I've finally sat down to dedicate some time to blogging about our Christmas season! This first block of pictures shows events from the end of November to Boxing Day. At the end of November Duane and I spent an evening at Center Street Church enjoying the Rocky Mountain College choir & orchestra's Christmas concert, Behold. It was excellent...as always. This year, with a new director (Andrew Love!) things seemed slightly different...but it was enjoyed nonetheless! Duane and I spent only one evening together doing our Christmas shopping during the beginning of December, and the rest of the time we just went out on our own when we could! Before we did our shopping, though, we tried out a Thai restaurant that has now become a favorite...Thai Boat. Service and food are both excellent, and we've been back a couple times.
I don't remember what day it was, early to mid-December anyway, but we finally took an evening off and spent it decorating the house. There were many times when I would have liked to do it on my own, but thought Duane should help too :) During the tree set-up, we had an unfortunate accident; the top of the tree broke! While trying to stuff the metal pole for the top section through the metal pole for the middle section, it got slightly bent and eventually (while trying to fix it) got broken! Once the tree was up and fully decorated it had a pretty obvious lean. It looked pretty sad, I thought. We just made sure the lean was towards the window, so that when you looked at it from the front it wasn't as obvious. I took it down the other day and hauled it to the alley for the garbage man! Good riddance. I hope to get a real tree next year...although our plans to travel to the warmth of New Zealand and Australia maybe negate the need for a tree. We'll have to see, I guess!
Also during mid-December our church held its annual Christmas banquet. It was delightful, as always, and we had to get our annual "friend picture" with Kristen and Jon Klok. Duane also did a quick, just-for-fun photo-shoot with a few of our friends while we were there. What fun!
One evening shortly before Christmas, we were invited over to Mike and Karen's place for dinner. These are the wonderful folks that I work for two nights a week, looking after their 3 precious kidlets. I love them to bits! We ordered in Chinese and sat around on the floor in the living room talking, laughing and eventually opening gifts. We had a great time, and I'm still stunned that they bought me an awesome winter MEC sleeping bag!! Thanks guys! The kids made sure they broke it in for me while we were there...playing in it, drooling on it, and baby barfing on it. Yup, it's ready for the backcountry now! We had a riot! What special people.
Christmas Eve was spent out in Dalum (near Drumheller) with the awesome Hendrickson family. We picked up Benjamin from the Calgary airport and had a nice drive out with him, and then spent time playing hockey (well, the boys did) before the two Candlelight services. Mr. Hendrickson is the pastor of two small-town churches, and I was asked to sing special music with Megan and Aaron at both! It was actually fun...not so sure why I was nervous! The first service in Hussar was probably a bit more nerve-wracking only because we weren't sure when we were supposed to go up, but we did alright. We also realized after that we weren't mic'd! Whatever, the church was small. As soon as that service was over, we literally raced out of the church to get back to Dalum for their service! I have no photo proof that I sang because Duane forgot at the first service(after I specifically asked him to!), and he got to the second service late and couldn't get a seat where I was sitting, therefore couldn't get to my camera. How sad. The second service went much better, as I was more sure of myself and we moved our ghetto blaster further behind us so we could hear IT properly and the congregation could hear US properly. Oh, and we had the mic working this time! Yay! All in all, it was a nice evening at church, and then we spent some family time eating, chatting, opening gifts, eating some more, and playing some music. We love those guys! We drove back to Calgary that night so we could have our own Christmas celebration the next morning. I guess I shouldn't call it a celebration...we slept in! Ah, how I love sleeping.
Anyway, we eventually got up and opened our gifts and made a mess of our living room. It was good times, and Duane got me a keyboard!! Woohoo!! So exciting...even though I haven't really touched it too much! We set it up that afternoon, and played around on it a bit, but the family came the next day so there wasn't too much opportunity. I'm really rather surprised that dad didn't play around on it! And if you noticed in one of the pictures, I'm opening my stocking while laying down on the couch with my lower back covered in a bag of frozen veggies. I don't remember if I've mentioned it in a previous blog, but I was out for the Christmas holidays on Worker's Comp with a sprained back. I know I've told most of you in person, but that's a picture of what I looked like and how I spent most of my days. Laying down...not doing anything. As of Wednesday this week, I was cleared from WCB and am now able to go back to full duties at work when school starts on the 7th.
Speaking of family, my family arrived from Abbotsford, BC and from Whitewood, SK on the evening of the 26th. We spent most of that day tidying up for their arrival and turning our small home into a house of beds. Honestly, that's what it seemed like. The only rooms in our house that didn't have people sleeping in them were the kitchen and bathroom! We decided during the week that 7 people and a dog is WAY too much for a 900 sq. ft. home!! Ay yi yi!! Normally I don't mind all of my family in one place for long periods of time but this time, for some odd reason I was SO bothered by all the commotion and unfortunately didn't enjoy myself as much as I wanted to. I still had a good time though! I think it was because I was hosting...and I'm not so into that. On the 27th, after sleeping in a bit, my family all hauled into the livingroom/bedroom and opened gifts. That was fun, and again it looked like a tornado had gone through the place when we were finished! That evening we all decided to go out for dinner so I didn't have to do anything...or maybe it was just so we could all get out of the house :) How lovely.
On the morning of the 28th we went to the airport to pick up my cousins who returned from a year in Nepal! It was fun to be there to welcome them all home. Duane and Kev had a photo shoot that day, so Duane wasn't able to come. We spent the rest of the day shopping for food stuff, baking for the family party, and making lasagna for dinner! After the shoot, Kev joined us for the yummy dinner. I don't think we've ever had 8 people around our tiny kitchen table. I should have taken a picture.
I just noticed that this Picasa thinger cuts off bits of some of the pictures! That means that Duane doesn't have a head in the picture of him and our Christmas tree...oops! I may also have lost a Hendrickson in their family picture too...
Thank goodness we didn't cut off anyone in this set! Oh...it cut off mom's head!The next couple of days were spent organizing everyone's things to take home, cleaning up and watching movies. Early morning on the 31st Duane and I drove mom, dad and Jody to the Greyhound depot to catch their bus back to Abby. It was freakin' early considering the entire time I've been on holidays I've been sleeping in until AT LEAST 11! We found out later that they didn't even get on the bus they were supposed to because it was too full, so they were sent on one over an hour later! We had them there for around 6:45 to catch their 7:15 bus, and they eventually left around 8:30. Sucky!! We drove back to the house and had breakfast with Sherri and Joe before they left around 11. Once they were out, we did a super quick tidy of the house to make it seem like a house again, and then we did a bit of running around before leaving for Airdrie for lunch. We had a great steak lunch there with Kevan, Leah and Jenna before we took off for Edmonton for the evening's festivities. What a busy day! Actually, while we were in Airdrie we were pretty relaxed and didn't do much other than eat :) Jenna and Leah left for Etown before Duane, Kevan and me, and we met up with them at Julie and Lowell's. There was no room for me in the car 'cause Jenna got a keyboard for Christmas too, and she had to put it in the backseat. The drive was uneventful and we got to the Taylor's in plenty of time for lots of food and partying :) We played guys vs. girls Catch Phrase most of the night, and then all of us piled onto the Etown LRT to head out for the fireworks. It was quite fun! We all decided (all 13 of us) to walk back to the apartment after the fireworks...and while skipping along, arms linked, we surrounded a group of unsuspecting partyers singing "Happy New Year!" I'm sure they thought we were crazy, intoxicated kids...but we weren't! Well, maybe the crazy part! It was so much fun wandering the streets of Edmonton with loads of friends :) Eventually the party wore down and we all left around 3:30ish. Our group headed over to Jenna's house for the night and got to sleep around 4am and didn't manage to wake up until 11. I was forced awake, as I wasn't feeling well and was warm and cozy in my MEC sleeping bag! Once we were all up and around, we went out to find a Ricky's for breaky...no luck. The one we did find was a half hour wait time and we were hungry! So we trotted across the street to Timmy's instead and decided to go for breakfast in Red Deer. By the time we go to Red Deer, however, it was more like lunch time and we were only able to find a Tony Roma's that was open...so we had lunch and headed back to the city.
I think that's about all I can come up with at this point, and if I think of anything I've missed I'll have to blog later!
~K~
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