Snowy Christmas Day

I don't celebrate Christmas in the sense that other people do, but I do celebrate it as a more special day than others. I'd been itching to get another crack at snow photos and mom wanted to take the dogs for a walk - so we compromised and she accompanied me to Forest Park. I had fun, the pups had fun and mom would've had more fun had her steps counted.

While it was fun to try to catch the falling snow the day before, the pictures from Christmas were much clearer, cleaner and crisper.

Here are just a few of my favorites:









This was great wet snow - the kind that sticks to trees and sticks to itself, as evidenced by these mini-snowmen









We also came across a tree that was planted in the memory of a person whose friends decorated his tree for Christmas:

Merry Christmas...

...from my house to yours. I was raised Jewish, and though I don't celebrate Christmas in the same way as everyone else, it's never gone by unnoticed in our household. It's still a holiday and a family day.

Ever since I moved back to St. Louis, I've had a Christmas tree. I've always wanted to have one but it never made sense in our household growing up. Here are some pictures from our tree decorating this year:

Our tree, found at Home Depot:



Decorations - some of my roommates favorite ornaments (she's a music teacher):



My ornament from my roommate last year:



And an ornament that I received last year for my birthday, again from my roommate:



My ornaments on the tree:



The ornament that I gave my roommate - from Anchorage, Alaska:


Our tree - all lit up:



Our tree - manual focus:



And finally, our tree so you can see the decorations:



So I hope you had a very Merry Christmas, whether you celebrated it or not. I hope you got to spend it with friends, if not family!

Christmas Lights

Enough with the chatty - here's some pictures to enjoy!

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Yes, this is my second post on Christmas Lights - quite a lot for this non-Christian. But it's because of this one tree:





I happened upon it by accident, because of SuperShuttle. A patron was being dropped off there before I was to be dropped off: this was last year at Thanksgiving time. I hadn't seen a Christmas tree decorated like that before and due its size, it really caught my eye.

Now armed with my DSLR, I had to go back and recapture it. While a friend and I were trying to find the tree, we happened across a few other impressive displays, so I paid those a visit as well.













There are more on flickr, as usual.