Chillin’ in the hot tub

It has been a while since my last blog entry. We have been very busy. This year we hosted Christmas for my immediate family. My Mom came up early on Christmas eve night. I treated my favourite two women to a BBQed dinner while they relaxed in the hot tub.

Not the best photo but it shows the backyard was also in festive spirit.

Our backyard Christmas 2015

This year’s glorious tree

It was a relaxing day. In the evening we watched Home Alone (by request from my Mom). Strangely the TV started acting odd. It has periodically had massive ‘black shadows’ across half the TV. The shadows come and go and sometimes the picture twists and distorts. It is really annoying. IMHO it is far too early for our Sony Bravia to go. But it seems it has. Sigh. How disappointing. As if the TV issues weren’t enough, bdot came downstairs to discover the fridge had died earlier in the week. The TV is bad but our LG fridge is 2 years old and apparently the compressor is dead. What a mess. So that meant depending on our old beer fridge downstairs for the whole week and hosting two events. It is into January now and it is still not fixed. So for every little refrigerated thing we have been running up and down the stairs for. Ugh.

Christmas was fairly low key. It was nice to have my Mom over and Steve (bdot’s brother joined us early in the morning) to open prezzies. Bdot gave me some fancy threads and a wonderful looking stereo for my car. It will allow me to listen to MP3s off any device. I’m looking forward to adding the Rock! I gave bdot Dixie Chick tickets and a phone holder for her car, since she is on the photo a lot. Safety first. JP and Rhonda arrived in the early evening. Bdot found a lovely turkey our local butcher. The bird was grown locally and naturally raised. Despite cooking a long time bdot wasn’t happy with how the bird turned out. Some of the wings weren’t fully cooked. The breast was. And we ate. Dinner was still amazing. Bdot’s stuffing once again getting full marks for supreme deliciousness. After dinner there were more presents. My sister thought it would be fun to make opening mine a little more challenging.

Oh dear

I was elated to get some gaming goodness! Fallout 4 for PC. After some initial issues with the game booting (had to update to Beta Video Drivers) the game has been a blast to play. I also scored for steam dollars well timed for the Steam Sale.

It was our first Christmas without my Dad. It was certainly tough. You see him in memories throughout the day… opening presents, cutting the turkey, the dinner table… hopefully it gets easier, he’ll never be forgotten.

My Mom left for her cousin’s that morning. It was nice she stayed with us two nights. The next Christmas event was at Barb’s sister’s. It is usually quite relaxing and low key there. The nephews are at an age where they are off doing their own thing… sometimes you wouldn’t know they are there (until the fighting begins). It was a enjoyable afternoon that included some World Juniors and a trip to Bestbuy. At the time our TV was still acting up sporadically. So with the Boxing Day Sale on we thought we would look at TVs. We decided to try a Samsung this time after the disappointingly short life of the Sony. The new TV is the UN55J6300AFXZC. We debated about spending another $300 to get the 4K TV but settled on the cheaper full HD TV. It has a bunch of SmartTV features and is bigger than our old TV, I expect it should be plenty awesome. For Christmas we got the nephews a day at the Aquarium. The Aquarium day was a long day. We had reserved tickets for Saturday between 9 and 10. It was a quiet drive down. The boys woke up however once we got into the Aquarium. The two younger nephews had fun with all the activities and displays. The eldest seemed to be pretty bored, perhaps he has outgrown the Aquarium? He’ll get something unique next year.

Fishes.

The day went pretty smoothly. Keeping an eye on the two younger boys was certainly more of a challenge as they tending to occasionally wander. There was a little drama once we got close to home. I’m pretty sure we won’t take all three boys out again all at once. Divide and conquer seems to be a better plan. Still… was a fun outing.

Somewhere during the holidays bdot and I went out for Sushi. I usually like it but rarely love it. But for whatever reason the sushi was exceptional this time.

Sushi for Christmas

There was some debate about what we were doing for NYE. The plan was originally to host it at our place and ultimately after some talk that is what happened. So we had a house full indeed. 3 dogs 2 cats 4 kids and 6 adults. Phew. Needless to say the dishwasher got quite a workout. Everyone pitched in however and meals were handled pretty efficiently. The house however (from our POV) got pretty trashed. I guess what is typical for people with kids is a bit eye opening for us. Heh. It was a fun two days. We played some games, ate, drank, walked dogs and watched some hockey. We ended up in Newmarket for some shopping before saying goodbye. A great visit from Buck/BBB and family and David/Vicky and family. After a nice walk in Palgrave yesterday we spent most of the evening chilling between the couch and hottub.

Canada had a pretty disappointing World Junior’s this year with a poor record during qualifying and failing to get to the medal round. The competition is excellent at the tournament again. I wonder if anything will be better next year in Canada.

I’m glad 2015 is over. It was unquestionably the worst year I’ve lived through. I’m hoping 2016 will offer new opportunities so I can get back to a normal schedule. Sigh.