Here's a collection of family photos taken this winter before we went off to Spain.

This is me, Johanna, standing on the overlook near our apartment. We are renting the top floor of a spanish house in the old village of Nerja...it's really comfortable and has a big terrace on the roof which looks over the village. We have a nice kitchen and satellite television and all the comforts of home (better actually) and no woodpile and no snow to shovel. Tom likes to cook so we walk out to the supermarket every day and buy interesting food and make our meals at home. And decent wine costs less than three dollars a bottle. What a holiday!!!

some of the Zomers family are not in Canada right now but are on the Costa del Sol in Spanje. This is the town Nerja, where Tom and Joanne are spending the month of February. No need for an outdoor furnace here. It's about 18 degrees at eleven a.m on Feb 6...some clouds over the mountains but the air is warm and some other foolish people are even swimming in the Mediterranean.

It's definitely winter now in Eganville. Here is Martien driving a tractor into the warm shop. Installing the outdoor furnace has been the big project around the farm for the past few weeks. Tony was off to Montana for three days to go snowmobiling in Yellowstone Park and Chris and Jason will be going to Florida to Disneyworld in April. We are making some plans to have a party for Oma and Opa in June and of course there is Diana's wedding coming up on Aug 4.

Martien is pretty pleased with how the whole furance adventure turned out...now he has to go renovate the bathroom in Mary's house before the new owners move in...and then it will be time to start building his own house. Henrietta and Chris are both taking a day off so we could go visit Oma and Opa before Joanne and Tom left to go to Spain on Feb 1.

Oma is sitting in her new rocking chair which we got her for Christmas and Bert is checking to see that there is really no fire in the woodstove. As you can see someone who still doesn't believe it, has hung socks in the cold oven to dry.

Although it is a very cold day with temperatures only -16 Celcius, we are sitting in the kitchen without the woodstove burning because our clever brothers have built and installed an outdoor furnace that heats both the shop and the house. All of us except for Tony, gathered up at the farm to see for ourselves what a warm house in winter is like....we decided we could all move back in with Oma and Opa and enjoy the warmth.