Christmas Prezzies & Boxing Day Fun

We've packed up to head out to Peterpatch early tomorrow so this will be a non-picture post.

Santa and our Hutchison family was very kind to us this year. Len and I got some fantastic gifts that will definitely make our lives easier and more fun.

I got Lenny a food dehydrator (which he was quite surprised to get -- he's wanted one for a while!) and two first/second edition books on some of his science interests: Sir Sandford Fleming's book on Penicillin (an 1940s dosage and usage book!) and one of Banting's contemporary's books on the pioneering Insulin research. Hopefully they will inspire him to think of something new for his own research.

Lenny was a real sneaker and put a People's jewelry box inside a big Mark's Workwearhouse box with some packages of index cards and a paper towel holder rolling around in there! Ha! It totally got me! Anyhoo, I got a georgous pair of diamond earings. My first real diamonds actually. They make me feel so pretty and special. Nice work my dear :) Not sure if this is them exactly, but this is pretty close floral design:Well that's probably enough info for now. More to come after a trip to introduce Lenny to my Grandpa (my mom's dad) in Peterborough tomorrow for lunch and a trip to Missassauga to visit our friend Justin and his new girlfriend Kristin for dinner.

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays from the houses with the most Christmas spirit of all!

'Twas the night before Christmas

It's Decem-beard and I like it!
Here's a promised shot of some water. I'll work on a better picture sometime before we leave.


My mom made delicious maple buttertarts from a recipe my Aunt Peggy passed on to us a few years ago. Delicious!!

Christmas Eve dinner consisted of reindeer-shaped pasta with an Italian sausage sauce. Nummies!
And of course the traditional tourtiere. Suprisingly it was actually really good. Thank you Hall's Apple Orchard for venturing into this baking opportunity! Nummies!
And for dessert number one, panettone. Yummy!!
And dessert number two, gingerbread cheesecake. A-m-a-z-i-n-g!
After a drive around town to look at Christmas lights we came home to a treeload of presents. Sa-weet!
Keely gave Starsky an early present: a huge bone. It was gone in just over an hour.

Happy sleeping!

This is so mean

Stumbled on this web site today. Let's hope this doesn't happen to anyone else!

http://yourownimage.info/girlfriend-troll.html

Alight at Night

On Tuesday night Lenny and I drove up to Morrisburg, ON, about a 40 minute drive, to check out Upper Canada Village's Alight at Night. It was really pretty, not too cold, and just the right amount of entertainment for something self-guided. One of the buildings even had the lights timed to Christmas carols played on overhead speakers.

I've been to UCV during the summer quite a bit but never during the winter. A lot of the buildings were closed (obviously) and there wasn't really a lot to do or read, but we had a great time just being by ourselves, outside, with pretty things all around.

Construction on the park began in 1958 as part of the St. Lawrence Seaway project. The Seaway required the permanent flooding of ten communities in the area, known as The Lost Villages. As a consequence, Upper Canada Village was incorporated as part of the project's heritage preservation plan. Many of the buildings in Upper Canada Village were transported directly from the villages to be flooded.

Here are some pictures of us out and about in this town "stuck" in the 1860s (+ lights).


Hmm I wonder who that is infront of that strange looking Christmas tree?

Flash on: It's Lenny!

Hmmm who is that you say?
It's a me! Heather! I bundled up so well for this outing.

Another attempt to show you some of the million lights.
Inside one of the buildings they had the displays from their annual gingerbread house competition. Check out some of these amazing creations!
A very realistic Santa's toolbox:
An excellent replica of one of the churches at Upper Canada Village:

An awesome Christmas tree with soooo many candies. One day I will create an epic gingerbread creation like this.
This one was entitled something like a "Whoville Christmas." Pretty well done, eh?
One of the other buildings that was open was the bakery. This guy bakes 85 loafs of bread in a stone oven that takes three hours to heat twice a day. We ended up buying a loaf in the shoppe on the way out and it was delicious! The flour is all ground at the grist mill on site too so it doesn't get much more local than that.

This was a bear figurine we considered getting to commemorate our trip but in the end decided a picture was best.

This video gives perhaps a better recap of the lights compared to my beginner camera skills:





Well there you go, a recap of our trip to UCV. I didn't end up taking any pictures of the near dozen carriages and horse-drawn wagon rides because I didn't want to spook the horses. Hopefully some of you will get a chance to check it out someday.

Adventures in downtown Brockville

Two days ago Lenny & I took a break from our normal run routines and went for epic walks instead. First we took Starsky out for a tour (no pictures) and then we dropped her off at home and went for a walk downtown. Here are a few pictures introducing you to some of downtown Brockville. I'll have to try to take some pictures of the water and islands the next time we're out.

The first item of excitement was seeing a rather antique looking firetruck. BFD. :)
Next up we walked by the centre of town. Here's a picture of the cenotaph with a nativity scene set up. I'm pretty sure it's been the same one for as long as I've been around.

This is a picture of the courthouse in the distance with some older nice looking buildings on the side. Brockville used to be the millionaire capital of Canada until Toronto took it over many moons ago so there are a lot of beautiful old buildings to see.

Here is Lenny outside of one of his favourite Brockville stores, Cooke's Fine Foods. The building the store has been around since something like the 1850s so the architecture is beautiful, although, I think he likes it because of the strong scent of fresh coffee that oozes out onto the street. Nothing quite like the smell of fresh roasted coffee.
Tait's Bakery. Nom nom nom. Not quite as awesome as St. Phillip's in Maple, but a Brockville staple since 1919.
Len thought the original cash register from the bakery was worth a picture so here you go. Pretty neat eh?

So there you go. Some sights and sounds of Brockville. Next up is a post about our visit to Upper Canada Village's Alight at Night show.

Sunday & Monday Adventures

Most of Sunday was spent driving from Len's family's house to mine but we did make time to stop at our favourite bakery in Maple, Ontario: St. Phillip's bakery. We picked up some delicious cookies and a panettonne. Yummmm! For those of you that don't know, panettone is a traditional Italian Christmas cake and comes in a fancy looking box with handle like this one:
The panettone we got has apricots and chocolate baked into it. I'm looking SO forward to having some very soon.

Visibility wasn't the greatest because of snow between Toronto and Kingston, however, it was a lot better than last year and a lot better than London. Here's a picture of us heading into who knows where because you can't really see any signs!


On Sunday night a choir my mom sings in was giving a concert at a nursing home and Lenny and I decided to come along with the bassoon in hand. I love my mom and I think this is actually one of the better more recent pictures of the two of us.
There weren't any seats in the area of the concert so Lenny hung out in the hallway and took pictures through a glass window (hence the glare). You can still get an idea of the size of the choir and see proof that I did actually play my bassoon over the holidays!

It's always really nice to see music performed by people that absolutely love what they're doing at that moment. You don't get to see that all the time at the university or on the professional stage, so it was a really nice moment to have. I'm also so grateful for Lenny's support. He didn't have to come out to the middle of nowhere to support us but he did and I'm so grateful :)

Moving onto yesterday, we had a bit of a more relaxed day. In the morning Len & I went out for a run with Starsky, possibly the world's worst running partner at times, and got a lot of energy out on the slippery sidewalks. Lenny managed to survive wearing his Vibrams which was kind of amazing considering the temperature.

After recovering from the run, we headed out with my sister Erin to Starbucks (YES!), visit her new boyfriend Chuck, went to a shop downtown, and finally visited her old workplace to pick up some groceries for dinner. We helped make a roast beef with veggies and I made a double recipe of the Flourless Chocolate Snow Mountains featured in an earlier post. We finished off the evening by watching on of my favourite Christmas movies, Elf.

Today I'm hoping to set up my new Garmin Forerunner watch, do some reading, eat some delicious left overs, and then head out to Upper Canada Village for their Alight at Night celebrations. I have good memories of going their in the summer as a kid so hopefully going there at night in the winter will be just as fun!

The best holiday video thus far

This video has brought big smiles to my face. Hope you enjoy it too!

Holiday Time Begins

Let the Christmas celebrations begin!

This morning we worked our mad packing and cleaning skills to the tee and managed to get everything done and be on the road before noon. With some delicious Great Canadian Bagel breakfasts in our stomaches (one of our favourite places to go out for a quick bit), we were off to Kitchener-Waterloo to visit Tamara. Tamara and Len worked together at the university for many years but now she's doing her masters in something close to international policy and conflict in Waterloo (T, can you correct me if this isn't what you're studying?). We met up at the Huether for some good eats and catching up. It's always a great feeling when you get together with someone that you haven't been able to see in a while and the conversation just flows with funny inside jokes and the like. Hopefully Tamara will be in London to do our PhD so we can spend more time with her! Here are some pics with me & T and Lenny & T.Just before we went into the Huether, I decided to give Lenny part of his Christmas gift as it would be useful during our long drive(s). This is his reaction:

This guy just loves gadgets. I picked him up an FM transmitter for his iPod as he said he wanted one back in August. If you're not familiar with them, FM transmitters are little adapters you can plug into the bottom of your iPod, set a radio frequency dial for it, and then proceed to listen to your iPod over the radio. Why, you may ask, is this necessary? Well our tape deck thinger that does the same thing really is dying a slow death and the quality is pretty poor. It's also really useful for situations when you can't or don't want to be close to your iPod, say like when you're on a boat (the transmitter comes with a remote). Anyhoo, this is one part of four for his gifts so stay tuned for more.

Once we arrived in Toronto we stopped at the Running Room as I realized I had forgot my running pants in London. Silly me had left them hanging in the closet after shoveling the other day and didn't think to pack them. Anyhoo I got some nice new winter running pants, bringing the count to two, and took them out for a 4k test run tonight with Len & Dakota (the family dog). Here is Dakota all happy and tuckered out post-run. Isn't here reflective vest sooo cute?!

Len's family did an awesome job of getting home-made mini pizza supplies together for dinner. Bocconcini, ham, pepperoni, prosciutto, olives, mushrooms, toppings galore! It was quite tasty. Even Dakota got to partake in the delicious treats with her own mini pizza:
We decided to exchange a few time-sensitive gifts after dinner. We got Len's step-dad Mark some fleece-lined jeans for Christmas and wanted him to have a chance to wear them before the construction season ends on Wednesday. We also got him a pickle ornament as a highlight to his German heritage (although Google suggests this is all phooey), and some warm socks to go with the pants.

We got his mom a coffee table book of the Niagara region as this is somewhere they went often as a kid and a lot of the artwork is by one of his mom's favourite artists. We also got her a cute Pug Therapy book that has different dogs dressed up in funny costumes. They look so much like Dakota and bring a big smile to your face as you read it. Here's a pic of Mark and Silvana reviewing the book:

I got a fantastic assortment of shea butter products from The Body Shop. I absolutely adore these products because they smell soooo yummy and really do moisturize and work well.

Lenny got some kick-ass gloves by Ralph Lauren that allow him to use touch-screen technologies like his phone. What a great idea!

He also got a really nice sweater (which he needs more of). Modelled here:

The final gift, which I'm sure Lenny will enjoy for years to come, was a phenomenal corkscrew/wine set from Henckels. The corkscrew part ways a tonne, but it's one of those wonderfully-designed things that you only have to push down and not actually twist. I'm quite excited to test it out and finally be able to open a wine bottle without pain (twisty things still inflame my wrists a lot).

Here's the final pic for the evening. We're cuddled downstairs by the wood-burning fire (Awesome) watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation followed by Meet the Parents. Lenny's curled up with Dakota, a rarity, thanks to both of them being a little pooped out from the day.

Time to go enjoy myself. Ahhhh vacation :D

Next up: Brockvegas tomorrow!