Our Christmas!

We had the best Christmas ever this year. It was small, and perfect. Josh came over on Xmas eve and brought a feast that he had cooked at home; Honey-d ham with cloves, baked sweet potatoes, pickled beets, roasted onions, and green beans and a creamy mushroom sauce. It was soooo yummy!
We had a lovely evening, and after Aloka was in bed, Santa came! Josh spent the night in Aloka's room which was extra special for her.



The next morning Aloka was up at around 7am (not too bad!) and there were stockings for everyone, and the tree was beautiful and abundant.
The first thing we did was open the stockings. Even Juniper had a little one and she just loved it.





Aloka got all kinds of fun stuff in hers; hair things, nail polish, little games, cool magazines, and lots of chocolate and treats. Oh, and of course, socks. :)
She did great! She didn't get overwhelmed or frenzied with the gift opening. She paid attention to everything she got, and even played during intervals in present opening. Her big present was a new pair of Cross-country skis and boots, and Richard got a new/used pair as well (his broke in half last year!).

Jeanne sent us these very cute little Christmas pajamas from Hanna Andersson, the girls were adorable in them!

After the whole present opening thing, Aloka tried out her new skis.



We've gone tons more since then. We are so lucky to be living in a beautiful ski town with amazing trails right outside our door. Our neighbor is an avid xcountry and downhill skier, and lives next to a huge parcel of Crown Land. He made a huge loop that meanders through trees and meadow, and has a few little hills even. It's SO fun and we've been out there a ton!
Richard and I made the Christmas day feast, a delectable brined organic Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, his famous red cabbage with apples and cloves (this is soooo yum), and cranberry sauce, with a decadent chocolate torte for desert. Oh, and of course christmas cookies!
Josh stayed one more night and then I gave him a ride back home the next morning. It was fabulous!

A sweet little video

Richard watching Juniper at night for an hour or so, while I put Aloka to bed. Here's a litte clip he filmed the other night... they are always very quiet because Aloka is trying to fall asleep.

And while we're waiting...

for my Xmas videos to upload (it's been 3 days now)....here are few that somehow were forgotten!

For instance, my amazing 'new' car! It's a 1993 Toyota Lucida (similar to the Previa), it has AWD, two sunroofs, A/C, ABS, CD player, the seats swivel around and fold down into a bed, it's in mint condition and has only 64K on it! It also has a very cool feature they call Sonar, but of course Josh said it's not sonar technology it uses, it's infrared. :)
It has sensors on all corners of the van, plus front and back, and a little picture of the van on my dashboard. When i'm near an object, the corresponding sensor on the picture lights up and beeps (3 types of beeps depending on the closeness of the object)! It's extremely handy for backing up and parallel parking.

It's a Japanese import so it's right-hand drive, which was cake to get used to. Even Richard loves driving it, and was leery about the right-hand drive thing.

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?