Giving Thanks

Old photos that have been sitting on my desktop, waiting to be posted.  This is the Sandy River at normal summer flow...

and below is the Sandy the morning after Hurricane Irene.  The water was big.

You would THINK Dixie likes Carlos, but you are wrong.  I think she was holding him here.

Got two skis in on Wednesday.  In the morning, Al and I went for one together (no pics from that one; it was snowing too hard).  And then I harnessed Dixie and we went for our first Ski Jour - at 4pm that same evening.  First thing on Thanksgiving morning, we went for our third ski of the season.  It was 6:30 (a necessary early start for all we had to do that day) and it was a little over 9 degrees.  LOVE IT!  God, I love the cold.  Dressed in ski pants and a long sleeve polypro with my blaze orange fleece jacket -- and was plenty warm.  Ran into a hunter near where we turned around - he had two different shotguns and was super nice.  We talked for awhile, me skiing beside him as he walked - he was about my age, from Wilton, in all cammo and blaze orange - we got talking because he said, "I used to do that."  And I asked, "With a dog hooked to you?"  And he said, "Yup."  He used to have a Malamute and also used to ski our - not that there is a "type", but I would not have thought him the Nordic "type" - anyway, he told me there were 5 more hunters heading in and I thought I would get out of there.  We wished one another a Happy Thanksgiving and went on our way.

My Christmas Cactus has been absolutely beautiful this week.  Took these Thanksgiving morning when I should have been packing my stuff -- made us a little late, but darn, it was so happy.