Merry Christmas!

Since most of you will not be here at Christmas time to try to find the "pickle", I thought I would show you pictures of our inside Christmas decorations and have you search for a common theme in Barb focuses on.  Now what would that be?  I'll bet your first guess was right,  Nativities.  So your challenge is to tell me how many nativity scenes Mom used in this years Christmas decorating.  I have counted them and Mom has verified the count.  In the spirit of the pickle the first one to correctly identify the correct number gets a prize and it won't be a box of Graham Crackers.  Each picture is labelled so you might want to list them by picture.  This same challenge applies to the Grandkids, except they can work together by family and  the family who comes closest get a prize.

Since we usually have two pickles, the second challenge is to be the first to list the people in our family (all 36 of us) who do not have Christmas stockings hanging up at our house by the Christmas tree downstairs.

Have fun.

Brian's office

Hallway

Bar counter by kitchen

Left bookshelf in family room

Fireplace

Right bookshelf in family room

Family room

Living room (south east view)

Barb's office

Master bedroom

Table at bottom of stairs

Bookshelf in ping pong room

Stockings by downstairs Christmas tree

Cabinets in TV room downstairs

Bookshelf in downstairs TV room

Downstairs bathroom

Down stairs Christmas tree

Grandma's (toy) room

Living room (northeast view)

Sewing room

Merry Christmas

What?!   No one is crying?!  Amazing!

We love our Christmas PJ's!

Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!

Christmas lights at Grandma and Grandpa's house

Since most of you won't be here for Christmas I thought I would share some of our Christmas fun with you through pictures.  This is part one:  Christmas Lights

First is our living room tree and window.

On the landing of the stairs leading to the basement is where Mr & Mrs Santa greet our guests.

Downstairs on the counter behind the "wittle" "yitto" kitchen is the Christmas village.  This year I added a water fall.  It is the dark area in the middle of the picture.  It is aluminum foil water falling into a mirror.

Next is the downstairs Christmas tree.

Now we go out in the back to see the tree Grandma decorated.  See did a great job.  It is my favorite tree.

Grandpa did this one.

This is the same tree with the water fall on the left and the cobble stone walk of fame in the middle.

This is a close up of the grandchildren cobble stone walk of fame.  Notice that just to the right the little windmill is also lit.

Now back inside are the lights in the family room window.  I use little suction cups to attach the lights to the window.

The lights in the master bedroom.

Outside are the lights on the west hill of the driveway.

Lights looking south from in front of the garage.

Front of the house.

Front including Narby's lights in front of their house.

This is our forest scene.  This year about half the lights on our15 year old Costco tree stopped working so I tore the tree apart and used many of the branches to create this lighted meadow.

Front porch.

View of Narby (left) and our house (right)  from Western Ave.  What people see as they drive up Maiden Lane.

This is a closer of just our house with my new and improved "Merry Christmas" lights.  Rather than manually  spelling out the words each year, after Christmas last year, I cut out the letters using two sheets of 4'x8'white rubber/vinyl board and then zip tied the lights onto it.  This year I simply had to put up the letters instead of spelling the whole thing in lights manually.  Much easier and much less time consuming and I think they look better.  The lights look much better in person than in pictures so any of you who would like to join Cassi & Caled are welcome to see the lights in person.

Have a very Merry Christmas!!!

Safari at Masi Mara Reserve in Kenya, Africa

A zebra is the first animal we saw as we entered the  reserve.  We stopped to take a lot of pictures.  Little did we know that just around the corner there were thousands more.

this is a Masi Warrior.  You can tell them by their bright colored red, yellow, gold and orange capes.  They are the only tribe allowed to carry weapons, so  they are used as security cards everywhere.

This is a group of cheetahs that just just killed a gazelle and are having their afternoon meal.

Cape Buffalo

Gazelles

My favorite African tree an acacia tree.

Goonie birds

Elephant

Pride of female lions.  We never found any male lions.

Rhinos

When zebra are young like the one on the left, they have brown stripes.  When they get older their stripes turn black.

Family of girrafes.

This may be hard to see, but is you look closing you will see a long line of wilde beasts running from right to left just below the blue sky line.  The picture just below is a close up of the same thing. Look at the line of dark animals in the center of the picture.  There were thousands of them running somewhere.

How close do we dare get to a female lion.  We got close enough to count the flies on its nose.

How many flies can you count on her face.  Good thing she wasn't hungry.

We saw lots of pretty colorful birds.

The hardest thing to get is a picture of a hippo.  They are stay in water until it is to dark to get a decent picture.

This is just a few of the 200 pictures we took at the Masi Mara Game Reserve.  Later I will share adventures we had at a second safari reserve.  Granpa