Happy Holidays!!!!

I know ... a little bit late from normal but it has been a busy holiday this year.

This was the first year that we Skyped during gift opening. With Martika in Ottawa we Skyped with her so she could open gifts with us. It was actually very fun. We sat next to our tree and she had her tree and she had all the gifts that were sent from us and the rest of the family. It was a little bit weird not to have dinner with her but she spent it with her friends in Ottawa which I know she enjoyed.

We had a wonderful Christmas ... we relaxed ... no stress ... we ate well ... drank well and had fun with the girls. But of course the holidays are not over. We have New Years coming up and between now and then will have more fun with the girls and Kris's friend who arrived yesterday from Sweden.

We did manage to take a few pictures ... and I uploaded them to our Picasa site. You can follow the link or view them in the slide show below. We hope you enjoy.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas Tree Weekend

So we went out this weekend and picked out a nice Frasier fir for our Christmas tree. We got it in the back of the Jeep and got it home and let it sit in the stand so it could fill out - which it did nicely.

Sunday evening we decided to start and decorate it. We strung it with lights and then started the decorating. We will finish it next weekend when Kris and Sam come over. To make it easy to see we have pictures of lt with the room lights and lit without the room lights. We hope you like it as much as we do :-)

Some pics ....

I promised some pics from Christmas ... so you will find two new albums up on our Picasa site

One from Christmas and one with some of Tika's art.

Let us know if you enjoy them

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to post this yesterday, of course, but if I did I was afraid I would give something away. The picture was one the girls did for Laura as a Christmas gift. Growing up the girls always liked going to see the same Santa so I asked the girls if they would want to go see him one more time and get a picture done for Laura. They were all very enthusiastic and got all dressed up - suspiciously so as Laura was wondering why they looked so nice that night at dinner. I then went out and had a bigger version of the picture made and we framed it and wrapped that as one of Laura's gifts. She loved it - and the tears showed it.

I guess it is a good holiday when there are lots of tears of joy and we had a few occasions of that yesterday. The girls were excited about all their presents, Laura in particular loved the art work she received, originals from Matthew Johnston and Andrea Moore, and I loved the thoughtfulness of the girls and Laura and our families. Laura got a bit sneaky and made one of my presents. We have been keeping corks from wine bottles ever since we knew each other - and yes there are a few corks. So she decided to sneak out of the bag some of the more significant ones from special bottles we had at very memorable times - a sandwich picnic in Switzerland overlooking Lake Zurich, our first New Years Eve dinner that I cooked and many others and made them into a tray. I loved it - it brings back such fond memories.  I will get some of the pictures up on our Picasa site but to give you a flavour - Martika painted this for Laura.

Outside of presents we had a wonderful Christmas holiday. We got to talk to the Bridger's in Sydney twice, the Moore's in Newfoundland and with everyone of the remaining Bell family in Texas we had an opportunity to talk to all of them. The Girls came over for lunch and after we opened presents we headed out to Mala Tang for lunch. It is a Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant. The food and service was great and every one had fun. The girls then had a big dinner with their Mom and their Uncle Keith, Aunt Lynn and cousin Sidney.

We hope all of our friends and families had an equally wonderful holiday - Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah

Love Gary & Laura