Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas in St. Thomas


Season's Greetings to our friends and family.

I write this entry taking a quick break from "assisting" Julian with building his gift from Santa. A nice gift - but did Santa seriously realize there are some 700 pieces to assemble this Lego Mars Mission set? Oh well - a fun thing to do together...or watch Mark do.

The Christmas season has not been without its excitement and busy schedule in St. Thomas. Starting off with school Christmas concerts and ending with a New Year's Day Party - we have had a packed calendar.

Just before all this craziness started, we were very happy to welcome our friends the Ellsay family to St. Thomas. Chris, Christine and their three children Andrea, Ryan and Cari (ages 4,6, and 8) are sailing around the world on a 42-foot catamaran. This adventurous family left Parry Sound, Ontario in June and made their way through Georgian Bay and the lakes of Ontario to New York and then headed south. Having completed the Caribbean 1500 cruising rally which began in Hampton, Virginia and ended in Tortola they met up with us. With our children all being close in ages - the pack of five got on like a house on fire. We had a few evenings with them including one at our house where we all decorated our Christmas tree and then another - far more eciting from our perspective - visiting their boat and eating freshly caught mahi. This boat seems far bigger than the average 42-footer. And at one point there were 10 adults and eight young children on board - and it still felt spacious. The Ellsays left a week before Christmas heading east to other islands with the hopes of being in St. Martin by Christmas.





On December 19th - Santa flew into the St. Thomas Yacht Club for a visit with all the children. It was a fun evening and always fun to watch the children sitting patiently waiting to have their name called to sit with Santa and receive a gift. Despite previous years experiences, Max marched up confidently to Santa and sat on his lap.













Christmas Eve was dinner at our house with friends. We sat outside and drank champagne before dinner and then it got a little too windy to stay out there. Christmas Day was fun and relaxing and then we spent the evening with our friends and neighbours for dinner.










A few more days to play then back to work on Monday. The boys are off school until January 8th and then Mark's parents will make their way to visit us for a couple of weeks.

Happy New Year.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

December


I have spent the last few weeks ignoring the early warning signs of Christmas by swiftly changing the radio station when anything resembling a Christmas carol is being played and ignoring any Christmas displays in the stores. I did, however, have a good laugh at the inflatable snowman displayed outside our local Home Depot, partly deflated and looking like he was melting in the heat. Some things really don’t translate well across borders.

For obvious reasons, it hasn’t felt like December. The month of November went by very quickly with my parents visiting St. Thomas. They arrived November 1st after a five week cruise that took them down the west coast, through the Panama Canal, up the Amazon and through the Caribbean. Quite the adventure. Needless to say, there was a sharp contract from their highly catered trip with chocolates on their pillows each night to visiting with us. They may have found offerings on their pillows left by little lizards – but believe me, they weren’t chocolates. Mum and Dad’s visit resulted in beach trips, visits to the yacht club and ferry trips to St. John. Julian and Max truly enjoyed all the extra attention and had two additional people to wake up each morning.






In addition to having a busy family visit, November was steady with work, school and sailing. And now it’s the week before Christmas.

Of course, with procrastination, there are consequences. The Christmas season has hit us like a hurricane. One friend warned me a few weeks ago, “When the Christmas trees arrive, you have to go right away or they’ll all be gone.” And she wasn’t kidding. Fortunately our local Cost-U-Less was also selling something that resembled a freshly cut Christmas tree, tied up so tightly there was no knowing what was hiding within the branches – the few branches there were. Charlie Brown would be proud. The tree is happily displayed in our living room with all of our decorations carefully shipped from Vancouver. It’s a weird and new concept to have your tree in a room where the breeze blows the branches and decorations.

And then there is the work assisting Santa’s big day. All I can say is I am a new fan of on-line shopping. Who knew it was so easy and that shipping would be so fast? The best part is I didn't have to set foot into a single shop and battle crowds. The line-ups at the post office are another story but I am learning to go with my phone, a book and other things to do while I wait.

This week Julian has a Holiday Breakfast and concert hosted by his class and Max’s class has another event finishing up the week and term. On Friday night we are heading down to the Yacht Club for a family dinner as rumour has it Santa is dropping into the club for a quick visit. Santa apparently quite likes St. Thomas as there have been multiple sightings over the past couple of weeks. Julian went to one event attended by all schools on the island and reported to us that evening that “Santa didn’t have a beard and he looked different.” Oh I wish I had been there to see that. However, all the children of the island came back from this event hosted by the Governor of the island with a lovely book and stories about talking to Santa.

The weather has cooled and the winds have picked up. I have quite a few more stories and photos to post but want to get this posted quickly first as our laptop has finally returned. More later.