Happy New Year

We had a nice visit from Bill and Kathy. They got home safely late Monday. Dad is still here. He was originally going to head back to Florida tomorrow but he is going to wait until after the snow storm. I went over to Nelson's today and picked up four bales of hay. We've been storing them, four at a time, in the tractor port this year. It saves me from driving the tractor down the road after dark.

 We burned lots of things over the holidays. The first day we lit the burn pile to get rid of the year's debris.

 Kathy helped by adding fuel.

 Bill raked and maintained the fuel and air flow.

 Dad came down the second day. We gathered more sticks to add to the embers we had banked from the night before.

 Dad got some black walnuts while he was down there.

 We burned everything and set the corral panels so the sheep wouldn't burn their hooves.

 The next day we burned the stump and branches from the fallen tree in the other pasture.

 It was a hot and clean fire. All hard wood, no weeds or posts until Lisa brought the garden refuse out later.

 Kathy and I took off out coats because the fire was so hot. Dad let one of his ears out.

 Dad got me a great new camera for Christmas. It's a Nikon Coolpix. One of its many settings is a smile detector. It waits for the subject to smile then snaps the shot. This was a manual shot. It doesn't detect grumpy face.

 It worked on Bill.

 Dad set it off.

 I had to take off my glasses so it could see my face.

 Lisa joined in and made it happen.

 It was able to detect Kathy's lovely smile eventually.

 Tonight's sunset.

 Paige.