Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is here and all of my family have arrived safe and sound. Poor Abby and Emma are in culture shock I think.
Alexandra labours under the mistaken impression that her mother is THE only person in the world who is capable of caring for her - if mom is in the room, or within eyeshot, Alex screams until mom finally takes her. She is not even happy with her father's undivided attention.

Austin, on the other hand is simply excited about Christmas. He hung his stocking by the fireplace tonight and left milk, cookies and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer.
Tomorrow morning should be exciting for all of us as this will be the first Christmas where Austin understands what is going on and it is Alexandra's first Christmas.

Nana, as you can see is just thrilled to have everyone home, safe and sound.

Christmas

Can you believe that Christmas is only 12 Days away!!!! While I don't really celebrate Christmas (I celebrate Yule or the Winter Solstice on 21 Dec ), the rest of my family does. This is good for me because my children come home. For the first time ever, ALL of my children and grandchildren will be home on Christmas day. Until they were married, Ryan & Deb always spent Christmas Day apart - Ryan with us and Deb with her family. Since they've been married they've spent Christmas at home or with Deb's parents so this is very exciting. They do have an unterior motive - they are travelling to North Carolina (or South) on Dec 26 or 27 to attend a family celebration and, again, for the first time ever, I get to babysit my grandchildren!!!!! They will only be gone for a couple of days but, that's probably as much as I will be able to take for my first time babysitting. Hopefully I will have more opportunities in the future. So, for Christmas Day there will be 8 of us. Jamie actually returns home today after writing her final exams yesterday. Krista and Ryan's gang will be home later on Christmas Eve - both Krista and Ryan have to work on Dec 24.
As Ryan and Deb are leaving for North (South) Carolina, Graham's daughter Jeannie and her youngest, Isabella will be arriving for a couple of days. This is also a first and a very exciting one. Unfortunately, Jeannie's oldest daughter, Carissa has to work and isn't able to join us.
So, the Christmas season is a very exciting one for us this year - we intend to enjoy every minute with our children and grandchildren.

We would like to wish each and every one of you and Very Blessed Holiday season and a Prosperous New Year.

Family Tree

I have been working on my family tree and thought that some of you might be interested in having a peak. It can be found at:

www.downard.myheritage.com

I have been able to find the marriage licences for both of my sets of grandparents. I did try to attach them to this post, but they are too small to read.

I never realized that my dad's father's family originally came from Ireland, while his mother's family came from England (at least as far back as I've been able to trace so far).
Here are my ancestors as I have found them so far:
http://www.myheritageimages.com/M/storage/site42132681/files/ng/p2/17/ngp217_9218923b33b394dur0de17.pdf

Graham is also working on his family tree. He is much farther along than I am - makes sense since he's been working on his for about 3 years. His brother and sister have recently been sending him some old pictures. I am attaching a picture of Graham when he was a police officer with the Mississauga Police Force. He had badge # 94.(Don't laugh too hard.)


I have also joined the London Camera Club - hoping to be able to learn to take some really good pictures. I'll keep you up to date on that.

My Challenging Week

On Wednesday evening, I had to take Abby and Emma to the vets all by myself. Now, the girls are "only" Cocker Spaniels, but they are a handful and a half...........................each!
We all survived and the girls have now had their shots for the year and they were all set for the groomers today.
Thank goodness I had Graham's help this time around because it was pouring rain AND the girls get so excited in the pet store where we have them groomed. Between the two of us, we managed, and our girls look absolutely beautiful!!!!!

Dirty Dancing

For my birthday this year, Graham gave me tickets to Dirty Dancing at the Royal Alexandria Theatre in Toronto. What trip to Toronto would be complete without a stop at Ryan & Deb's and an opportunity to spend some time with our grandchildren. (We really do enjoy you guys as well, Ryan & Deb, but, the grandchildren do hold a special appeal).
Despite the cold weather, we spent time out on the front porch "blowing Bubbles" - an activity that I have not enjoyed since my own children were small.
Deb and Alexandra came out to watch.
Austin actually spent more time chasing Nana's buubles than he did making his own.


After a delicious
dinner of
cheeseburgers
(Gramps' favourite) and homemade pumpkin pie (Deb's very first attempt at making a pie and it was delicious), we headed for downtown Toronto and the Royal Alexandria Theatre. We had amazing seats for the performance - any closer and we would have ended up with sore necks from constantly looking up at the stage instead of straight ahead. We were almost exactly at the centre of the stage -

couldn't have asked for anything better! The show was amazing - full of energy and song - we had both forgotten how much we had enjoyed the movie - wecertainly enjoyed the stage production.
The only downside to our evening - we come form a city where after 6:00 on Saturdays you do not have to worry about parking meters - the parking is free. Unfortunately the laws a a little different in Toronto. We amanaged to find a wonderful parking spot, on the street between the Royal Alexandria Theatre and the Princess of Wales Theatre. Seeing no "No Parking" signs, we thought that we were safe - NOT!!!!! Apparently, the metres are centralized and up the street a ways where we couldn't see them. We came back to the car after the performance to find a $30.00 ticket neatly tucked under our windshield wiper for "fail to display receipt in windshield". Live and learn!

Day 25 - New York City

I've always wanted to visit New York. Graham has visited the city - in his truck. Apparently you don't stop in New York or you'll lose pieces of your truck. Apparently one of the Taylor drivers stopped at a red light and had both of his taillights stolen.
Unfortunately, we saw very little of the city. We disembarked from the ship and boarded a bus which immediately took us to the airport in Newark, New Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. A short, 2 hour flight to Detroit and then home. Back to work and the real world.
The dogs were delighted to see us!!

Day 24 - at Sea

Our final day aboard the Eurodam was spent at sea. We needed an opportunity to get ready to re-enter the real world. As usual, I spent time in the spa while Graham napped and we both spent time in the casino. I actually walked off the boat having won approximately $700.00. We won't talk about how Graham did. Here are some of our casino friends.
This picture is of Sean Bell & the Neptunes - they were our dance band in the Ocean Bar. Sean is actually from Winnipeg.

Day 23 - Halifax, Nova Scotia

When we arrived in Halifax, the day was again gray and dreary and we decided to remain on board. Halifax was also a city that we visited last summer on our east coast trip

Day 22 - Sydney, Nova Scotia

We chose to remain on board the ship in Sydney. We visited this city last summer on our trip to the east coast. The day was gray and dreary, however the water in the harbour was like a mill pond and Graham was able to obtain this amazing shot of the water alongside the ship as we slowly moved out of the harbour.

Day 21 - St. Pierre & Miquelon

I'm back - sorry, but busy times!!

Day 21 took us to St. Pierre & Miquelon. These are 2 small islands just south and west of Newfoundland. These islands belong to France. The larger island is Miquelon, but the majority of the population live on the tiny island of St. Pierre.
St. Pierre does not have a harbour large enough for large ships to dock so we had to tender to shore. Unfortunately, the day was very, very foggy, so the tenders (ship's lifeboats) had to travel in to the dock 2 at a time for safety reasons. Since those who were going on shore excursions had to travel in first, it was about 12:30 by the time we finally arrived on the island. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that most of the stores are closed from 12:00 to 1:30. Since the town is very small, it doesn't take long to explore it and we were done before most of the stores opened again. The town is very quaint. Since it was still very foggy out on the water, we decided to head back to the ship.

Day 20 - St. John's, Newfoundland

Home at last!!! This morning we arrived in St. John's where Linda and Ted met us and acted as our tour guides.


This picture was taken from our balcony. Graham had to yell at Ted so that they could find our balcony. Once he found us, he promptly lost us again.

Poor guys had to wait for us - first of all, there was a fence in the way and we couldn't dock until it was moved. Then customs and immigration took forever to clear the ship.



Finally we were off and the sightseeing began.

Our first stop was Cape Spear - the most easterly point on the North American continent and the home of a lighthouse at the top of a very long hill. The view was absolutely worth the climb. (The finger is Graham's).
Following Cape Spear, we drove through a small fishing village called Pt. Perry. We had lunch in an old home there that has been turned into a restaurant.






After lunch, it was off to Signal Hill.



We spent some time wandering Signal Hill and then it was off to downtown St. John's and a quest to find an "ugly stick". This is a uniquely Newfoundland musical instrument made out of a stick and beer bottle caps. Here is Ted standing on the street holding the "ugly stick". A little later he crouched down on the street with the "ugly stick" in his one hand while he held out his other hand. A gentleman who had been behind us promptly put a loonie in his hand. Then the two of them started talking and had quite the conversation as we walked down the street.

Sadly, it was time to leave. The entrance to the harbour in St. John's is extremely narrow and the day was extremely windy. Navigating out of the harbour was a challenge that our captain and crew met with apparent ease.











Time to say goodbye to "the Rock" (which is very aptly named) and to Linda & Ted. What a terrific visit.

Day 19 - at sea

Another relaxing day spent at sea - the spa for me; napping for Graham; the casino and the buffet for both of us. Thought that I would share some of the marvelous "towel art" that our steward left for us each evening.

Day 18 - Prince Christian Sound, Greenland

WOW!!!! We woke up this morning to the sight of a huge iceberg outside our window. This is officially an at sea day, however the weather early this morning was good enough for us to begin the transit of Prince Christian Sound on the southern tip of Greenland.


The scenery was absolutely amazing. Greenland is covered in glaciers which apparently are slowly melting. We saw several, including this one which came right down to the water's edge







and this one which is high up in the
mountains.

















The evidence of the glaciers melting is
everywhere - it shows up as streams running down the mountain side.












As we cruised through the Sound, the clouds seemed to fall from the sky and it became very foggy. The result was some very eerie cruising. Enjoy the show!!!

Day 17 - at sea

We really enjoy the at sea days. I can spend some quality time in the spa. Graham can have a mega-nap.
Leaving Iceland, we are leaving the "Land of the Midnight Sun". The complete midnight sun, of course happens during June - July, however, it is twilight here at 11:00 at night. These pictures were taken starting at about 10:30 pm.

Day 16 - Reykjavik, Iceland

This morning, we arrived in Iceland and while we actually docked in Reykjavik, our day was spent touring the island with an extremely brief tour of Reykjavik at the end of our tour.

Our first view of the island was a picture of craggy magestic cliffs.


Our first stop on our "circle tour" was at this quaint
church. The wall decoration was on the back interior wall of the church.





The next place that we stopped was at the "small waterfall" (as opposed to the "big waterfall" that we saw later in the morning). I was especially impressed by the salmon ladder on the left side of the falls.






Next, the "big waterfall". Not as big as Niagara Falls, but different in that there are two levels of falls. These falls then follow through a long, narrow canyon.

I discovered how to drive Graham crazy. He is afraid of heights; I am not. I spent some time at the edge of the cliff above the canyon to obtain some pictures. Graham went wild - he was quite convinced that I was going to end up at the bottom of the canyon.


Here is one of the pictures that I was able to get.








Probably the most spectacular part of the day was the time that we spent at the "geysir" area. Seventy percent of Iceland's energy is geothermal and this area certainly showed us why. Graham managed to get this perfect picture of the geyser that spouts on a regular basis (about every 2 - 3 minutes). We saw several spouts, but this is the best picture.




There were also hot pools, including one that was actually boiling.











We ate lunch at a restaurant in the Geysir area - salmon. I found it very good, but Graham, who we all know is extremely picky couldn't eat it.


After lunch we headed off to see Thingvellir. Thingvellir occupies a very special place in the hearts and minds of Icelanders. In 930 the Icelandic Parliament was founded there. Thus the medieval Icelandic commonwealth was established. Many important events in the history of the country have taken place here, e.g. the official adoption of Christianity in the year 1000. Late in the 18th century Parliament discontinued its use of this site and in 1845 it
was re-established in Reykjavik.

After some time spent in this amazing area, we headed back to Reykjavik and the Eurodam.