Wishing a very Merry Christmas to our family and friends.
Two More Sleeps…
Only a couple of more days, where has the time gone. We have had our tree up for three weeks, we had cut it down back on December 2 after the Family Bonspiel. Here is a picture of the tree waiting to be tied down to the car. We bought it at Agrams and had it freshly cut down (from the rafters).
It turned out to be a good tree, there were a lot of trees hanging that day and it was hard to spin them around.
Susan and the girls did their usual good job of decorating the tree.
Here is Gillian and Chloe before she headed off to work today. She got a lot of hours this weekend, tomorrow morning I’m dropping her off on my way to work as she starts at 6:00 am.
Santa Chloe.
Santa Chloe’s helper…Chloe Elf.
I borrowed a 10-20mm wide angle lens from one of the guys at work. This is the type of lens they use for real estate photos. Makes the rooms look a little bigger.
The Vinyl Cafe
Received the tickets I ordered for the Vinyl Cafe Show with Stuart McLean. Susan and I will be seeing him in Burlington, ON next May. Looking forward to it, the last time I ordered tickets (2007), I got stuck in Alert, NU and Susan ended going with one of her friends from work.
Curling Tournament
Today Gillian was competing in the Zones Qualifier of the Gore Insurance Provincial Championships. It is the longest running High School competition in the Province. The tournament took place at the High Park Curling Club. I was able to head down after Claudia’s concert to catch Gillian’s second game.
Gillian’s team won their first game, lost the second (the one I watched), but were able to win their third game. They finished in the top two of their Zone and have qualified for the Regionals. They will be held in Peterborough in February. Well done to Gillian and her teammates.
Christmas Concert
Claudia’s school had a Christmas Concert today, she was singing/dancing with her class and singing with the choir.
The choir was singing “Do You Hear What I Hear”.
Claudia and her classmates were dancing to and singing “Last Christmas”.
Here is the choir singing “Feliz Navidad”.
At shows like this, it is all about the little kids, here are the JK and SK kids.
Santa Photo
The girls and I headed to the mall for the annual photo with Santa. While waiting in line we determined that this was Gillian’s 18th visit with Santa. I was pretty sure we took her when she was only a couple of weeks old.
I started looking for all of the Santa photos for the past 18 years and I managed to find them. There were a few years that threw me off, as we didn’t always go to the mall. In 1999, Grandma and Poppa took the grandkids on the Santa Claus Express, on the South Simcoe Railway up in Tottenham. In 2000 and 2001 we went to the Toronto Zoo.
Decisions Ahead…
Congratulations to Gillian on her early acceptance offers from the University of Ottawa and University of Waterloo for their Biomedical Science programs. She has also applied to McMaster University and the University of Guelph. She is very excited and Susan and I are very proud of her.
Happy Birthday Gillian!
For the second time in 11 years I was away for Gillian’s birthday. We are now even for missed birthdays, Gillian has missed a couple of my birthdays for school trips and Guides. I was back in Newfoundland this week. There was still cake and photos, just have to get a copy to post.
Family Bonspiel
Today was the Family Bonspiel at the Dixie Curling Club (Gillian’s curling club). Unfortunately 2/5ths of Team Tanabe were not feeling well and in sick bay. Gillian, Claudia and I soldiered on and picked up Marcus as our fourth. We played two games of five ends. Claudia and I did pretty good for our first times.
Our first game was against Team Graham. Gillian plays on the school team with her friend Amanda.
Amanda trying to figure out how to knock out my two best rocks of the day.
The first attempt wasn’t successful, but eventually they knocked one of them out.
Claudia had a good time, she skipped a fun end.
Vanier Cup
Finally the stars had aligned and in 2012, the McMaster Marauders were going to be playing for the Vanier Cup in Toronto at the Rogers Centre. After watching them win the Greatest Game Ever on television last year, there was a good chance they would be there again this year.
After putting together a 21 game winning streak since week 3 of last season, it would be a re-match with Laval University. Before the Mitchell Bowl was over last week, Stam and I were making our plans for the Vanier Cup. During our years at Mac the best they did was a 4-3 in ’86 with a quick exit in the playoffs. This year they had the chance to repeat!
We started with dinner at khao san road, a thai restaurant on Adelaide Street West. For a restaurant that doesn’t even have a sign out front, it was a busy place. It opens for dinner at 5:00, they don’t take reservations, we arrived around 4:45pm and there were already 6 people ahead of us. They only seat complete parties and by 5:10pm the restaurant was filled.
We had seats in Section 217 on the 200 level. This was our view and unlike the CFL the play on the field is played live on the big screen. And all replays are played, controversial or not.
McMaster taking warm ups.
There was a record Vanier Cup crowd in attendance of 37,098.
It started out slow with a scoreless first quarter, after trailing 12-0 heading to the half, McMaster made it interesting with 2 late first half touchdowns to take the lead 14-12.
The second half was all Laval, their ground game was awesome and no match for Mac’s defence. In the end they outscored Mac 25-0 in the second half.
The final score was 37-14. There were a lot of disappointed McMaster fans leaving the Rogers Centre (early).
