Well, we woke up to a fantastic white Christmas, my first ever in fact.

We drove over to Jac's house for some yummy Christmas lunch with the Bateman family, followed by plenty of wine and beers before crashing out. George was on form and ridiculously excited over so many present arriving at once, he didn't seem to know what to do with himself. :)

George by the tree

Father and son making George's new toy

A White Christmas

Well we had plenty of snow overnight, so Jac and I decided to hit Grouse Mountain for a bit of sister-brother time. Jackie was an amazingly good snowboarder of course, despite not hitting the slopes for a couple of years, so it was up to me to try and keep up.

The snow was amazing and we were flying high all day, a great intro to a snowboarding season!

Some snow

Jac get's ready to throw some moves

Grouse just has some amazing views!

Well, the snow has fallen but the local longboarding crew doesn't stop just because it's a bit cold. With temperatures hitting negative figures, we bombed a local hill until our fingers were numb and our feet were tingling.

I finally felt confident enough to hit the hills with the big boys, although I trashed my shorts and put my gloves to good use. Of course, no one else was dumb enough to wear shorts, I was just trying to blend in :)

Another fun, if mental, day.

As I said in an earlier post, the local Longboarding scene is huge in Vancouver and the locals are big on organised events. Striker, I don't know his real name, likes to organise a toy rally every Christmas for the local kids. The toys are deposited at the local t.v. station headquarters, and every longboarder is asked to bring along a $5 gift.

I turned up with a couple of water pistols, not expecting much, but Striker and a few others turned up in Santa costumes and we skated through the middle of Vancouver! 40 skaters, going through red lights, overtaking cars, stopping traffic and generally having a whale of a time. Luckily Canadians are very easy going, so even the cops were simply laughing along. I can't imagine what would happen if we tried this through the city of London!

We finished off with a cruise around the seawall, Stanly park. A fun filled and exhausting day.

CTV headquarters, delivering our presents.

Striker

Downtown

Stanley Park

Striker, exhausted after a long day.