Celebrations

the kids skiing

David skiing

Snow shoeing a bit like walking with tennis rackets on your feet!

The kids got those fleecy blankets with sleeves Isaac and Josh look like Yoda & Obi-wan Kenobi.

Christmas Eve market was a big success except a little mix up over an order! A family asked if I made Christmas Puddings but as they need refrigerating and 6 hours steaming I said no but they came back later and begged me to make one for them. I agreed as I had made my own which made 3 bowls full, a friend at church heard I had relented and also asked for one and that should have left 1 for us. A bloke came early to collect the first pudding, our friend from church collected the second then just before closing another lady came to collect hers!!!!! I don't know who the first person was but hey they got a pudding and I had to send David home to wrap ours to sell. Guess what I was doing in the afternoon?!!!

Our Christmas Eve service was lovely and a fitting reminder of the real reason for Christmas.

Harriet got a DSi with a game and has been taking lots of photos of us all and feeding her farm animals on it. Josh got a Xbox live and an Xbox game. Isaac's present was a total surprise for him, an incubator for him to hatch eggs (we meant hen's, turkey's or geese but he's looking into terrapins and snakes!!!!- no way) David got a blu-ray DVD player and I got a new food mixer as mine from England is making very strange noises and not actually doing much anymore.

Our Christmas dinner was very English with turkey, roasted parsnips & potatoes, mashed potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cranberry & bread sauce, pigs in blankets and cauliflower cheese, stuffing etc. It took some finding to get all the ingredients as they don't have pigs in blankets and their sausages are more like huge German ones, stuffing is a stove top packet mix so no paxo for us but real sausage stuffing and bread sauce has never been heard of! Gravy is very different too very white. Rich, Jen & the girls came for tea and stayed over till Boxing day afternoon playing games and generally having fun and eating too much. We skyped family over Christmas which was nice too.

There was another storm warning for Boxing day onwards, it hit late Boxing day and Monday we woke to a good 8" of snow and it was still snowing. We dug out the car and enjoyed playing out in it then went off to the sales and to spend they day at Kevin and Dianne's. We had a lovely hot buffet with lots of tempting desserts. After supper (teatime) it was time to play some of us tried our cross country skiing skills out (in the dark) and others had fun racing round the top field on skidoo's (snow mobile) later we played games. We set off for home which took some time as it had been snowing all day and night and the ploughs were struggling to keep up. David turned into our drive and we found ourselves in a snow drift!!!! oooops we had to dig ourselves out which some kind neighbours helped with and get a space cleared off road big enough for the car overnight. It was fun unloading everyone and everything from the car and walking through drifts some up to our waist home in the dark storm. This morning the kids and Steve made snow forts, we cut more wood and dug the car out again!

We went to Rich and Jen's to practise snowshoeing and cross country skiing in their garden and woods. It is harder than it looks but thankfully the snow is soft! Tomorrow the Phillip's come to Yoho and we are hoping to go to an ice hockey game on Thursday if we can get tickets.