Off on the Adventure

It sort feels like cheating to be writting this having arrived back in Santa Fe, but anyway on the 27 of December our troup set off for an adventure. Our first destiation was Durango and a steam train ride to return Santa to the north pole. We sang carols, had hot chocolate and nougat chocolates on the train and santa gave all the children a bell. There was plenty of snow on the ground in Durango but it was the next day, after finding a wonderful french bakery, an indestructable coffee pot and some hiking boots, that we encountered our first snow storm. We were driving down the hill from Mesa Verde where we'd had a picnic lunch (discovered just how good that bakery was) and visited the Spruce Treehouse for a Ranger talk when the snow hit, and the sunset, a slow drive down the hill. We were heading for Moab Utah that night so assumed we'd be later than we thought but we out drove the storm and found our house in Moab without any trouble.

So this was how Xmas happened

I know, its the end of January and Im finally writting about Christmas ! It was buzy! We had all our travellers arrive from their far flung residences with various amounts of complication. It seemed simplier to arrive from NZ rather than Canada.
Christmas Eve involved baking cookies at a friends place, and icing them which the children had a lot of fun with. Pierre created a feast involving Teriyaki pork and chicken after which we all went to Canyon Road for the Farolitto walk. We had hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows on a bonfire one of the places had. We returned home and some of us went to the neighbourhood party, a bonfire down the road.
Christmas day dawned with stockings for the kids, we had Breakfast then presents as we had others coming to join us fo lunch. The menu was prawn cocktails, raspberry glazed ham, stuffed turkey breast, passole and beans followed by christmas pudding. Passole is a New Mexican dish, a special type of corn is boiled with pork and green chilli is added, its very tasty.