock covered with ice and then the water receded.

                                 These chunks were about 3" thick.

This is everyone's fear who owns a pier (ooh, I'm a poet and don't know it!!). We become afraid that the pier will be torn up with the ice as the tide rises and falls. We have "bubblers" that we can put into the water to stop this happening and causing a lot of monetary damage.

I thought this was an interesting photo of funny shaped icicles hanging from an ice flow.

The park is on the Chesapeake Bay and, as you can see is frozen over in places.

 This poor little guy was having a drink when I saw him. He must be desperate to be out in daylight.

 

Oh, I nearly forgot. We have a new addition to our little family. His name is Jack after his infamous Uncle, Jack Daniels. He is a three year old Quaker adopted by David. This parrot has the capability of talking, which we hope he will.

David has been dating a lovely girl named Sara. She is nearly at the end of her schooling to be a Physician's Assistant. She is in North Carolina at the moment for her last two weeks of school and then studies for her licensing exam on the 23rd March. Gary and I wish her all the luck in her new chosen career.

Well, I have come to the end of a long blog. I want to end with telling my hubby (who is in Missouri) that I love him and miss him. We were not together for Valentine's Day (again) so he sent me a lovely vase of multi coloured roses. So, my dear I LOVE YOU, MISS YOU AND CANNOT WAIT UNTIL WE ARE TOGETHER AGAIN.