celebration.
Laura had been baking
and we had all been putting together a big breakfast, so we all sat down to a wonderful meal and a little later the kids worked on a gingerbread house
then we gathered at the tree to open the presents that the families were giving to each other.Mom's big surprise was a laptop
and webcam that all of us kids had pitched in on. It is really nice, and I love the webcam!Molly was just busy being too darned cute for words...
And Lucy was a princess in her new sweater from Auntie Kasie...
On Christmas Morning we opened the rest of the gifts.
Lucy was happy with everything...
John got a poker set, and a cell phone. He got a "Montana State" T-shirt from Mike and Deena, and he has a couple of other gifts waiting at home.
Brendan was sporting his new look, after he got this really cool hat from aunt Deena and uncle Mike, an Mp3 player and some comfy headphones.
Paul was very excited about the Megablocks set he got,
but the highlight of his day was when he opened the last book in the "Percy Jackson" series. He jumped up and started shouting "I got it! I got it!, I can't believe it!" It was very cute! And he almost finished it in one day.
The day after Christmas, Andrew and the boys and I went up the Elwha River a ways and took a very short hike up to Madison Falls...
It is so pretty, in spite of being very cold!
You can see the trees at the top that have washed down the stream and are waiting to fall. It will be very exciting...whenever it happens...
This is a huge Fern that caught my eye.
The day after that we went up to the...
Just east of Joyce, behind my Uncle's house. What a wonderland he lives in!We started out on the road and then started climbing.
Lucy came along for the ride... and we hiked almost to the top.
We saw so many interesting things...Deep woods...
Huge, "Old Man" trees, that make me think of the character "Treebeard" from "The Two Towers".
Somebody's bad luck, from LONG, long ago...
And we just had a wonderful day, all the way around. Can't wait to get another hike in very soon!
