First Photos of 2012, and a few from '11

It's been a while since I added in any photos. I got a bit wordy there at the end of the year, so here's a chance to mix things up a bit once more. We'll start off with a couple from Christmas. Sorry no people. They're a bit shy around here, and rather cautious about being posted all over the internet. Perhaps I'm just naive in thinking it's not such a big deal, but I do my best to preserve the preferences of others, so I give you a mostly person free photo post.

Here's your chance to see a bit of my mom-in-laws style. Her cookies are fabulous (and still coming out of boxes every few days to maintain the beauty of the cookie plate. It seems they make up a ton of cookies before Christmas, and then continue to dole them out over the next month or so) and the Christmas tree is exquisite. I got to help with the tree, but wisely stuck to putting only the variety she was currently hanging on at any given moment.

We had a lovely layer of snow everywhere from Christmas up through New Year's Eve. It was positively festive, but now it has been completely washed away, leaving the ground all soupy and g-ross! These shots were from one of my Christmas shopping days :)

On the day Tammy and I went to visit our friend Che, who now lives WAAAAAY out in the middle of Czech nowhere, I had flashbacks to my Winfield days with this little lunch snack. My first year I had one of these cheese buns with cheese spread, meat and tomato together with coke and paprika potato chips essentially every school day. Yes, boring it may seem to some, but I'm rather a creature of habit if the truth be known. Perhaps the very fact that my life has been so random and all over the place necessitates such food rituals. Right now I'm eating primarily a roll with yogurt every day for breakfast, and any time I prepare food for myself it's a sandwich similar to those I ate back at Winfield.

Before making this little trek, Tammy and I searched the internet to discover "things to do in Olovi" and came up with a big fat lot of nothing. For those with a vague feeling for this part of the Czech countryside, it's a little village tucked up in the forest about 11 KM from Sokolov. We really had to slog through some nasty stuff to make it to Che's house, but it was worth it to have a chance to visit with her and to see her adorable baby Kathleen ;)

Perhaps the oddest bit of the journey is what we found in the Sokolov train station:

Really not sure where all the fantasy came from, but it did amuse us, especially since my book deals with dragons...Just a little teaser as the countdown to the end of my challenge is seriously on. I'm down to just a couple of days, and am at 93,554 words and 184 pages... Here are a couple more pictures leading up to New Year's and the end of the snow. Marianske Lazne is a lovely place to be certain.

These, by all rights, should be in my last post, but I'll just tack them in here. They are the before and after fireworks photos. Seriously, an amazing display of pyrotechnics :)

And now to finish it all off, yesterday we finally had a chance to go back and see the cottage. It made me quite nostalgic for all that back breaking work during the summer I spent here. There is still a long way to go, but it's looking great from the outside. Oh, and I did manage to squeeze one person in. That's right, the one who's not afraid to pose, despite being completely not photogenic.

Hope you enjoyed the show. Stay tuned for more to come :)