Today's Temperature

Today's temperature--a comfortable 50 degrees--is warm enough that our winter crop of broccoli continues to do pretty well, and the grass is staying nice and green. I wouldn't mind some colder temperatures (accompanied by snow, of course!), but I have to say that I have gotten used to the mild winters we have here in the Northwest. 

As a side note, I've mentioned before that we are kind of novice gardeners. I had never really thought about growing vegetables in the winter until I read an article about it in the paper. We have yet to see if it will be a success, but it's been interesting at least to give it a try. 

Joyous

For this one I'm taking some inspiration from what Missy said in her post. I agree with her that music is one of the really joyful things about Christmas. I think it's one of the things that gets us closest to the "true meaning of Christmas"--celebrating Christ's birth.

One special way that Christina and I get to enjoy Christmas music is by playing it together on violin and piano. We haven't played together yet this season, but I'm looking forward to it!

Red

Our tree had a stray branch that needed to be cut off. I decided not to throw it away though. We put it in a vase, but it still needed something...

red!

December Photo Challenge: Day 1

A dear friend of mine, Missy, invited me to join her in a December photo challenge. First, let me just introduce Missy. I met her and her family when I was nine, while we were living in Germany where our dads were both stationed, so we go way back. And while we've lived far apart for many years, Missy, her parents, and her sisters are basically family to us.

As I was saying, Missy, who blogs at Babbling Baker, invited me to do this photo challenge with her. The actual challenge is from A Content Housewife. Feel free to join in! Let me know if you do so I can follow your photos, too. Here's the list of photo themes:

I'm a day late, but I'll start with Day 1, which is "Your View Today". Saturday was a busy day and my view kept changing, but here's the part of the day I'm going to share with you. There's actually two photos, and perhaps that will make up for the fact that I'm deliberately skipping a post for Day 2. For now.

In the Northwest, you have three options when it comes to getting a Christmas tree--buy it pre-cut in a tree lot, cut it yourself out in the forest on state land, or do u-cut at one of our many local Christmas tree farms. We take the last option, and we always go to Thornton's Treeland. They have a "small tree" section that generally works pretty well for us.

So there you have it--my view.

 

Autumn Waterfall Sampler

I've been wanting to take some time to go out and "just take pictures." Mom graciously accompanied me on a trip this past week into the Gorge to do that. The day we picked turned out to be quite rainy (really not a surprise, considering the time of year), but we decided to go anyway, and I'm so glad we did. We stopped at four waterfalls around Multnomah Falls. It's really not fair--Multnomah gets so much more attention than these beautiful waterfalls that are just a few miles from it! So, I decided I would not go to Multnomah and instead spend my time on these less-famous waterfalls.

First stop: Wahkeena Falls. I don't know if you can see it, but there's water on the lens. It was really wet out there! I had a makeshift cover for my camera, though, so I could keep shooting.

Wahkeena again

Horsetail Falls

The fall colors were so lovely!

Shepperd's Dell

Latourell Falls

Driving down the old highway. I had fun taking "intentionally blurry" pictures. :-) 

Wet as it was, it was nice just to be out there--it's so beautiful in the Gorge! It's truly a wonderful part of God's creation.