Holidays...

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to everyone! Yes, I've been lazy once again, and have not updated in quite a while. I did take some pictures, though! See? We had snow! I made this dude, and he was smiley. The whole inner harbour has frozen over! I put up a folder of a whole bunch of snow pics here. And then, of course, Christmas. I remembered I had a fondue pot, so last minute we quickly put together a fondue with Hank and Suko. What fun! I also learned that salmon works shockingly well in a hot oil fondue. Just put it in for maybe 10 seconds, so the outside starts turning white, and then take it out and let it finish cooking on your plate so it doesn't crumble apart. Yum!! Here's a danger, though. Can you tell which one was egg nog, and which one was the goopy stuff you coat your cheese in to make the yummy cheeseballs? You don't want to take a swig of the wrong one by mistake! (I tied some ribbony stuff on the one on the left, which was the batter, but I still almost drank it) After the fondue we went to the Empress hotel and relaxed at the Bengal lounge before heading to the Christmas evening mass at the cathedral downtown. It was a really great service! The next morning bright and early I was ready to open presents. My Dr. Suess tree! And presents! I was so happy that Mom's package arrived Christmas Eve, and we had lots of fun opening it all up. After that we headed to Bo's mom's place, and had a Canadian moment along the way. A couple in a car had failed to turn when the road did, and were now very stuck in the snow. We stopped, jumped out, and right behind us 2 more cars of people stopped too. You could tell that none of us grew up around here - we all basically emerged armed with shovels, just started digging and explaining to the guy in the car how to rock it out of the snow, and shazam! The car was out. The only thing we were missing was someone with some Tim's yelling "Giver!" That afternoon went even better than we'd hoped! Bo's mom's bf's kids (follow that?) also were over, and while I hadn't met them before, I know there has been some tensions in the past. I know, what family doesn't have tension and potential for conflict, but we were a little concerned about how successful it would be. And it was great! We hung out for a while, opened some presents (check out the rest of my Christmas pictures here for an action shot of the hunt for the pickle!) and ate a whole bunch of food. Afterwards, we played a sort of charades/pictionary game where we all submitted words and phrases, divided into two teams, and the picked out things to act or draw. We only had 1 minute, so you could switch from acting to drawing and back again as much as you liked. Yes, MY team won. All in all, it was a lot of fun! Bo's sister who lives in Vancouver and brother who lives in Montreal were also out, so we got to do lunch on Boxing Day, too, so even though I didn't get to see my own family I did get a lot of family time in! For New Years, Bo and I decided to spend some Christmas money and buy Rock Band 1 for my Wii. It is SO much fun! We had about 10 more people over at Bo's and we all hit on the drums and played the guitar and sang for hours. It's quite cooperative, too, so super fun for parties. But now I'm off to take a nice walk with Bo. It's a little grey today, but pretty much all of the snow has melted. Woo! I like that.