A White Christmas

This Christmas was fairly typical for us. It started with our new tradition of searching for our Christmas tree. We don't quite have a traditional location yet. We got our first tree from the same place we get our pumpkins. We got our second tree from our local nursery and this year we got our tree from a farm near the pumpkin patch. It looks like a great location, with gentle sloping hills full of trees and the trees are very nicely. Unfortunately it has a 'No Dogs Allowed' rule so I don't think we'll go there next year.

Once we had our tree it was time to decorate it. Callie had pulled out our old artificial tree so we actually had two trees up. She wanted to do the old tree with home made decorations. She started with popcorn and we added some paper lanterns as well as some Japanese lanterns from the garden. We also decided it would be a good idea to decorate with some emoji's which are simple pictures people use while texting. Callie picked several smiley face and puppy emoji's but Carter decided he wanted to use the poo emoji. It was fun finding out some people still think it's just a picture of ice cream.

We also took our annual trip to the Vancouver Christmas Market. Ordinarily we go with Barb and Reg but they wanted to stay behind and look after the dogs so it was just the family. They moved the market this year down to Jack Poole plaza which is located on the water near Canada place. There were a few significant differences from previous years. There was a lot more room which almost had a negative effect since it didn't seem as cozy. It also didn't seem to include a reduced cost ticket to Flyin' Over Canada. We've gone the past few years to that because it includes a piece where you fly over the North Pole. Maybe next year.

This year we got a special treat of snow during the holidays. The first flakes came down in mid December and it remained through the new year. I can't quite say we had a white Christmas since it didn't snow on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day however we got a great snowfall on New Years Eve. It snowed about 20 cm and I was out in the evening before midnight shoveling. The snow stuck to everything and with our LED Christmas lights it was a very peaceful evening in the snow.