Christmas & Happy New Year

Wow, how time flies, it is New Years Eve already. We had a wonderful Christmas and I thought I would share a few pictures with you.

First is our little tree. Good thing we went up the week before to get a tree, because it snowed nicely for Christmas, but meant we could not go up on the mountain. Bryce and Tristan had a blast playing in the snow, sledding, jumping in drifts and building forts. Rocky was so happy to have children to play with.




















Because of the very recent remodel we still have things that are out of place (or still in their old place, lol). We decorated around the old stuff. Samantha did all the decorating, it is always fun to work with someone else's decorations. She keep saying "this is going home with me".

Not having a mantel we decided to use the old closet shelf to hang the stockings, and cloths pinned the beautiful card to the garland. See there are the old closet poles, grin.
To see how this room looked just days before go to my Wyoming blog...here















Christmas morning brought lots of fun gifts, but not before the coffee (or cocoa) and cinnamon rolls were made, which is a family tradition, designed to make the morning last longer. We also take turns opening gifts so everyone can see what the others got instead of just ripping into the pile. Depending on how many are together it can take an hour or more.















This is Miss Mew's first Christmas and I am very surprised at how good she has been with the tree, given her personality, I figured she'd be up in the tree and attacking the ornaments, but she didn't. She did check things out but she was very good.......I did catch her batting at one ornament, and chewing on the tree but that is about it.




























Samantha and the boys made ornaments for me. I can not find my ornaments anywhere so they made me new ones. This darling set of trees are the cutest, and made from scrapbook paper and little clay pots, I just love them.





















The wreath turned out so pretty and just a few of my snowman collection.




















Speaking of snowmen. This is the one that Bryce and Tristan made the day before they left for home. We had such a fine snow storm a day or two earlier, with about 10 inches to play in, with nice 2 foot deep drifts.




















On Sat after Christmas we went up to Cody to do some shopping. Samantha and I found some fun treasures, here are mine. We also enjoyed lunch at the Erma Hotel, which was built by Bufflo Bill Cody. We had planned on going on Friday after Christmas but were a bit snowed in.















We sure had a wonderful time together, Andy did alot of the cooking (ya). The guys went out bunny hunting several times and did not come home empty handed. Tristan loves to eat rabbit, and begged to go out again, at which time Bryce shot his first rabbit. Both boys are going to be hunters I think, which makes Papa very happy. They also all did some crafting projects out in the wood shop, they spent a couple afternoons out there making different things.
Samantha and I enjoyed our time together, it had been a year since we have been together, we did a little bit of stitching, too. We spent an afternoon making soaps with the boys, they enjoyed making different shapes, colors and smells.

The house is very quite and "big" without the gang here, Kirk and I are still getting used to that and the dogs and cats are rattling around also, they miss the kids.

We were in hopes all of our kids could come for Christmas, but alas it was not to be. We are looking forward to their planned visits this coming summer.

For New Years we will go down to the Paintrock Inn for primerib dinner and fellowship with friends here in town.

We send our wishes to you and yours for a very HAPPY NEW YEAR, may God bless you richly in everyway.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!