Happy New Year December 31st, 2021 - January 09 2022

 

Everyone will be glad to give this year the boot! It's been a year of ups and downs. Last January the hopes of a vaccine putting breaks on the pandemic found out to be short lived as this damn virus kept mutating. By May it was okay to see people again and go out to restaurants if you kept to your "bubble". The summer rules were even more lenient when a good portion of the population was vaccinated and then WHAM! The third wave in September and now the fourth wave of the worst spreading variant, Omicron for December. Just in time to kill most people's travel and visiting plans for Christmas.

The biggest "Up" for us the birth of our granddaughter Amelia on January 2nd, 6 weeks early. Most of the year we spent helping out the kids as Amelia required quite a few appointments in Victoria and Kristi went back to work in July full-time.

Fortunately we have lots of things to do here at the lake to keep us occupied in between trips up to Nanaimo weekly. It sure is been nice to have a house again to "hole up in" instead of the motorhome with these temperatures this year on the island.

Here are some gorgeous snow pictures Ray took over the past few days. Absolutely beautiful.

New Year's Eve, we received our vaccine booster shot, right at 6 months since our our last shot. Yippee. I told our neighbour Pat and her husband about managing to get an appointment at a little pharmacy in Duncan yesterday so she called them and scheduled their appointments at the same time. They could not get an appointment until January 19th otherwise, so we all went in Darryl's truck together. There is a shortage of volunteers available to give out Covid vaccinations now, so quite a delay for a lot of people. I just want it done and be as protected as possible.

I cooked a New Year's Eve Dinner of Seafood Paella for Pat and Darryl as we invited them over for the festivities. 

Started out with Cranberry Margaritas. 

Ta Da

Apparently the Paella is well received. lol Both Ray and Darryl ate 3 helpings and Pat had 2. :)

After dinner and champagne, we played a rousing game of Mille Borne. We haven't played this game for years and it's new to Darryl and Pat. Ray's back for once, held out for an extra hour at the table.

We watched some of the festivities of the New Year's in Times Square and called it a night shortly after 10 pm. A great visit. Of course we celebrate New Year's on New York's time, 9 pm. Midnight is way too late for us old folks. lol

New Year's Day, Ray's arm is a little sore from his booster so we will delay one more day to put our Christmas stuff back in their boxes. My arm seems to be fine. I just puttered finding my kitchen after our big dinner last night and laundry, how exciting. We even managed to have a nap after staying up past our bedtime last night. lol

January 2 we woke up to the predicted rain. Lots coming today. Tonight the forecast is for more snow though for the next 3 days. Temps are close to 0C (32F) so we shall see how much we get. Forecast is for possibly 30cm which is 12" over 3 days. Yikes!

Ray's arm is feeling better from his shot, so we started putting our Christmas stuff away. Took 2 weeks to put up and it will probably take 3 days to put it all away. lol The house will seem empty and dark for a week or so until we get used to the lack of lights. :) Both of us started at around 9 and by 1 pm we had 1/2 done. We were done too. The rest of the day we watched the rain pour down washing away most of the snow we had.

Monday morning, still raining. Still have snow in the back yard though. Once we drank our coffee and our usual morning routine of computers etc., we were off to the races again by 8:30 taking down and putting away the rest of the Christmas decorations. By 11 am we were done other than the boxes being put away in the basement. For now they were just stacked in the hall downstairs. I vacuumed up all the Styrofoam from the packing and replaced items that were stored away upstairs to make room for Christmas.  Furniture was moved to it's proper place, i.e. the couch and chair. Wow does the house look empty in comparison. lol

Ray hit the hot tub and I moved into my chair for the afternoon watching the snow falling outside. Definitely an inside day.

Tuesday woke up to about 6 inches of snow. Looks quite wet though. The sun came out briefly and it looked beautiful. Definitely looks like winter!

I was out at 9am and started up the snowblower. An hour later I cleared the driveway and sidewalk done. The snow's too heavy for Ray to move off the dec,k so I finished a path from the door to the bottom of the stairs so we have an exit route should we need one.

By 12:30 it snowed heavily again. WeatherNet says overcast and 3C. Ha Ha! My outside temp on the heat pump says 0C and looking out the window the snow is very thick and like a blizzard. The flurries continued on and off all day, but fortunately only a skiff of snow stuck.

Amelia is now saying a few words and here she is learning to brush her teeth with her Daddy. They do this every morning and night together, he does her first and then he does his and she finishes doing hers. lol So cute.

Wednesday the predicted flurries started at 2 pm. Did a quick run to the post office at noon before it started. Our neighbour Mike, did a great job plowing our road with his quad yesterday. Now we are ready for the next dump. Unfortunately he broke the part that raises and lowers his blade so the strata will reimburse him for the part to fix it. 

Ray received a 3000 piece puzzle for Christmas titled "A Magical Mystery Tour of 100 Beatles Songs". Quite the puzzle, the finished size will be 45" x 32". Good thing we're not having any company for dinner anytime soon and Christmas is put away. It certainly took up a considerable amount of room on the table and took awhile to get it all spread out.

Thursday morning woke up to another 8" of snow ... very heavy snow. Out the door at 8am before it started to rain to clear a path off the sundeck and down the stairs. I also moved the snow away from the doors so it could melt away from the house. In the front of the house I cleared the drains in front of the garage door, and a little bit out of the front of the house. I received a message from the guy that plowed our road before with his side by side and he was going to come. I decided to have him do our driveway too.

Unfortunately, Erron messaged me at 11:30 am, he broke something to do with the 4x4 on his machine so he can't come. Damn. I should've done the driveway earlier, now it's too heavy for my little snow blower. Oh well, we're predicted to have a ton of rain over the next 24 hours so it should be reduced somewhat and there is nowhere we have to go. Mike next door did make one pass in our driveway so we would have one set of tires on the driveway if we had to go. He also did the road again in spite of his blade being stuck in the down position.

Rained significantly overnight. It knocked the snow down considerably so if we needed to drive somewhere, we could actually get out of our driveway. lol I did actually sneak out to the post office and country grocer. Roads were pretty good. 

Late in the afternoon we kept hearing banging around the house. We thought it was snow falling from the roof. Nope ... it was our neighbour Mike, he shoveled off our sidewalk between our houses to the back yard and our driveway for us. What a nice guy. Hopefully this is the end of the snow events for this year but I doubt it. Ray gave him a six-pack of beer.

With such heavy snow up island, with bus routes cancelled, a Comox bus driver called the "Flowerman", drove around town in a bus deploying "shovelers" to help clear bus stops and seniors driveways and sidewalks. What great people.

The bus even had to be "towed" at one point to help get up a hill. lol This huge snowfall definitely had neighbours helping neighbours all up and down the island. Poor Sayward, in the north island, they have to shovel 4 feet of snow. They have groups going around shoveling off peoples roofs before the snow becomes too wet and collapses structures. Only a few weeks into actual winter ... what is next?

Nice to have some "good news" stories instead of nothing about Omicron!

Saturday morning back into the freeze at -3C but by noon it was plus 3 and everything continuing to melt. Laundry day for me and Ray worked on the puzzle. The easy parts are done, now the hard parts. 

lol  It definitely took over our dining room table other than 2 spots for Ray and I to eat.

Sunday the sun was out... but the roads are very icy, especially our driveway. Darryl came over and gave Ray a hand with putting on the last "O" rings for the fire pump so it's finally put together. Certainly is a whole lot more complicated than they led Ray to believe about just putting it together! Thankfully, Darryl is a pump expert from his career in the Navy. He definitely taught Ray some stuff! Now just the wheels need to be put on the cart and he will be finished with it. Hopefully never actually have to use this piece of equipment.