Christmas In Penticton, BC 2013

When you have a mom that is 90 years of age, you want to try to put in as much time with them as possible before they leave you forever.  We decided on our way back from the United States that we would spend this Christmas with Chris's Mom since she would not be traveling out of town for Christmas this year.

We decided to leave our gifts for each other behind until we returned home.  But we would at least have them wrapped and ready for our return....:-).

Not wanting to set out on the road Christmas Eve, we got a head start and left our home on the 23rd of December.  The sky was magnificent. The road was not overly crowded since we started out a couple days earlier than some others.

I love the scenery along the Sea To Sky Highway.  It doesn't seem to matter what time of year it is.  It is always beautiful.

We traveled along and was enjoying the ride with music, singing and talking when we came to an area just near Princeton, BC.  To our amazement, we came upon the largest herd of Elk I had ever seen.  It was so large that we did a U-turn in the highway to go back and see about snapping this picture.  There was another vehicle behind us that had the same idea.

Having made it through Manning Park without using chains on the tires, we traveled on and saw the beautiful snow capped mountains that lay between Hedley and Keremeos.  The big white "band" in the back ground is actually fog!  I was getting a bit nervous, but I didn't say anything....

Whew!!  We made it...haha.  After 6 hours of travel, son was finally reunited with mother.....:-)

Chris and his brother decided that they wanted to cook.........hummmm.....

Mean while, I was checking out the Christmas tree in the corner.  When a person turns 90, you have no idea what they might need at that age that they don't already have.  So, we came up with the idea of giving her recent pictures of the grand children to replace much older ones.  Unfortunately, we did not have all of the pictures with us and had to mail some out after Christmas for her to enjoy.

Christmas day came and we had to make calls to all of the family members that would be expecting to hear from us in some form or another.  Here is Chris on the phone with our family in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

I was snacking on some kind of Norwegian desert with almond paste in the center.  Not too bad.  No, I didn't eat the whole plate!  But I did have one piece....:-).

And decided to see what the view was like from the deck window....

This is looking to the left of the deck....

Laura who is known for her fierce independence was busy setting the table for dinner....

I starting missing seeing my own table decorated back in Oklahoma and in Germany where I purchased all of my silver and crystal just for special occasions as this.

Chris put a snack tray together so large that I wasn't sure there would be room for dinner, but it was still early.  So, I guess this was lunch.

 The snack trays started coming fast and furiously!  Oh dear......

It was getting serious in there!

The boys decided that they would do the whole meal.  Now, I tried to assure them that I was quite capable of handling at least the veggies....but they insisted! Chris decided that he wanted me to relax for a change.   Works for me!......:-)  Big brother took on the turkey and mom was fussing over the sink.

Next thing you know, the turkey was being carved and we were ready to dig in.........

Seeing as I had been given all that time to "rest", I was ready to eat!

I helped to bring the food to the table grateful for yet another year that we had some how made it through inspite of a broken water main, nearly frozen pipes, family illness and other challenges.  We were ready to step into another year very soon.  This would be the largest meal before we found ourselves in 2014.

Somebody was quite pleased at the way things had turned out with the meal. The master of the meal, well...and his brother of course....:-).

Even the sky was showing gratitude with a wonderful display of color.....

orange and blue........

and sometimes giving the appearance of a picture that had been done with a broad stroke brush..

 And then it started to shift into a pink color....very slowly...

And then it was pink!

 Another year, another Christmas.  We woke up the day we were to leave to more snow.  But all was well.  If you look closely, you can see the snow specks in the dark evergreen trees falling.

With the mission accomplished, there was nothing left to do but snap one more picture before hitting the road.

We hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to a wonderful New Year!