Odds and Ends

Sian's Christmas Club #4

Sorry this is a day late - I've been having Typepad issues, namely I couldn't get into it.

This is the fourth installment of my Christmas memories for Sian's Christmas Club (see my post from 3 Sundays ago).

I've had a hard time deciding what memory to share this week - the year we got married, the 1st Christmas that Lisa really was into it, a trip to Walt Disney World (not a wise thing to do at Christmas - talk about crowds!!),our Christmas cruise or what finally won out - the last time our family was all together for Christmas.

It was 1993.  Dad of course was heading to Halifax to spend Christmas with Jone & her family.  There was no way he was going to miss Christmas with his grandchildren if he could help it.   After checking with Jone who of course said yes we decided to go too.

It was John's first time in Halifax in winter and the weather sure made it memorable.  It was bitter cold while we were down there but we managed some trips downtown (normally a short walk but because of the cold we drove) while Dad would be napping.  On one of these little trips we saw quite the sight.  It was just below the Citadel on an even more bitterly cold day when we saw a man in light clothing and barefoot walk across the road through the traffic.  All these years later I remember that so vividly.

One night Ted led us (we had to use 2 cars because of the # of us) on a Christmas light tour.  One house in particular stands out in my memory.  It was a small house but it seemed like every square inch of it was decorated up, including the lawn.

Christmas Eve it started to snow, just lightly mind you, and it seemed so great that we'd be waking up to a white Christmas.  We hadn't had one of those in years it seemed.   Mother Nature didn't disappoint us and we did wake up to a white Christmas morning.  We discovered a new family tradition that morning.   The kids would sit up on the stairs waiting to be told to come down while "Santa" made things just so with the tree.  Dad sat up there with them - he was like a kid.  :)

The snow didn't seem know when to stop - it snowed all day and gradually got heavier & heavier.  By the time the 4 of us went for our walk before dinner it was really deep to the point we were walking on the streets instead of the sidewalks.  It was no problem though because there was absolutely no traffic.  It made things look so nice - you know that white snow before the sand, salt and cars make a mess of it and turn it dirty gray. 

We were booked to fly home on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas for those who don't know when it is) and we started to wonder how the roads would be by the time we had to leave.  In one word - they were horrible!  All the snow that had been cleared the night before had blown right back onto the highway and iced it up.  Luckily we got to the airport without any issues but it sure was a white-knuckle drive and we're used to driving in snow. 

Gail's Christmas Club 2 Pictures

I found some pictures to share that should have gone on my Gail's Christmas Club 2  post from last Sunday.  They were on slides and I had digitized them earlier this year.

Dad's perfectly tinsled tree.

 
The bowing tree
 

Sian's Christmas Club #3

This is the third installment of my Christmas memories for Sian's Christmas Club (see my post from 2 Sundays ago).

My apologies for the lack of pictures - they're all non-digital and need to be scanned in to my computer - I think that is going to be next year's major task.  I did the slides this year but the negatives didn't get done.

It was 1979 and I was heading to my first Christmas down south.  John's family had moved to Southern California a few years before and we were heading down there to spend Christmas with them.  I'd met them earlier that year when we had gone down for a week in April and this was going to be my first Christmas with them.

We decided to make a bit of a vacation out of it & flew into San Francisco where we toured around and saw some beautiful Christmas decorations.   I discovered not all of California is sunny & warm - San Francisco is definitely different weather-wise from Southern California.   After sometime in Carmel by the Sea we took the very scenic Highway 1 down the coast, stopping at Solvang (a quaint looking Danish town that looked perfect at Christmas time) and Santa Barbara before finally ending up in Laguna.

I think the 2 memories that stand out the most from that Christmas are first, going out to buy a real tree while wearing shorts!  Even when we get warmish (to us) Christmases up here it's definitely not shorts weather (yet).  The second memory is going to the beach on Christmas Day, definitely foreign to me at the time.  :)

John's Mum took care of dinner that year and even though she's (supposedly) vegetarian we had a wonderful turkey dinner just the 4 of us.  The one thing that marred the trip was a phone call from my Dad, he was in the hospital.  He'd fallen the night before he was supposed to leave for my sister's in Halifax and broken his leg in 3 places.  He ended up spending Christmas all by himself in the hospital and we felt so bad for him.  

Gail's Christmas Club 2

This is the second installment of my Christmas memories for Sian's Christmas Club (see my post from last Sunday).

With all the Christmas tree decoration boxes up in the living room waiting for me to attack them I started thinking of decorating the trees when I was a child.  It's one of my earliest memories of Christmas.

It always started with Dad going out & getting the tree – it had to be a Scotch Pine (for some reason that I never knew).   We'd think we'd found the perfect tree, but no our picks were never quite tall enough for him - he always seemed to pick a tree that there seemed to be no way it would fit in the house, let alone in the living room.  It would sit outdoors on the front porch for a day before coming in the house but before it came in he'd end up out on the porch chopping off some of the bottom of the tree just so he could get it in the door.   Finally it was in and then came the problem of getting it just so, it had to be perfectly in the centre of the living room windows and carefully tied to eye-hooks screwed into the bottom side of the sills so that there was no danger of it tipping over.

Mum would unwrap the decorations – a lot of them very breakable unfortunately (but that`s another story).  Dad would tell us what decoration he wanted and we`d carefully carry it over to him while he put it on the tree (as we got older we were allowed to actually put decorations on too).  But the biggest thing was tinsel – he was definitely a perfectionist & placed each one on there individually.  It took a very long time!  But boy was it ever worth it when he was finished.

The funniest thing one year though was with all his making sure the tree was absolutely perfect if you looked at it from the hallway & got a side view of it - it looked like the top of it was bowing toward the dining room where we would eventually put the nativity scene in future years. 

Unfortunately I don't have any still pictures of our trees from those days  because once Dad got his movie camera the other camera got completely forgotten about.  (:

Christmas Club

I came across this idea while reading Amy’s blogand to quote her  “Sian has had yet another great idea, she is posting a Christmas memory each Sunday up until the big day and anyone who would like to join in is more than welcome - see her post HERE and leave a link to yours in the comments section to join in.”

It was Christmas of 1976,it had been a very eventful year for us – Mum had passed away in March and we were all still raw from that but my sister had given birth in September to Lisa – my beautiful niece and Dad’s first grandchild.   He & I decided, after an invite from my sister, that we would spend Christmas in Halifax with them.  I think for Dad it was his first Christmas away since the war but it was wonderful for him and the rest of us.  We had thought it would be sad but with having Lisa there it made it a really special Christmas for all of us.  My sister made everyone their own special stocking - I still have mine after all these years and it gets used every year - even when we are on a cruise at Christmas it gets taken along with the one she made John when he joined the family.

Don't know what this is going to look like - it's scanned from a slide.

My sister and Lisa - you can see our stockings in the top left.   it's not a great picture - I know I have better ones somewhere.