Chirstmas Preaparations. December 2 - 6

Given it was now December and we could see Christmas lights going up in apartments around us we decided we should do some decorating ourselves. For obvious reasons we didn't bring a lot of decorations with us from NZ so on Wednesday night we did a trip out to Canadian Tire (For Kiwis - Its like a Warehouse with a Repco attached, and yes, they spell tyre wrong). After spending just under $100 we had a small tree, lights and some decorations. We spent the rest of the evening blasting terrible Christmas music and decorating the apartment. We were very happy with the results.

Thursday night we decided to appreciate someone else's work and went to the waterfront and back through town enjoying all the Christmas lights setup around the city. The large Christmas tree in front of the art gallery was great, especially with the lights on the Fairmont Hotel in the background.

With decorations up the only thing left to do was shopping. Fortunately we had an early start on this sending things back to NZ with Rach in November. Rach carried on with the shopping both Thursday and Friday, I however, had to wait for the weekend - and the chaos that involves.

On Saturday Rach's work had their Christmas party. 80 Doctors and Nurses took over Chivana Restaurant and Lounge in Kits. The food was great, the place was great. There were a lot of prize draws; a lot of the management staff and doctors had donated the prizes. Rach did well and got a basket full of chocolate, it's going to take us a long time to get through it all. I think everyone had a fantastic night.

On Sunday Rach managed to get an LOA (Leave of absence) from work so we decided to take a break from all the Christmas festivities and head up Grouse Mountain for some snowboarding. We got there early afternoon and stayed till afterdark. The sunsets are spectacular from up there and view while night snowboarding is breathtaking...