Christmas Montage 2007

This Christmas we spent Christmas Eve in Ajax, where we reinstated our old Christmas tradition of homemade eggrolls and miso soup (previously this tradition had been relegated to New Years Eve, due to time constraints). Tim made the eggrolls this year, while Gramma and I entertained the kids (which comprised of me carrying Emeth around all evening and Gramma dutifully granting Istra's every wish).




Anne and Sandro didn't make it east until Christmas morning, so we enjoyed a relatively quiet evening of good food and decorating the Christmas tree with little wooden birds and fairy lights.




Christmas morning saw the arrival of Auntie Anne and Uncle Sandro, laden with gifts; though this was just a taste of what was to come. After our Middleton party had broken up, Tim and I hijacked Gramma's car and sped away to Hamilton to do it all again. We arrived late, with two freshly-napped kids who were ready to party all night long. Istra entertained with singing and dancing and much applause for her efforts.




After our late night at Aunty Pris', we all had a good sleep and started all over again at Aunty Belle's. Some of the highlights from Istra's haul have already been mentioned: the digital camera, namely. Istra also got quite a lot of cooking and baking gear--including a little rolling pin and cookie cutters which we have already put to use making a Seitan Pot-pie from the Veganomicon. Istra also got some nice art supplies--a little travel easel which we are saving for car trips and lots of markers and crayons. I'm skipping over quite a lot here because there was quite a lot--so much that Grammie had to take most of her gifts back home with her because there was no time to open them. Poor Grammie.




We took the car back to Ajax to collect all the things we had left behind, but ended up leaving stuff behind anyway--there was no room in the car. The horror of the situation dawned on me when we had unpacked all the things that we had managed to cram in the car. The load covered almost our entire livingroom. Thank goodness for Gramma Middleton who helped us to find places for all these things and took some other things back to her house for storage.

I forgot to mention that on Christmas day, Emeth had a special present for everyone he met--a horrible hacking cough, runny nose, fever and sleeplessness. So thank goodness for Grammie Kerr, who is sick herself from loving on Emeth too much, who is here now dealing with all of us sickos.