After returning from our trip to England the first thing we had to do was finalize our choice of a new car as our Jeep Grand Cherokee was starting to get creaky being 12 years old. After looking at Subaru, Honda and others we found ourselves going back to Jeep. We got a good deal on the grey Jeep Cherokee, one of the last ones to be made and we hope it will serve us well for many years.

Fall brought Firepit season quickly followed by Halloween. Cookie baking season also got underway, carefully monitored by Gwyn.

Christmas was just around the corner which started with Hanukavent celebrated with our friends Judika and Sandy. Judy got some lovely new color changing lights for 'her' tree this year, similar to the ones we got for 'my' tree a couple of years ago. We did an extensive tablescape on the dining room table, which this year included Santa, coming by train to hand out the pressies.

Winter was again pretty mild, In fact we've only had two plowable > 6" (15cm) storms. This second one came the day before Valentine's Day. We've learned not to try and go out on holidays, which was just as well with the snow coming down.

A couple of weeks ago Judy celebrated another trip around the sun with a visit to our favorite Italian restaurant. It was cold but dry. However the Groundhog has predicted an early spring this year and it looks like he is right! I went out for a walk in town today and the trees are just on the verge of coming back into bloom. Spring is just around the corner!

This winter's "train project" was a new mini-layout to showcase my digital sound equipped trains which require a special DCC controller. I built the scenery over a month and also the controller pretty much from scratch. I'm quite pleased with the end result which tries to focus on the train running through a landscape, rather than cramming as much track in as possible. It came out pretty well.