General Chat

Seasons Greeting to everyone on the G.C. site. Hope all your Xmas wishes come true. Thought I would paint you a verbal picture of what its like where I live and how we plan to spend the holiday season, maybe all out there will do the same so I can visulize your Xmas also. We have snow, its snowed off and on for the last month so its quite deep, we get around fine, thanks to snow tires and 4 wheel drive. We live in a log cabin on 3 acres, our property is surrounded by tall ceders. At the moment its sunny but its supposed to snow again today. We have just started decorating the house for the holidays, we cut our tree down last week a blue spruce about 10 feet. We heat our cabin with a wood stove, so its warm inside -10 outside, quite mild yet, it can get to -40. 100 Mile House is a small town about 3000 people spread out over a large area, probably a couple of hundred right in town. We are in the area known as the Cariboo, the old Gold Rush trail went through, mostly cattle and logging now. We plan to spend a quite Xmas day just my husband and myself. Boxing Day the clan is decending on us, they all live in or around Vancouver, so about 7 hour drive from here, 4 children and spouses and 5 grandchildren, we will open presents and have Xmas dinner then. We have made a small ice rink out the back so if its not very cold the children can skate, we will all be sledding and riding the 4X4 and just having together time. I hope everyone has as good a time as we plan to have. Seasons Greeting to all and hope everyone finds Peace and Joy in 2004.

Seasons Greetings to you and your family from at the moment freezing Oxfordshire. Your Place sounds lovely perfect setting for a christmas , my christmas day was going to be quiet as I had said to my 3 children that they could go to their respective partners for christmas day and I would do a big dinner boxing day, but seems like I am having everyone both days now I am pleased really. I havent any grandchildren yet but there will be 14 of us, they will all be wanting to see how far I have got with our family history must try to sort out the mess of paper. Merry Christmas happy newyear to all Sandra

The holidays have already started: our town has an annual Christmas Tree Lighting (held last Saturday). To encourage residents to shop in town, the stores offer hot chocolate, or cookies, or hot apple cider, etc. Some townspeople dress in period costumes and meander down one of the main streets. There are also carolers strolling about. At 5:30 pm quite a few (depending on the weather) families gather at the City Hall and listen to music, sing Christmas Carols and munch on candy canes that are handed out by the Parks Department. Then, around 6:00, Santa appears in a horse-drawn carriage or in inclement weather, manages to find an electric golf cart. Santa leads the gathering in the countdown to light the tree, which is situated near the top of City Hall. With Santa's magical powers, the tree lights up (the little kids REALLY like this part of the day). We had quite a downpour this year, but even with the wet weather it was great fun!