Christmas 2007

Matty and I had quite an exciting and busy week around Christmas. Matty's Granny and Uncle Marc came into town and we baked and cooked for days getting ready for Christmas dinner. We made a feast that could feed 10+ folks for the 3 of us -- cookies, pies, turkey, filling, cranberry relish, apple sauce, sweet potato souffle, etc., etc.!!!



And Matty got lots of quality time with her Uncle "M" before the rest of the family came into town.






On Wednesday we went to PA to visit Nana, Aunt Marie, Aunt Jane, Havila, and Emily. We only stayed for a few hours, but it was a lot of fun. Then on Thursday, Granny brought Haley down to our house to spend the weekend, and Ron joined us a few hours later. Every day was stuffed full of fun adventures and lots of good food :) And, of course, Haley got a lot of great presents (like barbies, polly pockets, a sleeping toy puppy ("princess doggie"), books, games, and clothes)!!!



Our first adventure was to my local garden shop to visit their winter village and train depot that they had set up. Haley loved it and wanted to go back for more and more.





We also visited the National Zoo. Haley loved all of the animals...except for the elephant because it trumpeted quite loudly when we were visiting it. She said her favorite animal was the lion.






We had quite the interesting visit with the tigers. One of the tigers was wrestling with a large log and trying to get it out of the water for probably at least 10 minutes. When we walked up to get a closer view, it started to stalk us. He stared us down and was trying to find any way he could to cross the moat and get to us...he even tried to walk on the little 2 inch piece of concrete along the edge of the enclosure...Even the group of people next to us exclaimed "that tiger is trying to get those people!" Here's a pic from the encounter:



Another thing we did was take a tour of the "Lights on the Bay" at Sandy Point State Park, but I don't have any pictures because I was driving! They have a little 1-2 mile loop of light exhibits, from christmas things like santa and trees, to local culture like crabs, to aliens!!! It was quite fun.

But out of all of our adventures, Haley's favorite part of her trip was dinner at Pirate's Cove on the water in Galesville, Md. Dad's sister's and their husbands come to visit and we went to one of my favorite restaurants. We sat right next to the water and had fabulous food. Haley loved it because they had a life-sized replica of a pirate that she couldn't get enough of! Here she is in her pirate get-up (a napkin tied around her head!):







And one final bonus shot...Here's Haley with her banana pudding that we made. We made tons of goodies (and Haley helped with all of them), like french toast and blueberry coffee cake. But the banana pudding was her favorite!