Christmas is here

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Christmas comes but once per year. This year the whole family was reunited at our home in Nova Scotia. Our family came from Victoria, BC and Calgary, Alberta to join us in celebrations.

We had our usual family traditions. We chopped down the tree at a local Christmas tree farm, decorated it and topped it with the angel that can be seen in the photo to the left.We exchanged gifts in the morning with my wife playing Santa and our favorite Christmas breakfast, Eggs Benedict with Mimosa (I think I spelled that correctly), a mix of orange juice and Champagne completed the morning.

Of course, no special day is complete without a turkey dinner with all the trimmings complemented with our favorite, Stove-Top stuffing. Our oldest took a flight out on Boxing Day to spend a week in the British Virgin Islands with friends while our two younger ones are staying until the New Year.

The weather co-operated. We got our "white Christmas". There was even gentle snow on Christmas Day. However, the weather has not let up. I looked back to past Christmas photos of years past and cannot recall having had as much snow at this time of the year. While we have been quite lucky to have only the white stuff, other areas of this country have been hard hit by winter ice storms.  In fact, there have been areas of Ontario without power for 6 days. It reminds me of the 5 days we spent this summer without power at our cottage in Quebec but with a key difference; it was a lot warmer then.

What will the New Year bring? No-one knows but I expect there will be few changes although I for one will be working my last full year before retirement.

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