December 2014
Wednesday December 31
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!
Our Xmas tree
We hope you all have had as pleasant a Christmas as we have. Katy, Ben and Emily arrived on Dec. 23 after an uneventful drive from Ottawa with a stopover in Fredericton. David arrived by plane late that evening. Unfortunately his girl-friend Alesia did not come as planned: she has a back problem that flared up during exam week and her doctor advised her at the last minute not to fly. We were all looking forward to meeting her but that will now have to wait until another time.
Christmas Eve went according to tradition with the short late afternoon children's service at the church featuring The Grumpy Innkeeper, then a gathering at our house with baked salmon and other goodies followed by playing Town, River, Mountain and the grab parcel game. We had a fewer guests this year as several regular attendees were not able to make it for various reasons. Jim and Valerie were there, as were Krista and Tristan, and Chapman came for a short while.
On Christmas morning we had our usual Eggs Benedict breakfast followed by prolonged present opening. The weather was miserable (warm and wet; we haven't had more than a whiff of snow yet this year so there were no illusions of a white Christmas) so the afternoon was spent lounging around the house reading or playing with new acquisitions. The exceptions were Katy and Ben who went to visit Ben's family before returning for our turkey dinner.
On Boxing Day, as usual, we spent most of the afternoon at the Read's open house. Then, on Sunday, I had a significant birthday which we celebrated by asking a bunch of our musical friends for a party. We started mid-afternoon, fed everyone chili, trifle and cake, and continued until about 11 PM. Katy and Ben supplied a keg of Propeller Bitter, my favourite tipple, and there was plenty of wine and champagne as well as lots of music. We all had a good time.
Tonight we are off to Ingrid and Mike's to ring in the New Year.
Looking back, we have had a good year. Ann has been working all year and still enjoys her job (for the most part; as for all of us, there are moments when she would like to take a sledgehammer to her computer). Emily seems to have settled in well at Carleton; she still likes the program and has friends with whom she enjoys the extra-curricular opportunities in Ottawa. Ann, Emily, James and I had a lovely trip to Europe in the summer which we all enjoyed tremendously. The one sad moment was the loss of Ginger just before we left on our trip. He was a nice cat and is still missed.
Sunday December 21
Maggie
The charge towards Christmas continues. James had his last class on Friday but I will be going to work tomorrow and Ann until Christmas Eve. Ann and I both had Christmas functions at work this week: on Wednesday, DRDC had its annual Christmas lunch followed by a party in the afternoon, and that evening Ann was out to dinner with her colleagues. They also had a get-together on Friday to which everyone brought sweet fattening goodies (recall that this is the Diabetes Care Program).
As I write this I am over at Maggie's house keeping her company. She is curled up beside me on the sofa and, unlike Louie, has been quite considerate about not getting in the way of my typing. She reminds me a lot of Seeps, the cat we had when I was a teenager and still living at home.
This weekend we have been trying to get the house ready for the onslaught of our children and their hangers-on. James has been moved from his room to Emily's old one and a new bed has been installed in his old room. A a salmon has been ordered for Christmas Eve and, for Christmas Day, a turkey has been bought at the market and stored in Maggie's fridge: our own fridge is running out of room with the supplies necessary to feed eight of us. The tree has been installed in the corner of the living room by the piano and presents have miraculously appeared beneath it. Most of the last minute shopping has been done and we even managed to stay out of the malls this weekend.
Sunday December 14
James thinks he's found the perfect tree (plenty of room for presents) but not the one we took home. (Ann's photo)
Our Christmas preparations continue apace. Today we (actually mostly Ann) managed to get some presents in the mail, a bit late, but hopefully still in time to arrive before the 25th. Yesterday we made the annual trek to Hogan's U-pick to choose tree. As usual we found a nice one very quickly, then spent about 20 minutes looking at others before deciding that the first one was the one we really wanted. It is now installed in the living room but still waiting for lights and ornaments.
On Tuesday evening Ann and I went to see James performing with the high school bands; he is in the Grade 12 band and the jazz band playing trombone in both. In one of the jazz numbers he got to play a solo. I enjoyed the concert: there were a few Christmas songs but plenty of other stuff as well; a nice mix.
This afternoon I went to our friends Mark and Anna's annual Christmas open house. They both work at DRDC so there were lots of familiar faces there. Ann would normally have come too but she was at the funeral of one of the long-standing members of the Grace congregation.
Tonight Ann and I are keeping Maggie the pussy-cat company. This is recompense for Louie's care while we were away on vacation in the summer. She is a very nice, slightly tubby tortoise-shell that Emily has cat-sat many times over the past few years. Louie is quite jealous when we come home with Maggie smells on our clothes.
Sunday December 7
Alesia and David
As I usually do around this time of year, I spent the last week on a business trip to The Netherlands, leaving late on Saturday night and arriving via Heathrow in the late afternoon on Sunday. I had meetings on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday then spent all day Thursday getting home again, this time via Frankfurt and Montreal.
Last Sunday Ann, James and his friend Mitchell went to see Tafelmusik perform The Galileo Project. It was an excellent concert and I was sorry to have missed it.
It is now pretty hard to escape the coming of Christmas. Many of the houses and bushes in our neighbourhood have sprouted lights, the malls are overrun at all hours, and Christmas songs and carols are the standard fare on the radio. In The Netherlands our hotel was overrun with kindergarten-age kids who had come to see St. Nicholas and his side-kick Black Peter who were holding court in the lobby. There it was even more imminent as St. Nicholas comes on the night of December 5. Of course, our house has not been devoid of preparations either. Ann and James put up the lights last weekend and the shopping has begun. There is also the matter of the mysterious disappearance of the advent calendar; we can't find it anywhere and that is preventing the dispensing of daily chocolate kisses. Everyone will be coming home again this year, as well as Ben, of course, and David's girlfriend Alesia. That requires some organization to provide everyone a comfortable bed. This weekend Ann is painting Emily's old room which James will be taking over; the plan is to purge much of his unused stuff during the move. A new bed will go into James' old room for Katy and Ben.