Thanksgiving in Winthrop

We spent Thanksgiving with my sister Cynthia and her family who live in Winthrop.  Having a sister just 4 hours away is a major bonus to living in Washington.  Especially when that sister has a daughter just 2 weeks older than Esther, and she lives in a place with this view of the Cascades from her family room.  Can we say gorgeous?  I was literally inside the house when I took these pictures of the deer that came up for a morning snack. 

 Harriet and Esther played amazingly well together, mostly playing with the light switches, jumping, calling each other's names "Esser!" and "Harri-eh!" or just yelling, and playing with the toy animals.  Harriet is quite the little firecracker and it was delightful getting to know her fun personality.  She is going to be a great friend.

 A neighbor brought over a refrigerator box for the kids to play with. As you can kind of see, much creativity ensued that involved lots of paint and eating various meals inside the box, passed via a small hole in the roof.  All five kids somehow managed to fit inside along with various furniture and toys.  So fun.

The Feast:

Emil, Joshua, Marta, Thomasin

Cynthia & Thomasin

 Esther snuggling up to Marta one morning.  We spent a lot of time by that fire, because it was quite cold up there, and on our last morning we woke up to...

 SNOW!

 We drove up the pass to where the road was closed.  The oldest 3 kids (Thomasin, Marta, and Emil) put on their cross country skis and the rest of us trudged along the road next to a creek.  It was absolutely lovely...but Esther, being the Carolina girl that she is, wasn't such a fan of the cold.

And that is about what the road looked like when we were driving home!