Tuesday 24 December

Dinner was delightful last night. Gerard and Alison have a beautiful home in New Hamburg, about 20 minutes away. They’ve only been married eighteen months; Alison is a nurse educator with a masters in nursing and Gerard is a software designer for worldwide nuclear imaging technology. We had a fun night discussing their gaming interests and some fun banter about Apple (Steve) versus Microsoft (Gerard). We were home by about 9.15, so it wasn’t a late night.

Overnight we had another snow dusting, so all the crystals on the trees are coated with snow. It’s light and powdery, so it blows off in fluffy tufts as the wind comes through. And we had blue skies this morning, bringing colour to a winter wonderland.

Everyone carries a snow brush in their car. This fresh snow looks like it's solid but you just brush it away and it flies off. It's a different story with ice though.

A walk at the arena this morning, followed by McCafe; Steve’s friend, George, delivered his milk at Maccas and then had a coffee with us; he’s Dutch too. On the way to New Hamburg last night, we dropped in briefly and met his wife and four beautiful kids.

The afternoon was spent getting the house prepared for tonight; then quickly into our posh dressy stuff to go to church. We drove about 20 minutes to Elmira, a Mennonite town. The church wasn’t Mennonite, although there were some of them there; Dianne described it as an Evangelical church. Probably the service was much like the old Festival of Lessons and Carols that was more common in years gone past. There were readings from Isaiah and then the Christmas Story, done in bits with carols in between.

When we sang Away in A Manger, all the kids were invited to sit around the still empty manger; one nine-year-old carried her little seven-week-old sister and of course, having a baby on the sanctuary at Christmas is just delightful. There was a salvation message and invitation at the end, so it was a really lovely Christmas Eve celebration.

We headed straight home to wait for Dianne’s brother and sister and their partners: Jim and Carol, Mary-Jane and Jan (he is Dutch). This was to have been at Carol and Jim’s home but they only got their power back on after two and a half days of blackout, so the location was changed to Steve and Diannes place here; that’s not difficult because everyone contributes food, so the dinner is portable.

Jim and Carol have a big generator; many people out on farms and even in the towns have generators, some smaller than others, because when you get storms that take down trees, blackouts are widespread. Toronto still has thousands of homes without power; in the sort of temperatures we’re having right now, that can be fatal if you can’t get to warmth. Tonight the temperature is back down to minus 16º.

We had a casual dinner, just on our laps in the lounge room; the family has a system of picking one name each for the person for whom they’ll buy a present (like secret Santa but it’s not secret). The gift opening was done one at a time – such delightfully thoughtful gifts, some hand made. Embarrassingly, I got one too. They’re all such fun sports and we had a hilarious night.

After they left and I got into to bed to check on emails (which hadn’t been possible since early in the day), it was really lovely to be able to Skype Rich and Ruth and the kids in Queensland. It was 11.15pm here and 3.15pm there. They were just about to have their dessert, with all the Stewart family. It was so lovely to be able to see them all and I can’t wait till we can celebrate a belated Christmas when we’re almost all together. It’s been a very strange Christmas Eve, I miss Graham very much and I miss all my family, but I’m blessed to be able to give Dianne and Steve a kind of connection with Graham at this time, and I’m totally blessed and humbled by their hospitality and generosity.

Well, it’s off to sleep for me: almost midnight and I don’t want to be awake when Santa arrives!