Wednesday, December 25 to Friday, December 27, 2013 (North Saanich, BC and Travel to Quartzsite, AZ)

I hope you all enjoyed Christmas and celebrated it in your own special way. To us it means spending time with family and we had a wonderful week back home...made even more special with the addition of our first grandchild, Conner.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we were planning our traditional Christmas Eve...sitting around the table playing Rumoli and indulging in a variety of appetizers. Well, we missed the Rumoli part...before we knew it, it was after 9:00 and no one felt like setting up the game...but we certainly fulfilled the eating part! We started off with spinach dip in a sourdough bread bowl (prepared by Angie) and chips and onion dip (made by Chris)...while Rob prepared homemade venison sausage rolls...from scratch! 

He got his meat grinder out and started by grinding the venison along with some bacon and added spices.

Using puff pastry, he formed two large rolls...

Ta da!...two large "jelly roll" type sausage rolls that he angle-sliced and we all consumed...they were excellent!

Next was Chris and his "Pinty's" chicken wings....

Yum!

Followed by Angie's homemade pizza...also YUM!

We were up before Conner Christmas morning...the tree is looking beautiful...















 ...and look! Santa came...this is Conner's stash...

He's a little too young yet to know what it's all about...just wait a year or two, though! Today, he wasn't all that sure about all these brightly coloured packages that everyone wanted him to unwrap.

Dad showed him how to do it...

 ...and so did Mom...

After Conner opened a few of his gifts, it was time for the rest of us to take our turn. Chris got a new piece of luggage...





Rob, work pants and a dress shirt (nice combination, don't you think?)...

Steve, chocolates with a gift certificate to his favourite clothing store...







I got a beautiful new sweater, scarf and gloves...

And Angie's gift was a very unique wrap-style sweater...







Conner didn't think much about the toque we got him from North Pole, Alaska!

After the breakfast egg puff was cooked, Angie put the dinner ham in the oven and we sat down to our traditional Christmas breakfast. The ham came out of the oven at noon just in time for the turkey to go in. Steve peeled almost 10 pounds of potatoes...that should be plenty! (Okay...it ended up being more than plenty!)

Steve and I decided to go out for a walk on the park trail behind the house and look for a geocache. We had some "trackables" to place and we knew one of the caches we had found last year would be big enough for them. "A Trackable is a sort of physical geocaching "game piece." You will often find them in geocaches or see them at geocaching gatherings. Each Trackable is etched with a unique code that can be used to log its movements on Geocaching.com as it travels in the real world. Some of these items have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles thanks to geocachers who move them from cache to cache!"
Chris decided to come along with us...and he ended up being the one to find the geocache.

With that done, we continued on our walk...a little pre-dinner exercise. Then it was time to relax a bit before company arrived for dinner...Steve's sister, Nadine, and her family are joining us for Christmas Dinner.

Grampa and Conner having fun...

There's Conner all ready for company dressed in his cool shirt and jeans...(Mom and Dad don't look bad either!)

Every month since Conner was born, Angie has taken a picture of him beside this teddy bear...today he is 11 months old...

More colourful packages to unwrap...with cousin Amanda...

From left to right, going around the room...Rob with Conner, Angie, Amanda, Matthew, Chris, Mike, Steve and Nadine...

Angie and I in final preparation for dinner...

Finally, the big event...left to right...Chris, Steve, (Conner is in his high chair between Steve and Rob), Rob, Mike, Nadine, Amanda, Matthew and Angie...not everyone has their hats on yet!

As usual, there seems to be such a big build up to dinner...then it's over, just like that!! And clean-up starts...yup, that's Steve washing dishes (he lost the draw)...

We all sat around the rest of the evening chatting...Nadine, Steve, Mike and I sitting at the kitchen table while the kids sat in the TV room (to the right). Another great Christmas spent with family! What a great gingerbread house the Minckler family put together this year!

Boxing Day (for our American friends, that's the day after Christmas...click here to learn more about it's origin and history) morning was another lazy start. At around 11:30 our good friends Rob and Nancy dropped over for a quick visit with us...

Then it was time to head off to visit those loved ones that are no longer with us...but we still think of them often and take flowers at Christmas time.

It was going on 2:30 when we arrived at Dwight and Helen's place (my bro and sister-in-law). We had a great visit but after a couple of hours, Conner was getting a little antsie...it was time to head home anyway. Left to right...Steve, me, Dwight and Helen...

Friday again...wow...a week had gone by already! It was time for Steve and I to head back south. I puttered around all morning getting packed and doing "stuff" in preparation for leaving...we had to be at the airport by about 1:00.  So after playing and spending as much time as possible with Conner (he must have known we were leaving because he didn't want to go down for his morning nap), we said our goodbyes and after hugs and kisses, Chris drove us to the airport.

Our trip went very smoothly. The plane arrived a little early in Phoenix and we were through Customs, had picked up our luggage and were back at the La Quinta Inn and our truck by about 7:15...pretty good considering our flight wasn't even supposed to land until 6:30.

We pulled into La Posa South LTVA at 10:00 p.m....a two and a half hour drive from Phoenix in the dark...very unusual for us!

We had a wonderful visit and a great Christmas with our family...but we are happy to be back to our "home on wheels"...and Arizona!