Christmas Jollys.

What a lovely Christmas we had thanks to the many many wonderful friends we have met and made while in this beautiful city.

I shall start at the begining.

First there was the Christmas tree. Which is still the centre piece of our lounge and puts New Zealand Christmas trees to shame with its beautifully formed branches and little cute needles.

We had a fun night decorating and dancing after Lucie was so kind to mish through the hail and ice and snow to bring it home to us from IKEA (who sell real Christmas trees for $20 and then give you a $20 gift voucher if you return the tree to them after Christmas – Primo, Corker)

We had planned to have a Christmas dinner on Christmas eve with Lucie and Caro because we would all be going our separate ways on Christmas Day. So sam and I were rushing around town on Christmas eve, of course, really very late for everything. buying presents and then rushing home whilst creating all these plans for how we were going to get the Christmas pressies into the house, unwrapped, with out the girls seeing them.

We got home and i was ready to create a big distraction so that sam could sneak the prezzys to some safe hiding place, but the hose was empty! Turns out they were running even more late than we were and, covered in snow, with no feelings in their toes, they came home and created a big distraction while they hid our presents in a safe place…. hahaha.

The girls had planned on having an outrageously Christmassy dinner with all read and green treats and tricks but they had gone down to the super marche and it was shut! oh dear, so we had NOTHING to eat for our christmas dinner and ended up ordering fried chicken because it was the only place open. it was all very funny, and while we were waiting for our takeaways to arrive we were all in our respective rooms sharing one pair of scissors and one roll of tape, always meeting half way in our hallway to do a trade so that “you dont come into my room and I wont come into yours”

It was all very funny.

but the fried chicken was ok and by the time it had gotten there we had drunk our way through a couple of bottles of wine and (especially as i hadnt eaten all day) the high grease high carbo food was just what we needed. Then at midnight and another bottle of wine later, carol announced it was offically christmas! and so with out adults around to say “no! wait till morning” we went crazy and did all our presents. The girls got us heaps of stuff, it was mind blowing, they got us a book “101 things to do before your old and boring” a candy floss scented pencil for sam, and a book of splatters, a sew it your self stuffed to chiken for me, which is outrageously cool. A little key ring each with these funny little devil and dracula characterson them, lucie got us all tickets to a show that’s on at the end of Jan. OH this really cool bean, that you plant and when it grows out of the soil its seed leaves have the meassage “Save the Planet” printed on them
Amazing.

we got Carol a big canvas and some paints, because she had been talking about how she wanted to do some painting. and we got Lucie a dvd documentry of one of her favourite montreal bands Arcade fire, which you can only buy online and when you buy it you get to download it too so we burnt it to a disc and made our own cover for the dvd so she had something to open for christmas while she waits for the real thing to arrive in the mail.

It was all very lovely and they wrote us this lovely card in super fantasticly broken english, there’s a tear jerker for ya.

We went to bed all wined up and sleepy and woke on christmas feeling a little like it wasnt really christmas because we jumped the gun a bit with the presents.

Sam and I made the girls Pancakes for breaky and we just hung around a bit then at 4 we headed off to Marie-Eve’s house. Who was so kind to invite us to her place for Christmas Dinner with her and her boyfriend, benoit, and benoit’s family.

It could have been really strange i guess, as we had never met Benoit and it was really a family thing, with the children and the oldies and all that jazz, but they made us fell so welcome and even gave us a present each, which was flabbergasting. We have just been so lucky to meet such nice people. The Dinner its self was INCREDIBLE as both Ben and Marie are chefs. and we had a sweet potato potage with truffle oil as a starter, which was magnificent, and then super suculent duck with potato and a mushroom, onion, thingy for the main…. it was just fossiliferous, (or as good as finding a fossiliferous rock after months of searching through empty strata) then we feasted on delicious cheeses and drunk port and then had desert which was ice cream with nutty choclaty gooness and chocolate truffles and the biscuits that sam and i had made as a wee token of our appreciation for them having us. Luckily they were some of the best bisuits we have made (peanut chocolate chip brownies) so they didnt get too out shone buy the rest of the food. at about 10:30 the family left and it was just the four of us. and we played games and danced and finished off the wine and beers and then totally crashed. it was great! a really good christmas in the end.

Boxing day: Marie-eve and Benoit both had work the next day. and how they managed to get out of bed and go to work in hot stinky kitchens with food and grease and…. urgh, its just beyond me. But they went off early in the morning, and sam and i, when we finally woke up, did a big tidy of the mess we had all made and then headed out to Lucie’s work for a breakfast to try and kick the hang over.

and that my dear, is the story of Noel.

Unfortunately it didnt snow on christmas day, which is sad. But it was still white on christmas so we still had a white christmas. i guess…