Our Holidays

Well, it's the New Year and time for a recap of our holidays. As my husband has done this with pictures, I shall do it with words.

Finally, a week off together since we've been married and did we ever enjoy it. On Friday, Dec 22 we stayed home and had a scrumptious dinner of ham and perogies along with a bottle of homemade white wine given to us by one of Reuben's colleagues. Then
we opened our gifts to each other.

Reuben bought me the most beautiful jewelry box from the Bombay company and along with it a necklace, which he'd found, which I'd lost on our honeymoon. I got him tickets to an Ottawa 67s game and a gift certificate for dinner beforehand.

The next morning, we had a scrumptious breakfast of waffles and then headed out around 12:30pm for Waterdown. The drive was uneventful and a lot more pleasant than when we drive at night. That evening we spent catching up with the Helder family with good food and a fun game called Hoopla, a variation of Cranium.

On Sunday, we did the church thing and for dinner we had a steak fondue with lots of different sauces, yum, yum. Then we exchanged gifts. We also had to write poems. Lawren had Reuben's name so he adapted a Spirit of the West tune and sang it to him. Reuben's mom had my name and she also got me a jewelry box!! I really like it to so I decided to keep it but also thought I could share it with Reuben as it's not too girly! We also got chocolate letters and other small things.

On Christmas day we went to church in the morning and then relaxed the rest of the day. We had Oma Helder over and had a feast of turkey and all the fixings!!

On Boxing Day, we got up and drove straight to Arthur to hang out with the Buist clan. My parents with Rich and Emma had driven up the night before and Karin and Josh arrived about the time we did from their shindig in Port Stanley (Josh's hometown). We had hors d'oeuvres for lunch and then dove right into the gifts. We always have lots of laughs at this time. This year, my dad decided to count how many gifts there were. Suprisingly, there were 101! Craziness. Well, our family has now grown to 11 people so it's not a surprise. The big surprise was that my Mom bought my Dad, a James the Butler. We have been eyeing this statue for so long that it has become a long running family joke. Come on over to my parents' place and you can see him in his rightful place serving my Father. I couldn't find a picture online.

For dinner we had lasagne and then just hung out the rest of the evening, talking and walking and playing Sequence. We drove back to the Helders that night.

On Thursday, we drove home during the day and except for the traffic in Toronto it was also uneventful.

For New Year's Eve we went to the Wildeboers and had a nice time with the church congregation ringing in the New Year.