Christmas Day

Bret, Seth, and Kenna were able to come over for a Christmas brunch before going to Denver.  Mom made an egg casserole the night before and then bacon, biscuits, and homemade gravy (of course, I requested the biscuits and gravy :-)).  Debbie made a braided bread.  I love eating breakfast things like this but never make biscuits and gravy and rarely make bacon.  It’s so yummy, but so bad for you.Ethan with his cousins, Seth and Kenna, above, and with his grandmothers below.  This will possibly be the only time that he will be with both grandparents at the same time.This was the first time that Mom has been in CO.  Gary’s parents had thought about taking her to the mountains while she was here.  I’ve never seen the Rocky mountains in the winter, and Gary hasn’t in a long time, so we thought that Christmas Day would be ideal to go since it shouldn’t be so crowded and we didn’t have plans after the brunch.  Debbie ended up staying home while Kent, Gary, Mom, Ethan, and I went to Rocky Mountain National Park.   On the drive up the mountain we saw some bighorn sheep.  There were several rams in the group.  Though this picture needs some cropping and enlarging, it’s the only one that turned out of all of us.  If I wait until it can be cropped then this post won’t go up for several weeks. :-)We were surprised at how sunny and warm it was in the park.  We didn’t even need to wear our coats.  The interesting thing is that CO hasn’t had much snow so far this year, and western NC got a lot of snow on Christmas.  I think it may have been their first white Christmas in quite a while.We saw these elk while in the park.  I like how the sunrays are coming down on them in the picture above.  Below is the bull  that was in the group.

We were standing on the frozen, snow-covered lake at Bear Lake.  The sun had gone down behind the mountain by this time, so it was quite cold.On our drive home (outside of the park), there were quite a few elk on the side of the road.  I took this picture of a bull with the side mirror in the picture to show how close he was to the car.