CHRISTMAS IS COMING

The Christmas parties are winding down now and that gives me time to get to the task of buying my Christmas gifts, getting the tree up, and baking some cookies. I don't know if you are like me, but I seem to be putting less and less up for the holiday season. I figure if I get my tree up and actually get it down before March, then I am doing good. I am finding the Christmas holiday very commercialized so I try to stay out of the malls as much as possible and I shop online instead.

My favourite part of the holiday is getting together with my family and having a chance to spend some time with some close friends I don't get to see too often. Oh, I can't forget the food. The hours spent around a dinner table set for, lets see...we will be 14 this holiday season, all gathered at my parents' place (I have to treasure these times) with the smells of my mother's Italian cooking filling the house. We don't really eat for hours on end, but we do sit around after dinner and talk, laugh, catch up, and we watch the Canadian Juniors play hockey. Yes hockey will be playing on many of our TVs during the holidays. Most of our clan gathers in the living room to watch, but some of us are also in the kitchen. There is a few second delay on the TV in the living room, so those of us gathered in the kitchen usually erupt in cheers at a Canadian goal before the others, which I think takes a bit of excitement out of their cheers. It's a Canadian tradition and sometimes our meals have to be delayed just a bit so that we can catch some of the game. It reminds me of my American family on their Thanksgiving when they watch football pretty much the whole day. 

This year will be one of the first years that on Boxing Day (a holiday after Christmas Day) I am not flying off to Boston as it has come to be tradition for the three days between Christmas and New Years.  Boxing Day here in Canada is probably equivalent to Black Friday right after Thanksgiving in the United States. This started over 20 years ago as my way to escape the madness of Boxing Day. My sister was a bit surprised I wasn't doing my "usual" this year. She joined me one year. She'll get to see more of me now....

Last year I headed to Boston with a close friend of mine who had never been there before. We got there just in time for one of the worst winter storms. The whole city shut down. We didn't quite notice the storm though because I had booked a hotel inside the mall, so the two of us girls were able to spend time shopping until we rode out the storm. Sad to say she did not get her trolley ride because they don't plow the city but just wait for everything to melt....a bit of a mess.



Walking from Copley to Prudential Centre

 



Got to love this tree
It's a shoe tree



The day after the snow storm