Christmas countdown

One of our Christmas Eve Day traditions is tracking Santa via NORAD's Santa Tracker. NORAD is a combined effort of the U.S. and Canada that watches over the skies of North America. Although under the command of Peterson AFB in Colorado Springs, NORAD is housed inside Cheyenne Mountain. I took this picture this morning. Cheyenne Mountain is pretty much in the center, the tall mountain at the end of the chain in the front of the photo. The latest word, however, is that NORAD will be vacating the Cheyenne Mountain facility and will begin operating out of Peterson.


Cheyenne Mountain is also home to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, famous for its giraffe program. Click here for the live giraffe cam! Additionally, Cheyenne Mountain is famous in a quirky sort of way for its Will Rogers Shrine, which we finally visited earlier this year. "Quirky" as Will Rogers is not buried there (but others are), and efforts to move Rogers's remains to this site were denied by his family.

I've finished wrapping presents and plan to work on getting both some baking and housecleaning done this morning. It's another gorgeous day outside too!