Christmas 2012 was excellent!

Another perfect Christmas celebration has come and gone. I am grateful for being a part of it. I drove to Jennifer and Scott’s place early Saturday, avoiding the storm that blew up late last week. It was just enough time to finish up the shopping and spend some great time with the boys.

I was just as glad to see that Don and Denise Alexander drove down from Westree, also to be with the family. They are Scott’s parents and they have perfected the art of hospitality. No wonder; Denise is originally from Timmins and Don is from Newfoundland. They can’t go wrong. 

Christine, Dimitrios and Victoria also arrived on Christmas Eve, making everything even nicer.

It was fun to see the boys since they have grown a lot since I saw them last, at Thanksgiving. I usually snap a photo of Vic, Tyler and Nathan every Christmas so it is fun to go back a few years to see how they’ve grown.

 Christmas morning was fun and it took no less than two hours to open all the gifts. I love see how much the kids still get excited by getting up before the adults and rushing to the living room to sneak a peek at the gifts.  I was pleased that Jennifer’s dog and cat, Buddy and Lucky, even managed to buy me a bottle of my favourite whiskey.

 Christmas Day was perfect; mild with a gentle snow fall. It was a nice lazy day (for me anyways). Denise and Jenn kept the kitchen going and we had a fabulous Christmas turkey dinner. We also enjoyed Denise’s clam chowder, with chunks of Atlantic codfish (that Don caught himself), scallops, shrimp, potato-codfish cakes, coconut shrimp, fried ravioli, lasagne roll-ups and mussels. Scott even had an amazingly good moosemeat chili con carne. To top it all off, we all spent the day eating the sweets and pastries made by Jennifer and Denise. Vic even went outside showing off her new Christmas pyjamas. The day got better for me when Neil called from Vancouver. How nice was that? He enjoyed the day with some friends on the west coast. He is working hard as usual, but it was just a perfect part of Christmas day to hear his voice.  We also enjoyed a full ping pong tournament in the garage that took up most of the afternoon and put a good dent in our beer stocks.  Tournament rules said if the other player hit your glass with the ping pong ball, you need to take a drink. Good thing we got some exercise!

Life doesn’t get much better eh?