Oh, deer!

How do you feel about deer in your yard?  Right now, I am enjoying the abundance of deer on our property.  It's neat.  Not that I hadn't seen a deer before, but never so many, so close - and on a daily basis.

Our little town just might possibly have a higher deer population than people population, so they do tend to be everywhere.  But our old house had a tiny yard - and a very big fence around most of what yard there was - so we just didn't see them each and every day.  Now?  Well, the deer are pretty much always here.  Most of the time if I look out the window and start counting I get to double digits before I start really looking.  They blend in to their surroundings very well, so I'm sure that most of the time there are more in the yard than I realize.

Sometimes we still get a little surprised when one gets really close.  Our basement is a walk-out and the windows down there are right at ground level, if that makes sense.  So if a deer comes close to a basement window when someone is down there, it can be a face-to-face event.  This happened recently when the girls had some friends over.  There was a lot of squealing, let me tell you.  I think that when they come so close to the house, I'm mostly startled by how large they are. Normally they sit 20 or 30 feet from the house and seem the size of a large dog, but when a full-grown buck walks up to the kitchen window while I'm doing dishes, I get to see just how huge he is.

The girls have grown accustomed to the deer.  One of them may take notice when there is a large group right outside her bedroom window, but mostly, the excitement is over.  When we first moved in, however, the two little girls were out daily trying to catch one so they could ride it.  It was a great game for them.  And we were never terribly concerned about them actually catching one.

Mark doesn't find the deer as sweet as I do.  He's probably wise.  Right now, in the dead of Winter, they aren't harming anything.  But I won't be so charmed by them in the Spring and Summer if they show up to eat my flowers and vegetables.  Good thing they generally head back up into the mountains when Spring arrives.

CFCA Sponsorship Update

Last month we shared a post about an organization called CFCA (Christian Foundation for Children and Aging) and our several years of sponsorship of a little boy, called Rony, in El Salvador.  Long story short: Rony's parents determined that he didn't need sponsorship help any longer and so they stepped out of the program.  I'm still so touched by that.  I would guess that they could have gone on receiving the sponsorship for a little "extra help", but they were honest and stepped away when they felt they could.

Anyway, we firmly believe in the good work of CFCA's sponsorship program, so we chose to be paired with a new "friend".  Our first letter from Sharon - a 9 year old girl in Uganda - came yesterday.  So exciting!  Our oldest daughter is 11, so she already feels a connection and sees Sharon as a new pen-pal.  A return letter has been written already and should get into the mail today.  We're looking forward to our relationship with Sharon.  Her letter tells us that she hopes to be a nurse someday and that she is thankful for our help to pursue that goal.

CFCA's Hope for a Family sponsorship program is making a real difference in the world - one person at a time.  The website is http://www.cfcausa.org/GetInvolved/Sponsor.aspx

pretty, happy, funny, real

Merry Christmas!

Like everyone, I'm guessing, we've had lots of pictures in the last week or so.  Here's a sampling...

{pretty}

There were plenty of pretty pictures recently, but I guess we don't need to see pretty pictures of the girls over and over, so here are some things - besides our daughters - that are pretty :)

Cookies the girls decorated.  So, yes, we could have used more food coloring and actually gotten to a  true Christmas-green - and red instead of pink - but we thought these colors were pretty.  And I know some of the shapes are not traditional Christmas... the girls like to use ALL the cookie cutters when we get them out.

We had some freezing fog one day.  It's pretty when it happens because there's ice on everything!  It's even prettier when there's also snow on the ground.

More frozen trees.

{happy}

Pretty much every picture we've taken recently would classify as happy, but here's an extremely edited list of some recent happiness.

Candy Cane pudding!

The doll got a new outfit and a new chair!

There's nothing like a chocolate fountain to make a room full of kids happy!

We had a full house for brunch on Christmas Eve.  We - and most of our friends here - are geographically far from our extended families, so it's wonderful to get together for holidays.

{funny}

The chocolate - from the fountain - kind of got everywhere.

This was after midnight Mass - must have been closing in on 2:00AM.  The combination of extreme excitement and  near exhaustion was making them sorta funny.

I think this was supposed to be a photo of me and the particularly cute boy sitting on my lap, but I looked away (at just the right time!) and another particularly handsome boy behind me got caught putting a whole cookie in his mouth!

{real}

Though it is Christmas, some "real life" has been happening as well. Our free time - since we moved to this house in September - has been taken by projects, large and small, inside and out.  In the last week we got the old floor torn out of the mudroom (tile going down this week) and ALL the hardware from the kitchen cabinets taken down, repainted, and replaced.

Here, the first layer of linoleum is taken off.  Unfortunately, there were a couple more layers of "stuff" underneath this that had to come out.

All the knobs.  A particularly clever way of holding them up to be painted, don't you think?

I didn't think to get a "before" shot.  They were shiny brass on the ends and some sort of white plastic in the middle.  The paint job is probably a short-term fix, but considering all it took was a can of spray paint, it will be worth the effort for however long it lasts.

Everyone got in on the floor work.  There were A LOT of staples that had to be pulled out of the floor.  She kind of liked this job, so it didn't bother us one bit that she worked on it off and on over a few days.

Thanks for visiting!  You can find more links to other {p,h,f,r} posts at Like Mother Like Daughter.

pretty, happy, funny, real - Christmas tree edition!

Linking up again this week with LMLD...

We've posted about our tree once or twice already.  Not to go completely overboard about the tree... but it seems that most everyone has some emotional attachment to the family ornaments, right?  So, in reality, this {p,h,f,r} post is dedicated to ornaments.

{pretty}

the decorated tree

 {happy}

some of the ornaments with the happiest memories attached...

from the year we bought our first home (and it did look something like that - though the windows weren't gold)

Perhaps a little funny looking to the casual observer, but this fish is from our honeymoon in the Caribbean. 

This one is obvious :)

We have lots of ornaments that belonged to Mark's grandmother.  This is one of our favorites.

{funny}

The girls got this for me last year.

A gift from the first year we moved out West.

Can you see these?  They are: a cocktail shaker, wine glass, and martini glass.  There is a wine bottle as well, but it was behind a branch :)

{real}
OK, so while lots of ornaments are simply pretty, funny, or loaded with happy memories, some speak to the reality of Christmas.

I love this one.  It's one of the tiniest ornaments on the tree, but the detail of the figures inside - and the bright colors - make it so neat.

always hung on the east side of the tree :)

So, the {p,h,f,r} posts are supposed to be about what's been going on in our everyday lives, right?  Well, I've spent a fair bit of time looking at these ornaments recently.  I could have talked about many, many, more than just these few.  Isn't it something how the memories of ornaments build over the years?