Canadian Holidays

Round 3   We left olympia and ran almost immediately into snow on the road.  Luckily the roads were great but the snow kept coming down almost our entire drive north.  We pulled into Vancouver, threw some hugs and within the hour left to hit our first of the back to back to back parties our friends throw each year to bring in the holiday.

SO fun to see everyone again after a few months away and so great to take some time to relax, breath in the good times and catch up.  All very much needed after our frantic and stressful last few weeks in portland and in the shop!

The next night (christmas eve) saw another party at another house and more of the good times.  This time with back to back christmas movies and chili.  Perfect.

On christmas day we stayed in as various groups came to us for brunch, some football and eventually our (now traditional) seafood feast.  Vancouver even treated us to a dusting of snow so we could have a white christmas and start getting a feel for what the next few months will be like.

It's simply amazing how quickly we can slip back into life in this town and with these people... it's like we never left and we so love being here.

After the holidays we relaxed for a few days and then headed north for the first stop in our winter road trip.  Our canadian friends were all headed to whistler to celebrate the new year, so what better place to kick off our trip!   Jen and I headed up a day or two before everyone else and were met with a complete dumping of snow our first 24 hours.

It just kept coming down in a solid blanket hour after hour.  We haven't been in actual snowfall for some time (not counting the various odd icestorms that swept through portland this fall), so we spent as much time as we could stand just walking around the village, finding the random outdoor fire to warm up by and eventually returning to the van (and heater) as needed.

By the time we woke up the next morning the van was completely covered and when karma jumped out of the sliding door she completely disappeared beneath the snow.  Game on!

All in, 21" of beautiful fluffy powder fell from the sky to welcome us and we couldn't help but be giddy as we remembered what is was like to be on real snow.  The next day our friends arrived and we stayed up late partying, but we weren't about to miss early runs and woke up early to be in the line as the lifts started.  No more snow, but in its place were perfect blue skies and sunshine.

We couldn't stop smiling.  Run after run filled with deep, fluffy, make you wanna fall into it snow- all with our friends and all with perfect sunny bluebird skies.  Wow!

We stayed on the mountain longer than we should have for our first day out, and our legs were rubber (getting back into boarding shape may take us half the season), but we had a blast and joined our friends for apres in the village.

A few more glorious days on whistler with our friends, a crazy fun NYE celebration with the group that included a progressive multi-course feast and running the "snowball gauntlet" just before midnight and of course a champagne toast...

We honestly couldn't have asked for a better celebration to bring in the new year. Happy 2017 everyone!!