Christmas 2008

This year Mike and I stayed in Vancouver for Christmas.

We're pretty happy with our decision given the extreme weather that Canadians experienced from coast to coast this year around the holidays.

Everyone I spoke with who traveled for the holidays talked of delays, cancellations, sitting on the tarmac and lost luggage.

One guy at work trying to go east sat through almost a day and a half of delays and cancellations before he just decided to stay home and had his tickets refunded.

So I decorated our place with a little artificial tree and the little decorations I've collected over the years.



The neighborhood was decorated too which is nice and I didn't have to worry about a green Christmas this year, no sir.

Vancouver received record snowfall which was obviously part of the travel issue. However the temperatures were warm and it was nice to see snow at Christmas.

Also given there is pretty much no infrastructure for snow removal, when it stormed on the 24th people were advised to just stay at home given the slow or canceled buses, dangerous roads and backed up sky train.

Also it is a lot of fun playing with the dogs in the snow.

They get so excited with it and they bounce around chasing snowballs and catching them in their mouth. Even grumpy Tala seems to be a nicer dog when surrounded by snow.

It really was a good time to stay off the roads though. People were getting stuck all over the place because there are just really no plows, especially not on main streets. There are no little side walk plows and businesses just hire people to come out with shovels to clear the sidewalk in front of their business so the sidewalks are really messy.
On Christmas eve we made ourselves a little dinner and we had some wine and Baileys and opened some of our presents a l'Acadien style.

We watched A Christmas Story, A Christmas Carol, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Miracle on 34th Street, etc.

The next day we were going to a potluck Christmas dinner at a friends house for all the "Christmas orphans" among our friends.



I decided to make six pates. I got the recipe from Raymond and let it cook over night.

The next day it tasted just like six pates according to Mike, but it seemed a little darker. I think I may have used too many cloves. Regardless everyone had some and seemed to really like it.

Thanks, Raymond, I don't think it is Christmas for Mike with out that dish.




Thanks everyone for all the nice things we had a great Christmas.

Here is me in my pink hoody from Mom and Dad with my Chance perfume from Mike. Mike also got me a nice pink bathrobe and binoculars.

We'll be taking them to Hawaii this week when we go to watch surfers, etc.

We finished opening our presents the next day.


Here is Mike. From me he got some good sunglasses, a new book bag and a nice bottle of scotch.

He's also already worn the clothes that Mom and Dad sent him, so thanks guys for that too :)

So we went over to our friends place.

One couple made eggnog from scratch with egg whites, ice cream and rum.

While we were waiting for the turkey to cook we had some chocolates, appies and this delicious eggnog.






Here is everyone enjoying their dinner, yum, yum.

We had turkey and all the fixins as well as cannelloni and six pates.

It was delicious. We were all too stuffed to have dessert, but we finished off with some special coffees.






Sometimes turkey makes you sleepy, so here is mike taking a break with his furry buddy.

After dinner we played some cards and board games and that was our Christmas.

We had a very Merry Christmas and I hope everyone else did too.