Another gargantuan Christmas train’s gone through the house, and I’m very glad to be waving bye bye to the caboose.  From the vast amounts of presents under and around the tree for the six of us, to the jumbo helpings of food and booze, it’s already time to start thinking of a health regime.

The Woman’s Place Gym has moved locations, so we’ve been without any exercise since December 22nd and they’ll re-open with a big splash on January 4th.  Secretly of course I’m enjoying not being able to move this carcass other than to walk the dog.

Margaret and Brendan arrived right on time, early on the 24th and the dog and I picked them up from the airport.  I continued my cleaning routine while Luke went to Osoyoos to pick up mom and Schwarzie.  Everyone was assembled by late afternoon.

As we like to do, we dressed in decent duds and then convenened around the piano and sang while I banged out a bit of Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, Joy to the World and other old favourites.  We then began opening gifts but it was such an exhaustive act we had to break for a huge dinner to fortify ourselves before being able to continue.

The over seven pounds of brisket, which looked like an awful lot of meat, was easily consumed by this pack of savages.  A tiny bit was leftover for lunch the next day.  Once we’d eaten our lashings of meat and roasted potatoes, we resumed the present-opening.

I was very thrilled to get a Breville juicer from Luke, and Chanel perfume from Nicky, both as requested.  Margaret gave me her old Flip camera which looks like tremendous fun for making videos, and she also gave me the cutest tray and apron, both with the theme of pink roses, which you know I adore.

There was a bit of excitement on Christmas Day, as I asked Luke to affix a hook to the back of the bathroom door.  I got out my power drill and he easily did the job.  I don’t know exactly what happened next, but I think he became over-stimulated by the power tool and said he was going to remove my old range hood.

This was a job I had mentioned and wondered about, but as he’d acted as if he may or may not do it, I’d kind of forgotten about it.  However, here is was, noon on Christmas Day and he wanted to do it.  The old hood was taken off, and the new one was grabbed and installed.

When the power was turned back on, wham, a piece of metal and a puff of smoke flew from the hood, and I said this doesn’t look good.  It had to be taken off and re-done, so I said I was going to walk the dog because my nerves were going.  I mentioned I’d have to have all of that working very soon because I needed to start the stuffing.

When I returned, everything was working, and the turkey dinner was a great success.  Denis spent the day hanging out, and we all ate and drank as much as we humanly could.