MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

This is our first Christmas in Canada since 2008 and that wasn’t in our long term plans.  The time will come soon enough that we won’t be going south every winter, didn’t need to rush it!  Oh well, we are warm and comfortable thanks to the generosity of friends.

I’ve been using all this downtime to downsize my photo collection.  I’ve gone through about 10,000 slides in the last week or two and tossed about 8,500 of them.  It doesn’t matter how good they are if they are of no use to anyone.  I need to reduce as much as I can since there will be limited storage in the new house.  We will have about half the floor space as we had in our last house so we will need to be creative in how we use it.  I will try to digitize many of the slides I have kept so they can then be tossed, too.

On the house front, we have been given a tentative delivery date of March 15.  Occupancy will be several weeks after that, of course, as there will be quite a bit of finishing required on site.  At least the weather will be improving by then making the move easier.

We continue to stay mostly to ourselves except for Karen and Bev, our Penticton friends.  Aileen is trying to maintain her three walks a day and I’m trying for two.  I’m perfectly happy to lie in bed in the morning and wish her a nice walk.   We had about three inches of snow a few days ago and it is still around but now is crunchy and icy in spots so we have to be selective as to where we walk.

Swans on Skaha Lake taken with my Canon 6D full frame DSLR and 100-400 lens

Penticton Creek from a pedestrian bridge taken long after full dark with the iPhone 11.  The rest of these photos were also taken with the phone.

Skaha Lake near Okanagan Falls

Skaha pano

The fourth and last bag of slides heading for the dumpster

Our little Christmas tree with a few new ornaments from Georgia