Saturday, December 20, 2008

Peace on Earth…

Eddie & I want to wish everyone a

Joyous Holiday Season
and a
A Happy & Healthy 2009




As I wrote in my last post, we spent last week at Disney World. A holiday feature at the Disney Hollywood Studios is the Osmond Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights. The streets of the park backlot are festooned with a display of 5,000,000 lights. From dusk, until the park closes, the lights "dance" to holiday music as "snow" falls from the sky. It truely is Disney magic. Expand the post to see more of the display.






When I first heard about the display I thought it had something to do with Donny & Marie Osmond. It doesn't. The Osmond family is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and, according to a post on the Allears.net website, the family's display started with 1,000 lights in 1986 and by 1993 the display had grown to 3,000,000 lights. As could be expected, neighbors complained and Arkansas Supreme Court forced the Osmonds to dismantle the display. Disney and Kodak to the rescue. An expanded display is presented at Disney World every Christmas.

Happy Holidays to All!

We are just back from spending five days at the Fort Wilderness Campground at Disney World. If you read my blog at its inception last January, you know that the first photographs I published were of Fort Wilderness campsites decorated for Christmas. This year I was able to take photos of the decorations at night. The most spectacular, by far, was this site —


I can only imagine the time, effort and money that goes into creating a display like this. The couple who set it up are from Louisiana. They have been at the campground since the day after Thanksgiving and are not leaving until the day after New Years. In-between they seemed to spend much of their time keeping the display inflated and in working order.

Expand this post to see some more Fort Wilderness images. Our favorite is Minnie Mouse taking a bath.






Saturday, December 13, 2008

Another fine feathered friend…

We had another feathered visitor last week. This one, a male cardinal, was a bit shy and stayed under the shelter of the neighbor's orange tree.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my last post. The bird is, as many of you said, an Eastern Blue Bird. They no longer migrate to New York, which is why it was so unfamiliar. The only blue bird I am used to seeing is the Blue Jay. I like this little bird much better.

Tomorrow Eddie and I are taking our RV over to the Fort Wilderness Campground at Disney World for four nights. Last year, during Christmas week, we spent an afternoon at the Campground looking at the Christmas Decorations. They were pretty amazing, and I can't wait to see, and photograph, the decorations after dark! I'll be posting some of the photos next week.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Feathered friends return…


Last January, one of the first posts to this blog was about a bird that kept trying to get into our RV. All winter the bird (he or she?) would sit by our windows. At the time we thought it was looking for a friend in its relection.

This past week the bird came back — if not the same bird, then a look-a-like relative.

He or she spent a lot of time looking in the side mirror, probably wondering who the other bird was. And this time the bird brought a real live friend (or life-partner), because there were two of them. If anyone can tell me what type of bird it is I would be much appreciative. I've been trying to identify them, but haven't been able to come to a definitive conclusion.