With only 3 days left in 2009 I thought I should write one last post for this year.
Ken and I always find the first Christmas season after being home in Scotland for Christmas hard. This year was no exception and, as I said in the previous post, I was a bit of a Grinch/Scrooge this year. However, by the time Christmas came I think we had improved. I had even managed to get stocking filler gifts for Ken on my third attempt of trying!
Christmas Eve both Ken and I worked as normal. For me, work was a very relaxing day and everyone who worked brought some food in so that we spent a lot of the day chatting and eating. The Health Unit decided to collect items for a local women’s shelter and I had the privilege of delivering the hamper with another friend from work. It was nice to be able to help out in that way.
When we got back from work, Ken and I were originally going to go for a snowmobile ride and have a campfire before coming home to eat some food and watch a movie. But when we got home we discovered Ken’s brother Jim and his wife had invited us over to their place to have a supper of appetizers with them. A different way to the spend the night, but still enjoyable. We still had time to come home and watch a Christmas movie.
Christmas Day we were up at 5.00 a.m. to start a video call with our family back home – a great way to be part of each other’s Christmas if you can’t be there in person. We spent a couple of hours online chatting, opening gifts, etc. and sharing Christmas with our family back home in Scotland. Lots of fun for sure, not the same as being there with them but almost as good. We decided to hang up and let them enjoy their brunch without seeing Ken and I’s drooling faces!!! We went to bed for a couple of hours before getting up again to enjoy chatting to my family back home again for another hour or so.
After chatting with the family we went out for a snowmobile ride together – it was fun. As soon as we got to the bottom of our backyard we spotted two elk running around. We turned off the snowmobile and watched them for a few minutes (needless to say, I didn’t have my camera with me or there would have been photos here of them). After they finally left, we continued with our ride. It was lots of fun and was amazing to be out in the bush and see all the beautiful surroundings.
When we got back I made some buns or our Christmas dinner with Kendra, Frank and family and friends in Dawson. As soon as they were made we hopped into the van and drove to Dawson. We had a great time, great food and great company for the rest of the day. Lots of food was eaten; memories and stories shared; games played and so much more. It was a fun day and we are thankful to Frank and Kendra for letting us share it with them.
On Boxing Day our friends from Fort St. John came with their daughter and son-in-law for a visit. The day had been planned as tobogganing, bonfire, meal, games, movie and popcorn. Unfortunately, it didn’t all go as planned! We got changed to go tobogganing right away. Ken got the komatik hooked up to the snowmobile and took Ben, Crystal and Rob down to the tobogganing hill while Isobel and I started walking there. The hill was a bit too steep for me to be brave enough to go down (anyone that knows me knows that I am a bit of a chicken when it comes to tobogganing). After everyone had gone down the hill once, Isobel and Crystal decided to try a double toboggan ride. Unfortunately, not the best decision. At the bottom of the hill there was a small drop and Isobel’s head flew backwards right into her daughter’s nose. Blood immediately started flowing. Ken drove everyone back to the house by snowmobile and komatik. After 15-20 minutes the blood had stopped flowing as much but a trip to the hospital was decided upon. After only being at our place for just over an hour they all got back into the truck and headed back to Fort St John. They definitely made the right decision as their visit to the hospital showed that Crystal’s nose was broken. Not a Boxing Day that will be forgotten quickly.
So with the change of plans Ken and I spent the night watching the bonfire (all the brush, etc. we had cleared up from the backyard this year), playing games, and watching movies. Still enjoyable but not quite the same.
This year Ken got me Beatles RockBand for the WII. Ever since playing Guitar Hero at Katrina and Colin’s last year I have considered getting either Guitar Hero or RockBand. So we got the Beatles RockBand because it was a great deal. We have had fun playing it the last few days, although playing the drums is a bit of a challenge because I don’t have the best hand foot coordination!!! He also got me lots of stocking fillers and a Roomba!!!
One of the gifts I bought Ken this year was a trailcam – it is a camera with night vision capabilities that is triggered by movement/raise in temperature in front of the camera that you put on trees, etc. to see where animals are moving, etc. So for a trial we put out in our backyard on Christmas Eve. On Boxing Day while we were waiting for our friends to arrive we looked outside and saw a couple of deer munching on the hay bales we had used for archery last summer – fortunately this was where we placed the camera and looked forward to getting close up photos of them. I also took some from our deck with my camera. An hour later I looked out and one of the deer had moved even closer, so I managed to go out on our deck – approximately 30 feet away from the deer – and take photos of it. Unfortunately, it was eating our saskatoon bushes so Ken decided to get on the snowmobile and scare them off. It was pretty neat to see them so close again and be able to take photos of them. I have attached photos I took and also photos from the trail cam – look like the deer decided to have breakfast, lunch, supper and late night snack at the hay as we had over 100 photos over the couple of days at various times showing the deer there. In the photos below, the ones that say Bushnell are a couple from Ken’s trail cam.
So that was our Christmas, how was yours??
