best Boxing Day ever!

If I were to recount all the travel hassle we went through to get to Mum and Roy's for Christmas, well, this would be rather a more bitter blog than I ever intend it to be. A little snark is good, and Air Canada and Hertz especially deserve somewhat more than that. But it's over. We made it to Salmon Arm in the end. Let this not be a tale of travel ordeals but of the best Boxing Day EVER!

Skipping over Christmas - because we ultimately did - we made it to Mum's at noon on Boxing Day. For those few of you USians who read this, Boxing Day is a holiday in Canada. Nowadays it's about sales for many people, but when I was young (and when the Lord's Day Act forbade Sunday and holiday shopping), it was the day on which we would go visit people in their homes. I always liked Boxing Day for those visits, the chance to see the other decorations, the goodies that were offered in each house.

Conrad and I had checked into the hotel, unpacked presents, and changed. We regretted not having the planned three nights at the hotel as the room was handsome, and the lake views of the Shuswap were good.

We would have liked an evening or two in the room to sip a bit of wine, read, and relax.

Mum - no surprise - had much food for us. After all, she'd been baking and preparing for three of us (my sister didn't make it in the end) for three nights there. It fell to me and Conrad to eat as much as we could in order to do her honour. We did our best. We'll pay for it for some time to come. Mincemeat tarts, butter tarts, oyster tarts (the little squiggle of almond icing under the lifted top makes them look like oysters - Conrad liked these ones a lot), fruitcake (I HATE that people mock fruitcake - have some as good as my Mum's and you won't disparage it!), shortbreads, cherry loaf, sausage rolls with green tomato chutney on the side, rum balls (boozy!), and an assortment of store-bought things like cheeses, ham, chocolates, pickles, chips and dip. That was lunch.
Oh, and homemade eggnog. Nothing like the odd-tasting stuff you get in the cartons at the store. Oh no. Very rich, also boozy. I think boozy may be a theme to our Christmas eating.

After lunch, and in order not to doze right away, we did stockings and presents. Marie, Conrad, and I had done some presents in Vancouver, and I had made stockings for the two of them there when it became clear we weren't getting out on Christmas Eve. Still, we were in no way short of gifts.




And then the napping instinct kicked in. Big time. And yet, we resisted. Conrad, Mum, and I bundled up and went out for a slow saunter in the neighbourhood. More snow was falling by then; in fact, by the time we left Salmon Arm, we had 15 cm or so (6 or more inches) of new snow. A walk felt good.



Mum had made turkey dinner on Christmas, and she and Roy ate sparingly of it that night after it was clear we wouldn't be there until the next day. That made dinner prep easier on her, I'm happy to say. Mum is the one from whom I learned the technique of draping the turkey with bacon to baste it while cooking. The bonus is bacon to enjoy as part of Christmas dinner. Perfect!





For me, though, the highlight of Christmas dinner is the dessert. Christmas pudding, or plum pudding as it may be known. Mum makes her own, and this one was three years old. Yes, three years. She ages it and douses it with - you got it - booze to keep it going. No, she doesn't set it alight to serve it. Instead, it comes hot out of the steaming process and is served with brandied butter (hard sauce).
I'm happy to report that Conrad enjoyed it too.

We stayed there until 9 or so, hearing about their big cruise they took this past fall, and enjoying the post-dinner wind-down. The next morning Mum and freshly made waffles for us, and that capped the best Boxing Day ever (a day later) before we headed back to Kelowna to catch our return flight to Vancouver.

Let's go to the mall(s)! Today.

Ah Jeph, introducing me (and, by extension, Conrad) to Robin Sparkles. There were a number of points on Tuesday when he and I burst into singing that line and more. We hid it from my parents as best we could.

Tuesday, before our return to Salmon Arm, we did, indeed, go to the mall. Mum and Roy don't get as far afield as Kelowna, at least not often, and I thought they might enjoy the wider selection of stores. Once the mall opened at 10, we began shopping - all of us. Conrad and I picked up a few things to keep at the condo in Vancouver, and we did a wee bit of Christmas shopping. We spent almost 4 hours there. Wow. Lunch was at Milestone's, a reliable chain.
My Thai chicken tacos were not anything close to dinner the night before, but the chicken and slaw were both tasty and light.In any case, both Mum and Roy quite liked it.

I wish I had photos of the drive back. Specifically, after we stopped for some produce at Swan Lake in Vernon,we took the back road through Silver Creek. The late afternoon sun lent the valley a warm glow, and if we weren't trying to get to Gort's Gouda in Salmon Arm before it closed for the day, we might have dawdled on the way home.

Once back in Salmon Arm, we dropped in at the... mall. Yep. Needed to get those Coffee Crisp to bring back to Chicago, you know. Anyway, we'd already been there the morning before for a browse (scoring some knives, of all things - my favourite make!) and Mum and Roy's regular coffee time at Chester's. We behaved and did not have cinnamon buns!


On schedule for today in Vancouver? Oh, likely a visit to Pacific Centre. Yep, a downtown mall. I really am very smalltown BC, aren't I?

some people never change...

...and thank goodness for it!

Blogging a bit out of chronological order here, but I'm sure you'll all cut me some slack. I have a few photos still from yesterday, but I did want to get Ray's photos up before too long.

Ray is someone I've known for about 15 years from back home. Way back in about 1993 he took a fat young guy (me - and yes, I was fat, about 90 pounds heavier than I am right now) and somehow instilled in him an appreciation and enjoyment of activity. As if that were all he did, though. Ray is simply a very rare person, someone who takes each person on their merits and makes his judgment based on that. No generalizations based on the person's background or self-identification. It's a remarkable quality in a person, and I am glad to know him for it.

It's been too many years since last we saw each other. A few near misses when I've been in Salmon Arm and the area, but otherwise, it's been several years since last I saw him. I think it may have been 5 years since we managed a coffee in Kamloops on a snowy late December morning. 1 hour in the last ten years. Not enough.

Before Conrad, Mum, Roy, and I set out for Kelowna this morning, we stopped by Ray's new running gear store, Cool Running, in Salmon Arm. From the sounds of it, it's been a welcome business in the community, and I hope his success there endures. Meanwhile, he and I had a lot of running and swimming chit chat to catch up on as well as the Terrace gossip. Plus, he'd never met Conrad before, though others in his family and extended family had.

Dinner with Ray tomorrow night in Salmon Arm and more catching up on tap. How nice to do so on this all-too-short visit back west.