Early Christmas gift . . .

A couple of weeks ago (in fact, it was on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving!) we decided to give ourselves an early Christmas gift! They had a nice camera on a good sale at Best Buy that we'd had our eye on for awhile, so we went ahead and purchased it! Also, they had 4 GB memory chips on sale, as well, so we bought one of those, too. The camera is very nice -- not a fancy one like a Nikon or anything, but it is an 8 megapixel camera with a 12X optical zoom. It takes nice pictures, and has enough features to make it nice, but not so many that it takes a professional to figure them all out! It's a Kodak EasyShare Z812. My biggest beef with our old camera, is that it didn't have a zoom worth a darn. Also, it was only like 2 MP, so we couldn't ever blow any pictures up beyond just the regular photograph size.

We have a hummingbird feeder hanging from our patio, and we get some beautiful birds. Unfortunately, they're so skittish it's difficult to get pictures. With this new camera, we can stand far away and still get some nice pictures. Here's a hummingbird who was patiently waiting for Bill to refill the feeder. It was funny, because he flew up, saw it was gone, then landed on the bulb of the outdoor lights our neighbors put up! Then, when Bill put up the feeder, he came and drank from the feeder. It just shows how tiny these birds are, when you realize he is perching on the lightbulb! (I say "he" -- but it could be a "she" bird! Who knows!)

Here are the pictures -- you can click on them to enlarge them. Then hit the back arrow on your browser to return to the blog.

Here's the bird perched on the light bulb:





Feeding from the feeder. The little guy (or gal!) was very patient!




And this is kind of random, but last night I took a pic of our Christmas tree, all lit up, but this time I didn't use the flash. It's a bit blurry, because the camera automatically slows down the shutter speed because of the low light, and I don't have a tripod, so it was the best I could do while trying to stand very, very still:



When I'm done here, I plan to get off my butt and get some chores done. Bill and I were up and out of the house about 9am today, then we went out to breakfast, then back here. I sat down with the computer and Bill's been doing some laundry. After we get our chores done, we will go out and finish our Christmas shopping. We finally got the Christmas lists for Bill's niece and nephew from Jennie, so that was what we were waiting for to get finished. Then we will have to get them sent out to them soon. Oh, and I have to get something for my friend Nancy, with whom I went to high school. She was my BFF in high school in Sacramento. Her birthday is on Christmas, and she will be 50!!!! Wowzers. I'm next, but not for eight more months. She and her husband and two kids still live in the Sacramento area.

Well, I've procrastinated as long as I possibly can. I need to get my chores done and over with, so they will just be DONE!! I've got the yule log on TV (we have high def flat panel TV, and the high def on demand has this cool channel that shows a burning fireplace, complete with crackling noises. It also plays Christmas music, so it's very cool. In fact, it is so easy to upload photos from our new super cool camera, that here's a picture of it:



How cool is that?!?

Well, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Tomorrow will be spent wrapping presents!! Yayy!!! I LOVE wrapping gifts.

Bye for now!