no phone

Ok, I swear all the Christmas pics are coming soon!

But in the meantime, we are dealing with typical mercury retrograde stuff, like our phone not working! Since last Saturday!
Our outside phone line somehow got completely severed by ice or a tree or some other wintery obstacle, and we've been without contact to the outside world, save the internet. (thank goodness we have a satellite or we'd be S.O.L)
I've called the phone company (Telus) a million times raging, fuming, weeping, negotiating (see the 5 stages of grieving) and finally accepting that they are really actually not going to fix our line until January 8th. I hate Telus.
Twice now on two separate calls to them from various friends houses, the phone agent actually asked me for my phone number so they could call us to let us know if there was a date sooner that opened up to do the repair. Seriously??

Josh emailed this me:


Have I mentioned that I hate Telus?

Lots and lots and lots of snow!

Well, it finally came, at long last. Everyone was waiting for it; the day's were getting progressively colder and colder. The mornings would sometimes have a few flurry's. We all knew it was coming, but boy when it finally did, it REALLY did! In this below video, you can hear me say it's the 2nd time i shoveled the driveway that day! this was only a couple hours after i had just shoveled it. Richard got a foot in one day up at his house.
The snow here is the best champagne powder as far as skiing goes. It's light, and fluffy.

BUT, then only a couple days later it warmed up a bit and rained!! Ugh! Can you imagine what that did to the roads? The day it was raining I heard two people describe it as "gross". My boss, Judy, said "Rain in the winter is just disgusting!" and I agree. It was slushy, messy and icy. Now it's chilled up again and my driveway is clear but very icy!
Here is a video of the first big snowfall!

Gingerbread and fun

My dad and Jeanne were here a few weeks ago, and i'm lamenting that i didn't get more photos. Dad got a gingerbread house kit for Aloka, and the two of them built it together. Well, actually Richard did the construction of it (he's good at building houses, real or gingerbread apparently!), and then Dad and Aloka decorated it after it set.
The Martha Stewart in me screamed inwardly that I should be making it from scratch, but i quickly subdued her and enjoyed the absence of tasks needed to be done for this fun project!

I will be posting some pictures and a movie tomorrow or the next day of the massive huge amount of snow we got the other day. Winter came with a giant explosion of snow, starting on Josh's birthday, the 26th. Aloka has already tobogganed and I think we're going snowshoeing this weekend! fun fun fun!