Christmas eve eve greetings from Canada

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,

And since we've no place to go,

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Hello from London, Ontario! Hope you are all having a good lead up to Christmas - all your shopping is done, and time to relax and spend time with family.

Gideon and I are here staying with his Aunt Liz, cousins Lawrence and Stephen and his grandparents, Ruth and Doug. Although the snow has been melting over the last couple of days, it really feels like winter and Christmas with all this snow around. Hopefully it will snow tomorrow and we will have a right proper white Christmas!

Liz's gorgeous house

It took a long time to get here, we spent almost 2 full days driving, flying and waiting around in airports. Tuesday's travel was pretty straight forward... we left home at 6.30am in the morning, drove to the airport, caught a flight from Heathrow to Washington, then Washington to New York. About 19 hours later, we arrived in New York at 8pm local time. A long day, but we were less than half an hour late. Pretty good. We stayed in a hotel near La Guardia that night and left at 10am the next morning for another long day of travel. We were due to fly to Toronto at 12.30pm and then from Toronto to London, Ontario at 5.30pm. As we were at the airport early, the offered us the 11.30am flight to Toronto, although our connecting flight would be the same. I refused citing the chance to do some duty free shopping at La Guardia. As it turns out, you should always take an earlier flight if offered. There was next to no duty free shopping at the terminal where we were, and the 12.30pm flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems. They were unable to get us on the 1.30pm flight, and so after much hanging around, we finally left New York at 2.30pm. We got to Toronto with still some time to spare and waited around patiently for our next flight to London. That flight ended up being delayed due to mechanical problems, and they had to switch planes which delayed us by about an hour. It begs the question, do Air Canada have planes without mechanical problems? Still, we arrived safely, and none the worse for wear.

The back yard

Since then, we've had a lovely time relaxing, shopping (my first Walmart experience), eating and playing in the snow! :D Behind Liz's house there is a golf course which when covered in a reasonable layer of snow, we are allowed to play on (no damage to the grass). Yesterday, I even got my snowboard out and had a bit of fun on the small slopes of the golf course! Yay!

Gideon, armed and dangerous.

What's going on then... Gideon and his aunt Liz

Liz and Gideon's granddad, Doug

Out on the golf course

The boys roll the biggest snowball ever... or at least, that was the intention.

Gideon and his cousins, Lawrence & Stephen

More beautiful winter wonderland

Meanwhile... me and my beloved board...

I even managed to build up enough speed to get some wind in the hair!

Boarding on a golf course... coooool.

Merry Merry Christmas everyone!