Phew!

What a fabulous day!  But it so nearly wasn't....

We woke in the dark - we're still not really time acclimatised - to a house full of noises.  The wind roared outside in great gusts which you could hear coming all the way from the lower lake; the roof creaked with each onslaught; the fridge hummed..... 

Hang on, just a minute, the fridge didn't hum.  In fact, the fridge was suspiciously silent; the baseboard heaters had lost their occasional click as they switch in and out.   The house was super dark; the downstairs light was off.  We had a power-cut - what's known here as an "outage".  I crept downstairs, my way illuminated by the torch app on my Kindle (!) to collect - a candle lantern!  When it comes down to it, the old technologies are the best!  In case they needed it I left the lit lantern on the landing desk for the children, and tucked back in to bed to plan the day.


Well, fortunately, I'd cooked the ham yesterday:

and I knew where the camping stove would be;

and I could get the fire lit (the chimney has stopped smoking inside the house) so we would be warm;

and we had lots of bread;

and I had stocked up on water and candles;

But it would be the loos that would be an issue.....  No power, no water!

Hmmmm

So, we came downstairs at last, began to get the fire going; chatted over loo rules - too late, they'd both been flushed; faffed a bit generally - and then the microwave pinged, demanding the time to be re-set!  We had power!

More later - brunch now!

We had a leisurely session of present opening, then breakfast - or was it the other way 'round?  At any rate, by lunch-time, the drizzle - light at worst - and the raised temperature had seen off most of the snow!

It seems paradoxical, to come to Canada for a brown Christmas!







A really leisurely progress to Christmas lunch, which turned out all right. :-)








At some point we decided that the "youngsters" would benefit from a walk.  They didn't get very far!

And of course we had visitors for lunch :-)

By mid-evening, almost everybody felt a bit like this - apart from Ali who left us with a clean kitchen for the morning.

Thank you all, it has been a lovely day.  And perhaps the  spirit of the day, gentle, generous, happy and reconciled - if any was necessary - in some way makes up for the lack of formalised worship.

We are so blessed.