Mark and I celebrated our Ontario Christmas over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. On December 31 I had the morning off so I did a bit of shopping at Loblaws to get candy cane ice cream, olives and artichoke hearts, then rode up the street to T&T Supermarket to get sushi and sashimi. Both stores were more crowded than I expected for a New Year’s Eve morning, but would have been even busier had I gone in the middle of the afternoon.
After work I rode home and got my place ready for Mark, who was planning on arriving by 6:30. I brought his stockings downstairs and made a salad and mushroom gravy. Although Christmas was by now over, Mark, who was staying the night, wanted to open our presents the following morning. Thus after he had laid out his presents for me, the living room floor looked like this on New Year’s morning:
Mark posing with his trove of stocking stuffers and presents:
Cereal camouflage from Mark. Lucky Charms is my favourite cereal, and here it is, wrapped inside a frosted wheat box:
The following day Grant, Evelyn and Trooper visited. They are sitting next to their giant stockings:
Trooper got to open his stocking first:
Grant pulled out a Cherry Blossom (it was wrapped, of course):
Memories of Christmas in the 1970’s came flooding back when I unwrapped a pristine box of silver and blue Doubl Glo Christmas garland:
I had laid out the feast of Polish deli meats (that I had bought shortly before Grant and Evelyn arrived), cheeses, olives, black tiger shrimp, tempura shrimp, Strub’s full sour pickles, sushi and sashimi. The food never stopped and we did not need a dinner.
One of the presents I gave Grant and Evelyn was a Pomeranian decoration I had picked up in Bedford. Evelyn sent me this picture of the new dog hanging on their tree: