Saturday...nearly Christmas....

We awoke this morning to find that there had been some kind of blizzard in the night. Our driveway was covered and poor Santa had fallen over and had become helf buried under the snow. We dug him out and re-erected him and then set about digging ourselves out of the driveway.

Neil makes a start.

My what big piles we have!

Santa, standing again over to the left, and Neil still shoveling.

A very festive Land Rover.

Neil, haggling over cabage with a little old lady at the farmers market.

Neil and a horse.

Merry Christmas! Testing out the timer button on the camera.

Christmas time is coming.....

I don't want to reveal too much about our Christmas decorating as I don't want Katarina and Paulo to see it before they arrive here next week but I wanted to show that we have done something and oh, ho, ho, how jolly it makes us feel.......

Neil and Doog with the tree. The car smelled so lovely for the next couple of days! It was just a shame there were so many sticky patches from the sap!

Here you can see me struggling with erecting our reindeer....yes ok , I know it's only small but it was hard work!

Yes, I think I have it's head in place here.

Neil tries to hold up an 8 foot Santa!

Da Daaaaaa! Santa and his (one) reindeer! Lovely!

And here I am decorating the tree!

Hunter-sitting last week.

Last Friday night we got some bottles in and had a good night of drinking and eating (and burping and puking). Hunter had a great time and so did we. Changing him was an experience and we didn't really know if we were doing it right but he seemed pretty happy so it was all good!

We were pretty impressed by the fact that Hunter, despite only being 2 months old, was a big Oilers fan already.

Neil and Hunter watched some TV, had some milk and then they were pretty much pooped.....

Aaaah! How cute!

TODAYS NEWS!!!!

Tuesday the 12th December 2006

Dale Finally Passes Driving test!

Good on you man...........

Movie star....

Neil has been working in the media office which means he gets to do fun stuff like work in an editing suite, audition actors and even star in movies! Well, not movies exactly, this was a video about gang violence and Neil got to be the victim (in case you hadn't already guessed).

Here he is in an on-set meeting prior to filming. The guy with the camera is Neil's new buddy and pretty much his Canadian clone Renee. The German porn star look-alike is Gary who gets the pleasure of working with Neil most days.



Here are a couple of monkeys, oops, I mean Neil and Renee.

Neil and the gang that beat him.

Sweeeeeeeet!

Neil, Renee, Jody and Gary.

Poor Mr Poog...

It's warmed up now but last week it hit a low of -38 degrees. Doog didn't like it one bit. He pretty much refused to go out at times and we literally had to kick him out the door. He'd pee as quickly and as near to the door as possible and then demand to be let back in. He does this thing where he'll lift each leg up one by one and hold it up for a while as if it's just too cold to keep them all on the ground at once. We were starting to worry about the poor little thing, he doesn't have much hair and we all know he's a wimp at the best of times. Anyway, Neil went shopping and bought him a set of paw-tectors (little fleece lined rubber booties!) and a blue, padded bomber jacket thing. He's not sure about the booties and can't really walk properly in them but he loves the jacket. It's even got a pocket for him to keep his chewy in!

"Let me in....brrrrrrrr!"

"Why the hell did they bring me to this place!"

"What the frick are these?!"

WEDDING PAGE ACCESS

Ok i have resricted the access to the WEDDING PAGE!!!! I was worried that I may have some strange guests at my party soooooooooo. Whoever wants to get into the site, please send an email to me at nralston@hotmail.com and I can add you to my list, then you will be given permission. Sorry about that folks.

Neil

Cold on the outside warm on the inside....

Neil does a spot of sun-bathing.


Then poses next to his piles.

Cosy candle in a jar.

Well it's -24 degrees C. Earlier on today it was -28 and with wind chill......-35 degrees. It's quite odd really. When I left work for lunch today it had snowed quite a bit on my car so I went to get the snow brush out the boot to dust off the layers that had accumulated during the day. The trouble was I just couldn't open my car boot (canadian transaltion: trunk), it was totally frozen shut. Couldn't open it no matter what I did. Well I ended up opening one of the back doors and climbing into the boot to grab the brush. I dusted off the car and left the snow brush in the back footwell for easy access when I needed it later. Well, when I left work to go home later that day I went to open the back door and that too had totally frozen shut. It was like it was glued closed, there wasn't any way I could open it. So this time I had to climb through the front to get the brush. What's worrying me now is whether my drivers door is also going to freeze, in which case I won't be able to get home and I'll freeze to death in the office car park. Hmmm.

Other cold related phenomenons that I have recently encountered include finding ice on the inside of our windows (see photo below) and getting burnt by metal due to it being totally frozen ( it was Neil that discovered that one when trying to fill the car up without wearing gloves.) I also had an interesting experience in a hot tub on Saturday. It was absolutely boiling in the water and I actually felt a bit too hot but at the same time, my hair was frozen solid and felt like it might snap off. Weird!

Ice....on the inside!

Toasty warm feet!

Frozen eyebrows after snow-shoveling.

Friday Night Poker...........Some girls allowed!

Friday the 24th November, -25 outside, what else is there to do..............Yep we had the very first Canadian Poker night with the boys.....OK some girls included!

Mandy and I won the game and shared the profits 50/50! YEAHHHH

Snow day......

Temperature -17 degrees and falling. It's supposed to reach -24 by Saturda....brrrrrrr

Today it snowed a lot. I think it was probably about six inches or so all in one morning. I even got to leave work early as the roads were so bad. It was nice to arrive home in the daylight for a change so I took the opportunity to document our snow piles in some photos. In the pic below you can see just how big our piles have become today. The big lump nearest the house in this photo used to be our snowman. Unfortunately he was buried some time ago.

And here's the view looking down the street, thats one of our piles on the right near the lamp post. Big eh?

Check out our sky-diving videos....

If you haven't already noticed the link to the video clips, it's up on the right. Have a look!

Blog-lag

A very pretty sunset as seen from our back deck two nights ago.

Apologies for not havng posted recently, the enthusiasm left me for a while. I think it's a sign of home-sickness. I think I have been feeling a little sorry for myself since my visitors left. Anyway, let's talk about the weather shall we? Well we've had snow on the ground now since the last week of October, in fact, it all started the day my mum, Winnie and Kate arrived in Beaumont. The temperature has fluctuated between +1 and -20 since then. The last few days have been sunny and warm (+3) but we're set for a drop in temperature over the next few days and by Saturday its supposed to reach -26 (brrrrrr!). Last night on the way home from work I noticed a full dog sled team being mushed along the snowy verge at the side of the road! This struck me as odd but I guess it's probably quite a normal sight in these parts. I've also seen a few herds of dear, some bison and a coyote on my daily commute to work, wonder if I'll see anything tomorrow? Anyway, as nothing particularly note-worthy has happened latetly I've had to just upload some random photos taken over the last couple of weeks......

The last supper. We ate Neil's timpana before leaving for the airport.

And this is the last starbucks. It was at the airport just before we left them there. We even bought mugs to commemerate the occasion.

Here is Doog eating snow off the deck as the sun sets behind him.

This is me sitting at my desk. I have a flat screen. ( I told you these were random photos!)

This is Neil taking Doog for a walk in the snow in about -18 degrees......in his pyjammas!!!

Doog, running down the snowy street. I think his feet get cold.

Doog checking out the pretty sunset out the back of the house, from the upstairs windows the other night.