Things change.

It has been a good number of years since I have had Christmas with a blood relative. Probably the last one was with the younger of my older brothers in 2001. He is now in Mexico, a little far to travel for a week. The oldest brother is in Ottawa, again, a fair distance to travel. My sister is about a five hour drive (in winter) north of me and she has all of her husbands family in the area they live in. I have my urban family that I spend Christmas with. It fluctuates a bit each year, but the core of it stays pretty much the same.

Except this year. None of us likes hot turkey, so we cooked up a breast in order to have cold sandwiches for boxing day - it came out a bit dry. My friends decided that I should do the cooking this year - you would think they would know better by now! We had elk roast, the recipe sounded interesting, but it came out tough and had no flavour. The scalloped potatoes (that I have successfully made before) were just short of a disaster, but at least the roast and the potatoes were ready at the same time. Something I rarely manage. I even screwed up the salad - yes, I did! I can blame some of the disaster on it not being my kitchen, but alas, not all of it.

One of the traditions that slipped this year was the tree...we have a decorating party the last Sunday before Christmas and get the house all set up and the tree decorated. Not this year, we brought the tree in from the cold and the branches were still upright, so we didn't get it decorated until Tuesday. Whatever, we had decided not to stress about anything this year. This, in turn led us to discussing how things change no matter how much you want them to stay the same.

Click to enlarge

This is how the tree wound up looking, I like the way the lights reflect on the ceiling and floor.

Close up of the Angel.

More reflected lights.

One of the biggest traditions smashed for me, was opening gifts on Christmas morning. My urban family opens them Christmas Eve - after midnight, but still! The kid in me protests!


I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and no-one had illusions shattered or traditions broken beyond repair.

I also wish you all the best in the new year.

Edit: It seems (and to me too when I read it again) that I am whining. That is not how it was meant to sound. I had a wonderful Christmas in spite of the little things that went wrong and we all had a good laugh about dinner. I am very grateful to have my urban family.

WWC - Heavy & Light

Tuesday again! The slightly overdone Tink of Pickled Beef is our hostess for the Weekly Word Challenge and has given us the words HEAVY & LIGHT to work with this week.

Some of these photos are from the tour I did of the Legislature grounds and I kept them back from the post on the grounds in order to use them here instead.


LIGHT

This arrangement of mirrors and skylights gives sunlight to the pedway down below the Legislature grounds.



This is a closer look at the lights at the front of the Legislature.


This is a 10 - 20million year old petrified stump - lighter than wood.

Some light fare, or in my case, toxic fungus.


Last summers sunflower is now pretty light.



This covers both light and heavy. The closer bridge called the High Level bridge, is for cars and originally also had CNR trains (the heavy ones) running across the top of it. The further bridge, in blue and concrete is for the light rail transit (I assume it has a name, but I don't know what it is).


HEAVY

Having heavy thoughts?


The grass hasn't been cut in so long, it is becoming quite the heavy cover.


Heavy clouds.


Eventually the heavy clouds gave us lightening. (I really must invest in a tripod)

This rock looks pretty heavy.


Well, other than the clouds and the cats, all the photos came from around the Legislature grounds. If you would like to join in go see Tink, if you would like to look at other contributors work all together, check out our Flickr Group.

Hope you enjoy.