A New Year Dawns...

Brilliant

The King and his Sceptre

Light frost -- so delightful!

Stephen's Birthday!

Seven years old!

Preparing for Charades... ;)

Homemade Rainbow Sherbet was his birthday choice! 

Mom & I saw this loppity armadillo on our afternoon walk -- it was rooting in the loose leaves of a fence-row. They're really so uniquely odd!

A really thick (and really lovely) frost!

Piano lessons!

Art? or a budding petroglyph artist's practice sheet?

And a fun bday present! :)

The following words are taken from "In Which Piglet is Entirely Surrounded by Water," by A.A. Milne :)  -- they seemed to go with the pictures. :) We've had lots of lovely rain, tho' not as much as the story:

"Christopher Robin lived at the very top of the Forest. I rained, and it rained, and it rained, but the water couldn't come up to his house. It was rather jolly to look down into the valleys and see the water all round him, but it rained so hard that he stayed indoors most of the time,  and thought about things.

"Every morning he went out with his umbrella and put a stick in the place where the water came up to, and every next morning he went out and couldn't see his stick any more, so he put another stick in the place where the water came up to, 

"and then he walked home again, and each morning he had a shorter walk than he had had the morning before.

"On the morning of the fifth day he saw the water all round him, and knew that for the first time in his life he was on a real island. Which was very exciting."

... "'Now then, Pooh,' said Christopher Robin, 'where's your boat?'

'I ought to say,' explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, 'that it isn't just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it's a Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident. It all depends.'

'Depends on what?'

'On whether I'm on the top of of it or underneath it.'"

;)