Christmas Day

The children didn't wake us up too early. They are supposed to open their stockings (we use pillowcases) in their rooms, that was the way we did it in my family but they all came in our room and piled on our bed. I am so glad we have a king size bed with all these people on it. After the stockings we headed downstairs.

Hugh and I even managed to get dressed before the presents were opened. Everyone was in a mad rush to open gifts. Donovan loved his new guitar for the WII guitar hero. Miles received a load of Lego and Detta had a new painting set with travel case. Plus there were some other stuff for them also.
I turned the tv on to Citytv for the fireplace but they didn't do it this year. I was so disappointed. Hugh and I got the potatoes roasting. Hugh very kindly peeled them last night after I went to bed.

Then we headed off to Anne's. Next year I think we will have to start just a little later. Twelve noon is pushing it to get all of us ready to go. There were lots of people, Anne, Al, Alex, Liz, Joan, Tom, Kath, Alan, Andrew, Sue, Aimee, Lizzie's friend (can't remember her name), Margot, Sandy (Alex and Liz's uncle) plus Hugh, me, Detta, Miles and Donovan. Nineteen people in total. As soon as I heated the bacon wrapped sausages up, people were stealing them. I had to swip a few hands.

Dinner was fabulous. There was so much food. We then opened some more presents which was mayhem. I think next year we should wait till the tables are put away.

Christmas Eve

Detta had a great birthday. Kath, Sue and Aimme came over. We all went to Pizza Hut for lunch. This was Detta's choice this year. Pizza Hut had their lunch buffet which the children loved. Then we all walked over to Dairy Queen and had dessert.

Earlier in the week, Anne and Elizabeth came over with gingerbread houses and trains. Detta, Alex (Detta's friend) and Donovan all decorated. It was lots of fun. Miles was out at karate. He now has his orange belt. Anyways back to Detta's birthday. Anne also brought a cake with her. So we had cake and ice cream.

Detta received lots of good presents. We gave her a portable DVD player. I am sure she will get lots of use of it. You can even plug in a memory stick and play movies off that.

Sue and Aimme are here in Canada for a visit. Sue is a good friend of my sister, Joan and lives in Australia. Aimme is the same age as Miles.

I managed to get the mushroom and apricot stuffing ready yesterday. It is mainly for the vegetarians since there are lots of nuts and seeds in it. But I used gluten free bread so Kath could eat it also. Plus I wrapped all the sausages with bacon, there are at least 40 of them. Then Hugh and I made two batches of German biscuits. I bought rice, potato and some other gluten free flour to use in the German biscuits.

Visit from Josee Chouinard

The Ajax Figure Skating Club had a guest visitor, Josee Chouinard. Josee has represented Canada at the World Championships and the Olympics. Josee now coaches at the Granite Club in Toronto. She came to our club to give the girls a training session. Detta was asked to demonstrate a move.


All the girls were very excited and as you can see everyone clustered around her at every opportunity. Everyone enjoyed themselves and hopefully learned something.

First Day

I had my first day at my new job. It was so quick to drive in and even nicer I don't have to pay for the parking. I am reorganizing their library. The categories and subcategories have already been designated but I am going to label all the books so that the books are easier to find. There are also all the cds, dvds and vhs to go through.

Everyone is really friendly and we all sit down together and have lunch. It is a very nice working environment.

Sychronized Skating Competition

The Ajax Ice Waves sychronized skating team had their first competition of the year called the Bill Phillips in Stratford. It was a bit early in the year and the club was trying to fit in extra practices. So Detta and I headed to Stratford after practice on Friday night. I was not very sure about driving there in the dark. I have never driven to Stratford and there was talk that there was the possibility of a big snow storm in that area.

But we made it safely. The snow just started after we past Kitchener so it wasn't too far after that. Of course I ran out of windshield wiper fluid!! We checked in and found out we were in the motel part of the 'hotel'. So we would have to bundle up everytime we went from the room to the hotel. The breakfast was good, a nice selection.

Then we headed for the arena. Detta was skating Sat and Sun. They did very well on their first skate. From the looks of it, a lot of teams hadn't removed elements that are no longer allowed. There were a lot of changes made by Skate Canada to the program this past year. But after the second skate our team was 8th out of 12.

Unfortunately all the pictures I have are taken through the netting for hockey games.

Min's Visit

Our friend Min (Munindra) was in Toronto for work from the UK. We used to go to the pub every Friday night with a large group of friends and Min was one of them. The guys used to all drink ESB which Hugh still misses. I usually had half a bitter. Everyone called the pub, the Slaughtered Lamb (after a Werewolf in London) but it was actually called the Goat House. But Min was telling us it is not there anymore, it has been torn down!!

Anyways he was over here to work on some project with Rogers. He emailed me out of the blue and said he had a few extra days. So Hugh and I made arrangements to meet him at College Park for lunch. Min is a vegetarian so we went to a Thai restaurant. I am not too particular about Thai food but in actual fact it was quite good. We had a great time chatting about old times, friends and life in general.

Afterwards Min wasn't up to much so we invited him back to our house to meet the family. As usual it was quite hectic, Miles to Tai Kwan Do, Detta to skating. But he got to see the house and meet the children. The last time he saw Detta, she was about 3 years old and Miles was 1, (Donovan wasn't even a twinkle).

It was great to see him. I didn't meet up with this group of friends when I was England. I should have made more of an effort, oh well.

New Job

I have a new job. It is part-time and only a contract till March but that's no problem. The pay is great. It was a word of mouth type job. The librarian who I worked with at Rouge Valley emailed me saying this office needed a Library Technician to sort out their library. He had been emailed from another librarian from UOIT who heard about the job.

Anyways I emailed the lady back the same day with my resume. She called back and I met with them the next day. It is a small office and a small library. They are using their own classification system but I need to come up with a numbering system to id all the books and binders (lots of binders).

They said they would get back to me in the next few days with a contract. YEAH

Cookie Exchange

Well I made 6 dozen German Biscuits for a cookie exchange. This was a first time for everyone taking part. Of course, I left making my cookies to the day before. I popped out to the grocery store to buy plum jam but there wasn't any!!! I ended up going to three different grocery stores and none of them had plum jam. I did know of a European deli/shop near where I used to live in Toronto so away I went. They had lots of plum jam!! So I headed home and started making cookies.

Hugh and I made two batches at the same time. There is so much butter in these cookies. We ended up with a assembly line of cookies. Hugh was rolling and cutting out, I was putting the plum jam between the cookies and Detta & her friend were doing the icing and cherries. Detta & her friend ended up helping with rolling and cutting out also. They had lots of fun. Did anyone notice the yellow bowl? I bought a set of those old pyrex bowls in the different colours. My Mum had a set.


We all needed a much earned break after all this so we went off to Lynde Shores Conservation Area with some bird seed. We did a short walk on the bird trail. We put seeds in our hands and the little birds would come and take some seeds. Detta's friend had never done this before and she really enjoyed it. But it was freezing!!! If you click on the picture, you can see the birds in Detta & her friends hands. Everyone had a bird in their hand at one time or another. If anyone can help identify the birds, please let me know.