It's a beautiful day.

Welcome, Blog Around the World clickers!
As promised, here's the view from my place:

The morning dawned cold, with a light frost coating the ground and the wooden planks of our back decking. A dense fog hung heavily in the cool morning air.

The sun rose slowly, peeking through the trees to cast long fingers of light over the frosted grass. The swing and the sandbox sat empty.

The bare branches of the trees overlook the last of the soybeans, still in the fields. The weather has been too wet to allow the local farmers to finish their harvest. My neighbor's house is there, just beyond the field, shadowed in fog.

This is morning in Illinois.

Inside our house, a little boy still clothed in pajamas curls up in his momma's bed to watch Bob the Builder. He eats a granola bar and sips his juice while Momma sneaks outside to take photos. Daddy is already in the woods dressed in camouflage, carrying a shotgun; it's the first day of deer season.

All is quiet here, but for the filtered strains of "Can we fix it? Yes, we can!" Soon we will be hearing the first cracks of gunfire. Soon there will be triumphant men, flushed with cold and adrenaline. Soon there will be venison for the chili. Soon it will be winter in Illinois.

But you must be on your way. Click here to continue on this journey. Your next stop is Cyndi's World, my neighbor to the west, in Kansas, USA. Tell her I said, "Hello." :)