It's over and it's only 363 days left till Christmas - Phew!

And to make it official down came the tree today.  I don't know why but this year, I had the urge to de-decorate the day after Christmas but I waited until today.  I guess it's because on new year's day I'm flying with the kids down to L.A. for the 6 days and I didn't want to wait until we got back on the 6th.  Not to mention I had some able bodied hands to help with the task - namely Pap and the kids.  So the living room is kind of back to normal and looking a little sparse.  It will take some re getting used to though.  Still the outdoor christmas lights are still up and my intent is to get those down on New Years day first thing so we can still have those up for new years eve as we have some friends coming over for that event.

Anyway what about Christmas you say?  Well it was actually very nice and somewhat to our amazement (and every one else in Portland) it actually snowed. Yes you did hear that correctly - it snowed and hard.  Even stuck to the ground for a short period of time until the inevitable rain returned.  Morgan was so excited that she came screaming down the stairs yelling "SNOW" at the top of her lungs... and went out with Darren and Milo for a brief walk in the white fluffy stuff.  

But I should back up a little further to Christmas Eve which was spent getting last minute stuff things done and even had drinks with a few of our neighbors.   

Then the kids got ready for Santa and as you can see he was very happy to receive the goodies they left behind so much so that he filled their

 stockings to the brim, but 

actually in his hurry left his main presents for them on the door step outside and not under the tree so the kids found their presents outside the front door on Christmas morning much to their delight.  We were all thoroughly spoiled and received WAY too many goodies.  Darren surprised me with the new Itouch IPod that really wanted as well as a bunch of new clothes.  The kids got almost all the things they wanted on their list which really seems a little absurd but then there are so many relatives that like to purchase gifts for them.  This year I'm not sure they even could pick out a favorite item. 

I was surprised by a really HUGE hard drive for my pictures 1 terabyte - I didn't even know you could get hard drives that big.... with many thanks to both Mum, Pap and especially Michael as I am told he was the instigator of this gift.  It will be most useful to dump all my accumulating photos that I take on a daily basis.  On top of that we all got mounds of movies that we are still watching.  Most of which Pap hasn't seen so he was delighted to view them with us.  And not to be outdone by all the family, Darren prepared a delicious beef wellington with all the trimmings.. including roasted parsnips and carrots.  We promptly finished off our meal with a homemade New York Style cheesecake baked by Darren from scratch.  And I don't have a single photo to prove it other than our rather large round stomachs. - And I'm not photographing those I do have my limits you know.