There has been a brief hiatus as we have been the guests of my wonderful cousins, Allan & Judy in Weyburn Saskatchewan, and there has been no time to think blog, never mind write it. (There has also been a considerable amount of drinking!)
Surrounded by their children and grandchildren it has been a fantastic Christmas - and as I write this we are sat at a virtually deserted Regina airport on Boxing Day, waiting for our flight to Calgary - where it all starts again with cousins Gordon & Helen. January looks like needing another liver rest!
We were delighted to introduce the tradition (can it be a tradition in its first year?) of drinking several glasses of bucks fizz with Christmas Day breakfast, followed by the usual present opening by 7 children in a flurry of paper, cardboard and glitter, followed by the need for vitamin W.
Pre-dinner the teens and a couple of the adults managed some hockey in the sub zero temperatures and the younger ones sledged on the small snow hill generously shoved into existence by grandpa Allan (there being virtually no actual hills in Saskatchewan!); he still likes to get in a tractor at every opportunity!
Augmented by yet more family for Christmas dinner, a turkey the size of a small ostrich, alongside 20kg or potatoes, sprouts and assorted "salads" fed 26, with much to spare for the obligatory turkey sandwiches later on.
My back is virtually better (thank you to so many of you who have wished me well), and the trip to Regina went almost without hitch. Air Canada generously offered us an earlier flight, so we dutifully got out to the airport in time, only for them to delay it by 3 hours. So our original arrival into Regina at 1am was only advanced by 1 hour in the end. But we got there!!
So here we have been for the last 3 days, surrounded by my extended family having just a wonderful Christmas. We have snow, the flat landscape, and today endless blue skies; and the weather has cooperated pretty well - no minus 40C temperatures. In fact everyone round here says it is amazingly mild - its -6C, and allegedly -15 with the wind chill. Just as well, as without her daily walk into the city (yes, Weyburn, population 10000, is considered a city round here), Nareesa would surely have gone mad.
Having only recently met up with Allan & Judy in Amsterdam I reflect on how privileged I am to be able to see them again only 6 weeks later. I have been coming here to Saskatchewan for over 40 years. it is so different to home, and I just love it. I have worked many weeks on first my uncle's and then my cousin's wheat farms, and in the past driven tractors to seed and fertilise, and semi trucks to haul grain. (I've also driven a truck into bog deep enough to flood the cab, and had to be hauled out by tractor, by my uncle splitting his side with laughter - it was a long time ago but nobody has forgotten round here!).
Now I am being introduced to the next generation - my cousins' children's children. I hope I can do this for many more years.
I might come back to reflections of my periodic visits to the Canadian prairies but for now it is time to catch a flight to Calgary. Time to get this posted - just leave it with a picture of a Saskatchewan sunset - and this is just from inside the terminal building. Shows how flat it is though!