A Merry Xmas Eve!

December 24, 2005 | 902 views | Trackback | |

With Tess up in Whistler for the Christmas break and personally having no immediate plans for tomorrow, I was all set to treat this evening's 'revolving door' Christmas Eve party at Ryan and Corrie's place as my 'Christmas Bash' for this year. So relaxed was the affair that they basically advertised the roll-up time as anywhere between 2pm and 10pm.

Somehow it ended up being a big night out with the boys last night following the Canucks game, so I was more than happy to delay my arrival at the party till around 5pm giving me the chance for a solid, uninterrupted and I think well deserved sleep-in. Picking up some more low fat eggnog supplies on the way, I arrived at Ryan and Corries to find a gathering of older friends and family including Mo and Dave, Ryan's Mum and her partner.

The cocktails, wine, eggnog and finger foods were flowing freely by the time the youngies started rolling in. The revolving door concept was working well for me as I was able to catch up with a bunch of friends I haven't seen for ages (Andreas, Jim, Adrienne) as little by little they popped in to say hi and have a drink on their way to other Christmas Eve engagements. I was also able to catch up with Colin and Gail (Ryan's Dad and Step mum) who came up all the way from White Rock which was fantastic. Like most Canadians they're just such warm and friendly people, which was more than demonstrated to me when unexpectedly Colin invited me to join them for Xmas down in White Rock tomorrow. Apparently I have no say in the idea either!

My once potentially quiet day tomorrow soon became 'chockas' when all the gang finally arrived. TJ invited me to spend the early afternoon with his family on their traditional Christmas Day hit-out at the local ten-pin bowling alley down in White Rock and I was more than happy to accept.

It got a little nuts once Bosh, TJ, Cass, Aaron and Amy showed up with all sorts of weird and wacky Canadian Christmas traditions kicking off like splatting liqueur-filled chocolates against the balcony glass doors... ok... so there's a bit more to that story... but all you need to know is that it was a hell of a lot of fun!

For the stragglers who made it through to the 10pm cut-off time, the night concluded with one of Ryan's favourite traditions - a screening of the classic 'Griswold Family Christmas Vacation'.

I had a fun evening which served as a great introduction to the Canadian Christmas experience that I will no doubt experience in further detail tomorrow!

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