I hope everyone had a good Christmas. We had a very nice Christmas at home; we enjoyed preparing and eating our Christmas dinner and a pretty good NFL football game in the evening.

One of my (Christmas Eve) birthday presents is pictured in the left half of the image; it’s a nautilus necklace and earring set made from southwestern fossil materials, a little corral and Globe (Arizona) turquoise. I also received some colorful “candy” bracelets made up of Blue Turquoise, Mojave Green Turquoise, Purple Turquoise, Apple Coral and Spiny Oyster with Sterling Silver fittings, handcrafted by southwestern Native Americans.

For Christmas I got an Arizona Cardinals hooded fleece (image right) with the Cardinal emblem on the back and on the left breast. I also got a new cookbook, “Cook Like a Rock Star” by Anne Burrell of Food Channel fame. It has over a hundred fancy recipes that I’m anxious to try.

May you all have a joyous Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

This animated Christmas card is based on a famous painting “The Virgin with Angels” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, oil on canvas, completed around 1900. The original painting is in a museum in Paris, France. The complete image can be seen here.

I can’t take credit for the animation since this appeared as an example of animating methods in a tutorial on the SWiSH website. SWiSH is the program I use for some of the flash seen on our websites. I modified the script in the scrolling text for our custom Christmas greeting.

Verna and I have made an early New Year’s resolution; we will be going to the range on Fridays (weather permitting). We were there two Fridays ago but missed last week doing pre-Christmas chores. We went today and had a great time.

Image - A Great Day at the Range - click to enlarge

We brought our 9mm and .357 guns today. Verna brought her S&W 908S 9mm pistol while I brought both “Little Boy” and “Jerry Lee,” my Glock 26 pistol and S&W 686 revolver, respectively. In the image above, she is shooting “Little Boy” and I am getting ready to shoot her 608. We each shot about 50 rounds of 9mm and we both shot about 50 rounds of .38 special ammo. We stayed about an hour at the range before heading back to our nice little house.

You may recall that our two Min-Pins got into some rat poison on November 16th during our visit to the California House. We immediately took them to the California vet for treatment. The vet gave us a regimen to follow and sent treatment history and recommendations for our Arizona vet. Since then, we have been following the dosage of vitamin K-1 until last week when the medication stopped.

Today, we took them to the Arizona vet for their last visit and blood tests (we hope). After the exams, the vet told us that everything looked good and she would call us with the results from this last coagulation test. I’m sure that the little dogs will be much happier with fewer visits to the vet.

UPDATE: The coagulation panel blood test results for both dogs were OK. (WHEW!)

Here is how our new house looks as winter begins for us in the northern hemisphere. Verna put some red Christmas decorations in the palo verde (which means green wood) tree by the road. It looks very holiday festive.

Image: Our house on the first day of winter - click to enlarge

Today, we saw the coyote that has been hanging around our little hollow. Bay Bay barked at it and it ran away. Our little thirteen pound dog doesn’t understand that the coyote has at least thirty pounds on him. He also barks at the cottontails, jackrabbits, quail and squirrels that come around our hollow.

Verna and I anticipate a great week of football, food and enjoying our little family during the upcoming holidays. We hope that you will also have a good holiday season.

Just to add a little humor to our Christmas decorations, I put these cute little holiday trolls on the table with our two topiary rosemary trees and holiday basket. Click on the image to enlarge.