Our Christmas Adventure.....

My Dad and his wife invited us to their new house on Vancouver Island for Christmas this year and so I planned for a Vancouver Island "Green Christmas". I had grandiose plans of visiting every yarn shop in the Duncan, Sidney and Victoria area, beach combing with the kids, walks along country roads in pleasant and mild +5C or higher temperatures, with, perhaps at worst, some rain to contend with. I did NOT, in any way, plan for this



or this



or this



Notice the steel grey colour of the water??? It's not frozen.... it's floating snow... there was so much snow that it couldn't melt in the water and just sat there.... oh and did I mention this was only the FIRST big snowfall after I arrived??? There was another on Christmas Eve that was at least as much..... I think the Grand tally of snow for the week that I was there was around 60cms.... that's around 2ft, but there was some on the ground before. When I played in the snow with Chey on Christmas Eve and stepped into the untouched snow (which had melted and compacted in between snowfalls) it was almost mid-thigh, which on me, is slightly over 2ft. The best part of the snow was that it was great for building stuff (and I'm sure the kids would have enjoyed it more had I brought their snowpants, but snowpants were not in my plan damn it!... good thing Dale brought them when he flew out on Christmas Eve morning).....The kids did play in the snow in their pants one day and made snow angels and when the snowpants arrived Chey and I built a polar bear.....




In the newspaper on Christmas Eve, it stated that there was more snow in Victoria than at the North Pole and being as we were slightly North of Victoria, I believe we had even more.

In between bouts of snow, we did manage to take a day trip into Victoria, where we HAD to stop to see the BC Legislature buildings (Eli made a specific request, on the plane.... He wanted to see the government). We also made a trip to the Royal BC Museum, which was enjoyed by all...... The kids are standing in front of the Legislature buildings and in front of a partially frozen fountain in front of the Legislature.. the last picture is in the Museum.




We were very lucky on Christmas Eve that Dale managed to arrive on one of only TWO planes that were allowed to land in Victoria all day.... every other arrival/departure was cancelled for the full day...... And Christmas Eve was a yummy fondue, followed by the feeding of the reindeer and the sleepless (at least it was for me... I get very excited about Christmas) night before Santa came....

Christmas morning was a blast. The kids got spoiled and I got yarn and roving...... Dale got a few bits, but his main present was a new guitar that was left back at home.

The weather finally co-operated a bit on the 27th and we managed to go for a tour on my Dad's boat. It was a beautiful day and made even more complete by a viewing of a sea otter and a couple of seals......

Here is a picture of Chey with her two most favorite presents... a crocodile and dinosaur puppet.. she spent the next couple of days terrorizing the household with her "puffets"



and a great picture of Eli and my Dad on his boat



and do you recognize this sailboat??? It's the sailboat in the ocean picture above..... amazing eh??



I even made it to a yarn store.... It's called The Loom and let me tell you.... it is packed... JAM packed full of yarn, yarn stacked in boxes, with baskets of yarn on top and more baskets or bags or boxes of yarn stacked on those in all of the isles and on top of the yarn stuffed into shelving. This apparent lack of organization would normally send me running the other direction (I'm not a super neat freak, but I'm pretty neat most of the time), in this case though, I found it enormously entertaining and kind of like hunting treasure (she had lots and lots of treasures to be found) and asked if I could take pictures to show you.......




All in all, it was a fantastic eight days..... even if getting home wasn't *quite* as easy as getting there..... it involved cancelled flights (for Dale), sitting on the tarmac for three hours (again, poor Dale) and waiting for luggage for three hours after a direct flight which I still can't figure out how that happened (that was me and the kids) and then having one suitcase lost (again... can't quite get my head wrapped around a lost bag on a direct flight).... the one with frozen fish that my Dad had given us...... fortunately it was still frozen when the airline found and returned the bag the next day......