We had a very renovations and virus-filled Christmas, with nary a Christmas tree to be seen. On the plus side, our house was a welcome island of serenity in a world overwhelmed with Christmas-related exuberance. On the minus, nostrils clogged with sawdust are not terribly festive.
The Christmas train came to visit though, and so we went to see the track-side excitement.
And some of the usual trailside decorations popped up as well.
Christmas Day followed the by now fairly traditional pattern of Alex being at work, and the Moosling and I hanging out at home opening a few presents. The difference this year being that no-one was sick, and the boy was actually keen on the whole presents thing. Although when I told him that the Ho Ho had brought some presents, he was a little dubious. On arriving upstairs he declared: “Where is the Ho Ho? Ho Ho gone! *points out window* No, was Mama. Mama did presents.” So that didn’t last long.
So there was the donning of the festive apparel (new Toy Story t-shirts, amongst others), and the eating of the chocolate frog, followed by the running-around-getting-ready-to-go-skiing. After driving in with others, we caught the gondola up to Sunshine Village, and the Moosling went to hang out in daycare for a couple of hours (quite happily, as there was scary wind outside). I got a couple of hours skiing in, and was not terribly sad to have to stop at midday, as it really was a bit windy and miserable despite being theoretically fairly warm.
The afternoon was spent cooking, and being sprayed with the water pistol which the unthinking Mama had gifted the small child. And then came the eating of the tasty food, the setting fire to the pudding, and the going home early to bed, as it had been quite a long day.
The next day brought about the testing of the full body climbing harness, and the discovery that it certainly works quite well for swinging at any rate.
And so we did our bit to contribute to halting the spread of the deadly green menace.
For the first time since we’ve been in Canada, we got a real, genuine, not-made-out-of-newspaper-or-a-stack-of-old-tins Christmas tree. It smells of tree and has covered the house in pine needles, even if it is only sparsely decorated with home-made cinnamon stars (although now we have a rock-climbing Santa and a telemarking Santa to fill in the gaps a little).
We spent the traditional morning at the ski hill – and it snowed! And it was really warm, continuing the trend of this winter.
Unfortunately just as the flakes were getting lovely at fat and soft, I had to head home to get some cooking done. The offspring thinks the gondola ride is pretty cool though.
Christmas dinner was tasty, and silly hats were worn.