Saying goodbye to 2012 in style

I'm sitting at Mom and Dad's computer right now. I've been home for Christmas for almost a week now. It's been so nice to be home, even if I came down with a cold about 18 hours before I got on the plane in Vancouver.
It's been a relaxing time - hanging around the house, puzzling, card games, dog walks, visiting with friends. It's been good. And of course Christmas, that was good too. We had Christmas Eve at Robin's house this year. So the annual family photo is there, rather than at home and it is missing Emmy (she is not a big fan of car rides). But here we are in all our festive glory.

We also played Milles Bornes (Mom's not so favourite game).

Christmas Day started in the usual fashion with stockings and pet gifts. Peggy got a snazzy new sweater. She doesn't love it. But I do.

Emmy got catnip toys and honeysuckle toys. They just turn her right into a kitten (for a brief moment of time, she is 16).

The afternoon was spent playing Dutch Blitz and Mom and Robin doing dinner prep stuff. Our usual family friends were over for dinner and of course that meant B-52s by Bryan.

(The first on the left was just a practice - they got much better as he continued to pour)

Christmas was really good.

So tomorrow, it's back to Calgary. But this time heading somewhere warmer than Vancouver (at least briefly). First stop, Buenos Aires for New Years. I'm pretty excited. And then on to Ushuaia at the very southern point of South America. From there - on to Antarctica! Yahoo!!!!

I am going to try to get some blogs in while away, but no promises as I'm not sure how reliable/expensive internet will be. So if not, I will keep blogs ready to be posted for when I am back from the "Nice Icy Land" (as per Tacky the Penguin - a favourite book). Wishing you all the very best of the new year and hopefully catch up with you all soon.