Images of Christmas at Our House

It's Christmas. That hap-happiest time of the year. And I thought I'd show some shots of our house. Enjoy the glitz and glimmer, the shine and shimmer, the best of the season from our house to yours.











And, yes, although many will have a 'holiday' over this time, I'm still wishing one and all a Merry Christmas.

ROM Terracotta

ROM Terracotta. Oh, doesn't that just sound like a recipe? No salivating here; this title is about my train trip to Toronto yesterday with my friend, and our day-long visit to the Royal Ontario Museum's exhibits. The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army is the title of the ROM's starring attraction just now and we entered at 11:00, the first showing of the day.
Right off the bat I was disconcerted as the din of numerous school groups filled the exhibit hall. We tried to keep away but sometimes that was just not possible. I do like to be able to quietly find my own way through museums but had to make allowance for the kids. Okay I could do that, and, actually, it wasn't too bad. The tour guides must have been good as the kids listened attentively and only made noise when moving to their next stopping point.

Well, the warriors were the main attraction and were pretty interesting but not as great as I had hoped. I pictured many terracotta figures lined up in rows like soldiers at roll call and in the web picture above. Actually there were not many, maybe 10 or so around the main room. There were, however, excellent short videos and many other related artifacts.
Confusion rained about whether the warriors were real live people buried with the first emperor, Qin, but no, they were figures made out of terracotta. When I was in China there was no time to fly to the actual site where the terracotta warriors were found, a loss I really felt yesterday as I was standing in the museum. I had been so close to the real thing!
The rest of the day we visited other museum exhibits, got a feel for the integration of the two additions to the ROM, and just soaked it all in. Close to closing we whipped into the gem exhibit and were entranced by the stunning colours and formations filling many rows of cabinets. I saw names that I never heard of in Rocks 21 (Geology) at Western in the sixties. I guess I don't know as much as I thought about this earth of ours. This exhibit was a fitting and beautiful end to our day at the ROM.
Two other highlights were the Italian meals we had, yes, lunch and dinner, and the train ride home again. Our feet were worn out but not our voices. We talked contentedly all the way home.

Accentuate the Positive

This is the view outside our home today and while I like snow I don't like the way it sometimes makes us cocoon for days. While this picture is pretty white, we don't have much snow, not compared with London, Ontario, which reportedly has about a meter. Yes, I said a meter. That's just over three feet for non-metric types.


So I take you back to fall in the Rockies and this picture of a kayaker. It's about as close as I've come to kayaking but it is gorgeous.

Or how about this picture of my wonderful sisters and I laughing it up at a wedding reception in October? Sure is positive.

Finally, here is Grandpa making Ben giggle in Florida this past October. Just warms me up thinking about it.


I will search for positives a little more than usual today as I zip up my hoodie, and contemplate putting on my new silk longjohns for a walk in the white. Or maybe catch up on my blogging. Now, that's positively exciting. Have a good one, folks.