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Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas!
We were thrown in the deep end on our first night in Calgary. Christmas Carols at the Woodwards (our generous hosts for the week)! I rarely sing in public, mostly because the resulting noise is something that could hardly be called singing, but there was no escaping the hijinks planned for the evening.
Lucy did her best to join in, but mooses don't have the best vocal chords for singing. She opted out after the first song, leaving Tim and I to bumble our way through with the others. I was surprised to discover that I enjoyed singing along with the neighbours collected in Bob and Di's front room. Bob and Di have been hosting carols for years, ever since the kids were little. It's a great community gathering that they're still doing even though the kids have grown up and left home.
Christmas Day began with the traditional Woodward snow run. They did their best to convince me that it was a gentle jog with plenty of stops at the neighbour's place to drink various alcoholic beverages. But as I've said previously, Canada is cold! I unfortunately (read fortunately) came down with a head cold on Christmas Eve, so was given a leave pass. Tim, however, was out there with the best of them, running through the winter wonderland knocking on doors begging for a Christmas drink!
Bob and Di cooked up a storm for Christmas lunch. It was a proper traditional English style Christmas, with roast turkey. No prawns or Christmas Day dips in the sea here. It was kind of strange, though I should be getting used to cold Christmases after 3 of them in the Northern hemisphere.
I don't have much to say about Calgary from a tourist perspective. Its kind of like Brisbane; a great place to live in, with nothing to see from a tourist's point of view. It was actually nice just to chill out and get our affairs in order. We shopped up big, purchasing lots of ski gear and warm winter clothes. We caught up with our friends Dave and Natasha for a meal in downtown Calgary and we headed to the zoo for the Zoo Lights festival. Bob and Di were excellent hosts, shipping us around Calgary to sort out various bits and pieces. We are most grateful for their hospitality.
Post Christmas, Bob and Di also took us to visit some friends about an hours drive from Calgary. We had a great afternoon, riding on the back of ski-doos, taking in the scenery with the farm dog racing along through the snow beside us. We ventured up to the toboggan hill on the property and watched the kids sail down, laughing most of the way. Tim and Bob decided to have a go and the outcome was hilarious. As they raced down the hill, Bob started to overtake Tim, the dog hot on his heels. Suddenly, the serenity was broken by Bob's voice calling, "f*ck off, f*ck off, f*off". We thought he was cursing Tim as he overtook him, but it turns out his expletives were directed at the dog who was merrily nipping at Bob's hat, eventually pulling it off his head as he coasted down the hill! A great end to our time in Calgary!
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