The Holiday season and more!

As you can see, I have added a number of pictures from Dec 24 onwards. I am sure that for the most part, you can figure out which ones are from Xmas Day and which ones are from our Nova Scotia trip. We had great holidays. Having Xmas at home was great. We were pretty much ready early on, which meant that from Winter Solstice on, we had lots of time just to hang out, decorate cookies (with lots of sprinkles) and do crafts. We had such a gorgeous Christmas Day and enjoyed a midday walk to the river and a post dinner tobogganing trip.

On the 26th we spent far too long at the airport but finally got to Nova Scotia. While there were 3 mini storms while we were there, we really enjoyed the milder temperatures, not to mention the large number of adults to provide non stop child entertainment. We welcomed people to the house by indicating where they could join Jason (and Keira) in the imaginary games of aliens or deep sea scuba diving to the shipwreck (obviously building on the earlier Ottawa-based game of sea rescue in the snow on our front yard where we were repeatedly rescued from the giant squid.)

We had a great trip to the south shore to visit Grandpa and Iris where the kids played non-stop. We also had a great new year's eve celebration with the whole gang. From Jason's perspective it was a hot dog party but the rest of us also enjoyed oysters and fondue. We then had a big dance party blow out with Grandad's new Elton John concert DVD. The kids found the combination of tv and music amazing. Keira stripped naked much to the consternation of her uncles. Jason busted some moves and said as he went for bedtime stories with granddad:" Granddad we had quite a party."

We arrived back in Ottawa in a freezing, blustering white out. There were no stores open except the local Indian grocery where we got the last milk but at least I wasn't the guy trying to figure out if the panneer being offered would meet his wife's request for cheese. Despite the difficulty of arriving to that, I am still sad for the rain that has taken away our lovely snow. There is a period in the Ottawa seasons that one should only have to endure once a year - the melting-snow-emerging old- dog-poop season. I hate it. Every year I hate it and this year I will likely experience it twice because I can't imagine more snow isn't around the corner.