Freezin'

The frozen frame of our bedroom window.

It's cold here - VERY cold.

Just how cold? About -4 degrees Celsius, -11 with the windchill. Normals for this time of year hover between 2 to 7 degrees.

It started snowing here on Saturday night which canceled our plans to attend a party so we stayed home and laid low. I realize that sounds incredibly wimpy coming from two kids who grew up in Bruce County and Armstrong respectively. However, while we know how to drive in snow, not many people here do. Also, in all of the City of Victoria there is just one snow plow.

Sunday morning we awoke to a serious winter wonderland - the kind that comes to Victoria once a year, if you're lucky.

Top L-R: The view from our balcony looking NW onto Fort St. Bruce's winter greens (spinach, kale & chard) seedlings completely covered in snow.

Bottom L-R: Montage - Uncle, Kelly, Lil' Snow Dude & Auntie

Bruce arrived back from Texas on Thursday night so this snowy weather has been a bit of a shock to his system. But not incredibly shocking - their flights were delayed from Brownsville all the way back to Seattle with the snow that Houston received last Wednesday. Sadly, because his flights were delayed, Uncle Bruce missed seeing Kelly's Christmas Concert.

I went with Janet, Kelly and Kelly's friend Fatima to the concert. The girls were busy primping and getting dressed when I arrived (those concerts were always such a big deal as a kid!) and they looked great!

The concert was very heartwarming and entertaining! The evening started with the Kindergarten classes being cute as a button and went all the way up through the grades, ending with the Grade 4/5 classes finishing the concert off. The performing arts teacher did a great job of choosing pieces which represented a number of different cultures (George Jay is a great school because of it's amazing mix of students from different cultures) while incorporating singing, dancing/action songs and instrumentation. The school choir club and rock band performed. Individual students got their chance to shine as featured dancers and singers - and the crowd loved it all!

Kelly's class took care of the finale performance and opened up with Stompin' Tom's The Good Old Hockey Game and then they led the audience in singing several carols. It was a great time!

L-R: Kelly singing, close-up. The Good Old Hockey Game - Kelly, 2nd from right in the back row (click for larger view).

Janet & Kelly after the concert.

We finished off our wintery, holiday inspired weekend with a homemade stew made from the farm fresh beef we picked up last weekend in Duncan (a whole other future blog post) and Christmas tree decorating at our place last night.

In the afternoon we went to Anawim House, a local organization which provides drop-in and residential services to some of Victoria's homeless residents, to purchase our tree. We only had $10 in cash so we bought the nicest looking little tree $10 could buy! Here we are decorating (or burdening?) it with our plethora of ornaments! (It is only slightly overshadowed by our giant banana tree.)

Here are a few of the ornaments we collected this time last year in our travels:

L-R: A Peruvian carved stone nativity from Bruce's aunt in England; a hand crafted wooden ornament from Berlin; a recycled tin star from a very cool shop in Bern, Switzerland, which will forever take its place on the top of our tree;our newest ornament, the little brocade box that Kelly carried our rings in at our wedding.

Our little tree in the Monday morning light.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Savour these next few weeks - may they be filled to overflowing with family, friends, food and thankfullness.