Christmas is a fun time for a kitten

HAPPY CHRISTMAS to everyone who celebrates this holiday season! Here, in Alberta, it is 11:30 am on Christmas Eve day - and it's SNOWING, so we will be having a freshly white Christmas. Our temperature is -11C, windchill -18C. For my family and me, this will be the first Christmas without my older daughter, so there will be sadness as well as happy memories. Fiona loved Christmas so much!

This young kitten was one of three that my younger daughter and I saw at the Saskatoon Farm on 21 December, three days ago. They were the cutest little things, having free run of the place. One spot, that was very obviously a favourite, was the pile of boxes in bright, shiny, sparling wrapping, placed under the Christmas tree. Constantly on the move, except for this quick, 3-second rest, the kittens were not easy to photograph at all. The 'gifts', loosely joined together by a string of tree lights, gradually moved away from the tree, sliding over the wooden floor. What absolute fun for these little ones - and for any young girls that came to visit the Farm and were drawn like magnets to these irresistible cuties. I haven't taken any proper Christmas photos to post, so I was grateful for this shot.

On 21 December 2015, my daughter and I had our Christmas get-together. Like last year, she asked if I wanted to spend the day out of the city, looking for Snowy Owls (and other things). We were both so happy to at least see a (very distant) Snowy Owl, which she cleverly spotted, even though we had hoped to find a much closer one. Thank goodness, last year, my daughter and I did see and photograph beautiful Snowies E and NE of the city that were nice and close.

Finding one of these magnificent birds of prey was not the only purpose in our minds, though. It was our Christmas get-together, and we had a great day, in beautiful sunshine and in one of my favourite areas to explore. We had first planned to go NE of the city, but my daughter, waiting for her surgery on 11 January 2016, didn't feel up to travelling that far. Once she has recovered from her surgery, maybe we can go NE of the city and try for owls again.

So, plans changed and instead, we went to the Saskatoon Farm for breakfast. This interesting place is maybe a 20-minute drive SE from the southern edge of Calgary. You can collect your own Saskatoon berries in season, look around their outside green houses, and their inside gift shop full of unusual things, and buy special baking, jams, teas and so on. They also have a restaurant that offers delicious food.

www.saskatoonfarm.com/

Afterwards, we then went a bit further, to drive some of the roads east of High River, hoping to possibly find a Snowy Owl. We went as far as Mossleigh, where we stopped to take a few quick photos of the three grain elevators and then found a group of several old barns that I don't remember seeing before. They were off the main road, but fortunately the narrow gravel road had enough snow packed on it that the short drive was very smooth. From there, we also stopped at the little wooden church at Dinton.

Later in the afternoon, we couldn't resist the temptation to call in at Glamorgan Bakery on the way home and buy a few Christmas goodies, followed by a desperately needed food shopping trip. I just hadn't had a chance to go grocery shopping and had run out of even basic things. This was a huge relief, especially as I knew that I would be having a very long day on 23rd December (yesterday), taking part in the Drumheller area Christmas Bird Count.

Thanks so much for a great day out, Rachel. The best kind of day, as far as I am concerned : ) Many thanks, too, for the beautiful, very carefully chosen (as always!) Christmas gifts. Love the owl that looks rather like a furry, stuffed children's toy, that is in fact a wonderful heat pad (that you warm in the microwave), full of lavender. Haven't used it yet, but it will feel so good on my neck and shoulders that are painful from whiplash, thanks to the woman driver who suddenly came out of a parking lot exit and cut across my lane of moving traffic about three weeks ago! Nothing I could do, as I couldn't stop in time to avoid impact. So, I'm looking forward to having an owl on my shoulder : )