Happy Christmas!!

Some photos from our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Christmas Morning

As you can see, we're DEFINITELY having a White Christmas - it's just beautiful!!

Hope you're having a lovely holiday!

Teresa

Best of the Season to everyone...

no matter which holiday you're celebrating :) Enjoy!

Teresa

Holiday season madness...

Time is just flying by - can't believe Christmas is a week today! We've had a busy week, hence my relative absence in the blogosphere.

Last Friday I worked at the library, then that evening we headed up to Secret Cove for Sean's office Christmas party - here's a pic of us having a good time:

From November December 2008

On Saturday afternoon we tromped into the woods to find a Christmas tree. We'd seen a few on our walks over the last few weeks and finally settled on one, so Sean demonstrated his lumberjack skills:

From November December 2008

and carried it home:

From November December 2008

We took a brief detour during a grocery run to Gibsons on Sunday to visit Georgia Beach - Sean had forgotten about it, so I've never been there before. It's GORGEOUS:

From November December 2008

From November December 2008

When we arrived home, we went out on the deck and decorated our little tree:

From November December 2008

After losing several really nice decorations last year, we went with some very simple plastic "dingle balls" (as Sean calls them) + lights:

From November December 2008

Monday I was at work all day and Tuesday Sean and I worked on Christmas cards after taking a walk in the crisp winter air. When I woke Wednesday morning, the first thing I saw snow falling, lots of snow! What a lovely thing to see the week before Christmas and makes me happy yet again that we chose a house design that allows me to see outside as soon as I open my eyes.

It snowed all day:

From November December 2008

and covered our tree:

From November December 2008

When Sean got home from work (he's now back working the early morning shift), we walked down to see how our little pond is freezing - it's doing well. Sean cleared some snow off - he hopes to skate on the weekend!!

From November December 2008

Here's another shot of our winter wonderland:

From November December 2008

and Sean heading back to the house with his snow-clearing broom:

From November December 2008

The snow was so gorgeous, we decided to walk to the postbox - here's the view along the way:

From November December 2008

After dark, we went outside to see how the house looks with the Christmas lights on:

From November December 2008

And finally, here's what the tree looked like once the snow stopped falling:

From November December 2008

Today was spent doing yet more Christmas shopping - I'm ALMOST done now. Yay!! And so far I've done it all without leaving the Coast. This weekend we'll be busy with our Wigilia prep as I'm working Monday and Tuesday next week. Fortunately almost everything can be prepared beforehand.

I'm also trying to knit the last of my gifts as I have the chance! So my hands are rarely still.

How about you - how is your holiday prep going?

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Learning Curve by Melissa Nathan
Also Reading: Second Chance by Jane Green
Link of the Day: Will Write for Chocolate

My NaNo total etc..

As you can see from the badge in my sidebar, I finished with 15, 387 words. Not bad, considering I only managed to write on 8 of the 30 days. An average of 1923 words per day. I really wish I could have found more time for writing, but things were crazy over the last month. So I'm going to let go and just be happy I managed to achieve what I did :)

Life is super busy overall right now, between work, school prep, writing, Christmas prep (I'm knitting quite a few gifts) and just housekeeping, I don't have much spare time. Grey weather has affected me somewhat, but I'm taking my Vitamin D like a good girl and working through the blahs. It's hard to believe we're at Christmas yet again - our second in this house! Hopefully we'll find a good tree for the deck over the next couple of weekends.

I'm so looking forward to starting school. Working at the library has been a real eye-opener for me, making me realize just how right I am for this kind of job. Why didn't I figure this out earlier? Oh well, better late than never :)

Back to writing - Deborah Cooke/Claire Delacroix had a great blog post the other day about Boulders (the huge obstacles that tend to arise in the middle of most mss). What do you do when faced with those plotting obstacles? I try to play the What If game, as well as examining the story elements Deb talks about.

I always love to hear how other writers deal with the elements that plague us as we write our masterpieces.

Teresa

Currently Reading: Stately Pursuits by Katie Fforde
Also Currently Reading: The Write Type by
Link of the Day: Top Ten Plotting Problems by Alicia Rasley

White Christmas on the Coast...

We have a white Christmas! Ok, so it's mostly blowing around and not sticking to the ground, but it's snowing on Christmas day on the mountain nonetheless :) Yay!! (If you click on the image below, you get a better sense of the snow falling):


The wind is howling and gusting - very cool, though some people have already lost power. We're crossing our fingers that no trees come down near us and get caught on a wire! Or hit the house (though Sean assures me this is highly unlikely).

We're home for a while to nap (Sean) and make cranberry sauce (me). That's the great thing about being so close to my in-laws - we can pop back and forth. No big deal and the cats never get too lonely!

Off to do that cranberry sauce now - Merry Christmas, everyone :)

Teresa

Happy Christmas, everyone :)

Thought I'd better pop by and post Christmas wishes for all. Things here have been crazy busy and now, to top it all off, I have a cold. It's still at the nasty sore throat stage. Yuck. Am hoping that ends soon.

But I won't let it ruin my Christmas :) This evening we're celebrating Wigilia here with the family and tomorrow we'll do a traditional English style Christmas at my in-laws. Our niece and baby nephew will be with us for both, which is fantastic! Having children around at Christmas really does add a certain something to the festive season.

And now, as I still have a few things left to do and am moving more slowly because of my sore throat and achy limbs, I'd best sign off here and get going.

Happy Christmas!

Teresa

Outdoor Christmas tree...

Due to our crazy kitten, Cleo, we can't have an indoor Christmas tree. So we decided to put one out on the deck.

But first, here are some photos taken just over a week ago, during a heavy snowfall (the snow all melted the following day):

Last Sunday, during a much lighter snowfall, we set out in search of a tree on the property. Instead of just one, we found two growing side by side and as that area needs thinning anyway, Sean cut them both:

and dragged them home:

Once there, he strapped them together and put the lights on, then left the rest for me to decorate:

You can just see me in behind, hanging more ornaments:

It was frosty on Monday morning, so the tree looked really cool:

Christmas madness is pretty much my life right now, but I hope once all my packages and cards are in the mail, that I'll get a little more writing done.

How's everyone else doing, juggling writing and holiday prep?

Teresa

Sean and Teresa's most excellent adventure...

Sean wanted me to title this post "The Donner Party", but I decided that didn't quite fit *g*.

But first, a quick report on our Wigilia/Christmas Day celebrations.

We were up early on Christmas Eve in order to get the 8:20 ferry into the city. We walked on and were met on the other side by my f-i-l. After dropping by the hotel so he and my m-i-l could check out, we headed for Lonsdale Quay and then Sean's uncle's house, which has been in the family for many years. Almost everyone else was already there, so we were thrown right into the fray. Just the kind of Christmas family reunion I like - noisy! Sean's little cousins drew cards for everyone and after a while, my brother and sister-in-law arrived. Here they are with Sean:

Everyone had places to be, so just past 12:30 we all headed out and by 1:20, we were back on the ferry and headed for home. And not a moment too soon as the weather turned nasty. By the time we arrived home, it was really windy and rainy but we kept power this time.

Our Wigilia dinner was yummy. The evening did end with some excitement, though, when a chimney fire erupted. Sean took a pic of it:



Fortunately the roof was absolutely soaked from the rain earlier, so the house wasn't in danger, but it was pretty spectacular nonetheless. I'd never seen (or heard) anything like that before. The neighbours arrived just in time to see the end of it.

Christmas Day was very quiet - we opened stockings, munched on breakfast and opened presents. I received a puzzle and had to at least get the frame done before Christmas dinner *g*, while Sean readied our gear for our trek up the mountain on Boxing Day. As always, my m-i-l prepared a wonderful Christmas dinner, a veritable feast for the four of us, enjoyed by all.

Boxing Day dawned cloudy, a touch misty and cool, a perfect day to head up the mountain to visit our friends camping up there. We had rented snowshoes, a good thing too, as there was lots of fresh snow. A little too much on the road, for our liking and parking proved a bit of an adventure. But at last we set off up the trail. And I do mean UP. For the first 45 minutes the incline is quite pronounced as you climb the side of the mountain. The only time you go down is when you come to a drainage ditch (there are sixteen between where we started and where our friends were camping). Here are a couple of pics from that first section.

But at last we reached the lookout. Longtime readers of this blog might remember me mentioning hiking this same trail in June. A couple of the photos are taken from the same spots. The first one you see in that old post, corresponds with the one immediately below:

And here I am, checking things out with the binoculars:

We rested only a few minutes before soldiering on. The three biggest drainage ditches still awaited us - I actually had to crawl up the side of one of them *g* - not graceful, but I made it!

After that we knew we were getting close, but the fresh snow was very thick and deep plus the incline increased again, so it was slow going for a while. And, I admit, at one point I was about ready to cry uncle, but within five minutes we happened upon one of our friends out for a ski. Just knowing the end of the big climb was imminent gave me one last spurt of energy, though I did stop to take this photo, taken from the same spot as the second one in my June post:

Then we followed the others into camp:

We greeted the others, drank hot chocolate, ate lots of different yummies (including some of the chocolate we'd brought with us) and inspected the snow palace - a cool shelter they'd built out of blocks of snow and a big, big tarp:

The scenery from up there is breathtaking, especially in the winter. We could see for miles, over to the mountains on the other side of Howe Sound, up towards Whistler. Here are a couple of pictures of the view:

After a couple of hours, we put our snowshoes back on and headed down the mountain, after having been assured that the trip down would be MUCH easier and take about half the time. And it did! Not that we still didn't have to work hard - staying upright in the deep snow, even on snowshoes, was challenging. And the cross-ditches didn't disappear. But considering the slog up, the down was a breeze.

Alas, getting down the snow-covered road with the truck didn't prove quite so easy. The snow was very slushy, but also icy underneath. We had to back around another parked vehicle and in ensuring we didn't hit it, we ended up in the ditch. Luckily a really nice guy by the name of Rob, there sledding with his family, pitched in to help and used some of the tricks he's learned over the years in similar situations. I also got a cell phone signal long enough to contact my in-laws. Even so, it was well over an hour before we were on our way home. Sean thanked Rob on the radio yesterday and we hope he heard him!!

Despite all that latter excitement, we thoroughly enjoyed the day of snowshoeing and hope to get snowshoes of our own at some point. It's great exercise and you can't beat the scenery.

Wednesday was a much quieter day - we ran some errands when Sean returned from work, I glanced through the GH entries that arrived for me, then cooked dinner (turkey pot pie). After that, it was hockey while I worked on my jigsaw puzzle!

That's it for right now :-) I'm off to Nia in a few minutes, so I'd best get my a** in gear.

Happy Thursday.

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick

Happy Christmas, everyone!!!

Hope your holiday celebration is full of joy and good food :-)

Teresa