Christmas 'Present'

Merry Christmas everyone! This is Christmas Present as opposed to 'Past'. I like the past and reminisce about it a lot - the long gone past and the recently past! Both are great. This year though we made a new 'past' with a different Christmas. We were not with our daughter and family but instead we were with John's niece and husband where they live in Osoyoos on the mountaintop! What a beautiful view!

John's sister from the Island and her husband joined us and there was just the six of us - adults!

We did a creative thing for gift-giving. On Christmas Eve day, we went to the Home Hardware store in Osoyoos. It is huge and has everything!! We only gave ourselves 1.5 hours to pick out gifts for the other 5 of us to a maximum of $20 each! It could be one - $20 gift or 10 - $2 gifts! Our discretion. We then wrapped the gift and put them in the individual's stocking and it was 'from Santa'! Of course the fun of it all was also guessing who gave it to us! Most of the time, we got it right! What a hoot! No, pre-planning on what to get - just the pressure of the moment trying to find something - the 'right' something for that individual person! Maybe it was no pressure for the guys - but it sure was for me! In the end, it was all good fun and we all liked our gifts - both given and received!!

The weather was great. About -5 C and sunny as it had snowed the day before we got there. Lots of it! It was wonderful to go out for a hike with the group and Emmit - their 80 lbs bull dog! It took awhile for him to 'warm up to us' but in the end, we were ALL family!!

Our traditional Christmas dinner was on Christmas Eve and we did a number of courses over a long period of time: borscht soup; herrings with rye bread (I skipped that one); pyrogies with sour cream & onion buns; nalysnky (or wrapped crepes with cottage cheese), then our wonderful turkey with dressing and cabbage rolls. Or something in that order. It was nice to sit and have a break inbetween the different servings. Made for a longer relaxed evening.

Christmas morning was fun as I said with the gift giving. We all got such unique things! Really different than how we have done things in the past.

Emmit even got a few gifts and enjoyed the special day as well.

 On Christmas Day we went into town to a restaurant which had Turkey Dinner with all the trimmings. It was nice to just sit and talk and not worry about all the prep being done! 

With no young kids around, the boys did their best to entertain the girls with their crazy antics! They succeeded. It was a fun time. They also have a hot tub, so with the beautiful warm weather (only -5 or so), some people just had to get into the outside tub!!

It was a long drive there and we had some challenging road conditions and then, as I said, it snowed the night we arrived. On our way home, it was just 'lots of snow' on the road as we went back through Kelowna and then onto Revelstoke / Golden / Banff. We made it home in one day on our return. Some views of the mountains are gorgeous.

Blessings to all of you this Christmas and hope it was as wonderful for you as it was for us. Looking forward to a great 2017.