A walk by the lake

This afternoon Marian and I took a nice walk by the lake.  The snow is so wet that it wouldn't have been nice to go trudging through it in an effort to get a nice photograph.  Instead we walked along the lakeshore and enjoyed watching the ducks and swans.  It was very refreshing to be outside.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It appears that we might be getting a white Christmas this year.  This will be the first time in a few years that we have had this much snow so early.  It was fun going outside and taking a few pictures after supper.  Everything looks so festive.  I look forward to getting out tomorrow and taking some pictures if the roads aren't too bad.

Our first Gingerbread House

I've been a little behind in my blogs lately.  I didn't want to forget this memorable afternoon spent with our grandchildren.

Last week, Laura and Jay were visiting with a friend downtown and asked if we could look after the kids.  We were so excited to have them over for the day.  We thought it might be fun to do something special all together so we decided to build a Gingerbread house.  Off I went to the Bulk Barn to pick up a variety of candy to add to our kit that we had bought. 

                                  

It would be too much to bake the house first so we opted for a preformed house.  We just had to glue it together. This was Ralph's job as the girls and Brody decorated the Gingerbread men.

The kids were so excited to have Papa help build the house.

The girls were very proud of the gingerbread men that they had made.  With a little help from Oma, the eyes were glued on and the decorations added.  Once the house was put together, it was time to figure out what to put on the roof.  Smarties were the shingles of choice and the seam on the top would be covered with sugar candies. 

Once the roof was done, it was time to start planning on how to do the windows, door and pathway.  The girls were very creative making beautiful window boxes with snow and icicles hanging off them.

At times things got very intense as we planned each part of the house.  The girls did a really great job while Brody made sure to "taste test" all the candies.  It was really fun doing this all together.

After about 3 hours, the house was finally done.  We packed it up very carefully for the drive home so that they could enjoy it during their Christmas festivities.

The Christmas Market at the Distillery District

The weather this morning was quite nice.  We decided to go downtown and walk through the St. Lawrence Market and then walked further east to the Distillery District. The Christmas Market is all set up so it was a nice place to go and take some pictures. The sun was quite warm which made walking around very nice.  Thankfully we didn't get the rain that was forecasted.  We had a really nice time together. 

This tree was huge.  In some ways it's sad that it was

cut down to be used for a short while as a

Christmas tree.

You need large ornaments on a tree this size.

There were many planters around that looked so pretty.

Lots of snowmen to enjoy!!

Really cute ornaments.

I guess Ralph is on the naughty list...

The pink Christmas forest.  It was hard on the eyes.

Niagara on the Lake - a beautiful day

Today Ralph and I got up early and went to NOTL for a round of golf.  We left in time to take some pictures of the sunrise and also hoped to see some of the colour in the tree's.  It's funny though as there really wasn't much there yet, but if you travel north on highway 401 it is full of beautiful colours.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

This morning we woke up to the sound of pouring rain.  When looking out of the window, the the pathway that we had seen the day before was a small river.  We had seen deer on this path yesterday but I suspect that they went into hiding with the rising of the water.  This was a residual effect of the hurricane that was coming up the coast.

We relaxed over breakfast this morning and decided to go shopping at the outlet mall in Mebane, NC. It was about an hour away.  This was a Tanger Outlet.  We split up when we got to the Mall and planned to meet in a couple of hours.  

After shopping we went back to our hotel to figure out where to go for dinner.  We decided to go to a restaurant called The Print House Bistro.  What a good decision this was.The restaurant itself was very elegant looking and you could tell that meal was going to be good by the number of people that were there.  We were not disappointed.  The food was amazing and the service was top notch.  It was a nice break from the rain.  It had rained all day and there was no sign of it stopping.

We tuned into the tv when we got back to the hotel and were sad to hear that one of the piers in Myrtle Beach had all but 100 feet destroyed by Hurricane Matthew.  This pier was over 1,000 feet long.  The other pier which was closer to our Condo also sustained damage.  Thankfully the hurricane was downgraded to a Category 1 by the time it hit Myrtle Beach but there was still alot of damage.

Tomorrow we will head to Morgantown, WV for the beginning of our journey back home.  Hopefully the rain will have subsided by then.

The rain won't get me down...

We woke up to a fine drizzle this morning.  This must be an effect of the hurricane making it's way up the coast. The temperature is still really quite nice so we all dressed in shorts or a skirt. Unfortunately by the time we got to the course the rain had increased and we were required to put our rain suits on.

We booked a round at Greensboro National Golf Resort.  What a beautiful course. Given all the rain that we had, the greens still proved to be challenging for us.  This is a very pretty area that you play through.  There were only a few people on the course while we were out and it rained the entire time. At one point I was concerned that we might have to call it quits as the rain was coming down really hard but we played through it.

Today's competition was held on all the Par 5 holes.  Each player could select only one club and was required to play the whole hole using only that club.  Lawrence was today's winner with a total score of 30.  This was a pretty challenging competition and we all had fun playing it.

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Afterwards we went out for dinner at a restaurant called Darryl's Wood Fired Grill.  The food was amazing and so plentiful.  I had rib's and I would say that they were the best I have ever had. Yummy!