Happy Christmas from the Rockie Mountains...

Happy Christmas to you all - hope everyone has had a wonderful time. Tegan, Fraser and myself joined Chris in Canmore on Friday 18 Dec along with our friends Andy, Sam and their children Francesca and Millie and all 3 dogs. The house we have rented for a month is great, large 4 bedrooms along with a den downstairs for the kids. We back onto Silver Tip golf course which makes dog walking easy and we have our own hot tub in the back garden - fantastic after a day of skiing. The view from every window in the house is of the snow covered mountains, very picturesque. The golf course is also home to a large herd of elk which roam around.

Saturday afternoon we went up the mountain to have a look, Sunday we started skiing with Tegan, Fraser and Millie having lessons whilst in Tiny Tigers and Francesca having a lesson for older children. Tegan and Fraser had lessons over a couple of days and have done really well, Tegan can now snowplough her way down a green run, however Fraser is not quite there as he doesn't have any control - as normal just goes fast. Tuesday was a day off from the slopes and was spent tobogganing on the golf course, swimming at the local pool and finished off by going to watch the Canmore Eagles vs Calgary Canucks ice hockey which was really good.

Christmas eve we didn't ski and spent the day doing a few chores and popping into Canmore. That evening friends from Ralston invited us all around for drinks and mince pies then it was home to get all 4 children ready for Father Christmas, we left out milk, a carrot, sherry and mince pie, which all promptly froze. So with very excited children we were ready for our first Christmas in Canada. Fraser did wake up around 4am to say that 'he has been' but we persuaded him that he had to go back to sleep - then all 4 kids were up at 7.05 am - not bad. After a mammoth session of opening presents, a quick jump into the hot tub Chris and Sam were then in charge of cooking christmas lunch. After a splendid lunch and more playing tired children eventually went to bed.


















One of Chris's christmas presents was a day of snowmobiling along with Andy which they have both done today (Sun 27th). They left at 8am and didn't return until 5.30pm after a great day of zooming around mountains in glorious sunshine, a good boys day out.

Tomorrow we start a week of ski rec lessons at Lake Louise which should hopefully improve my skiing, as for Chris not sure if they will get him to slow down for long enough!

More to come in the next few days...