Holiday cheer

The best month of the year (guaranteed snow, family parties, Christmas lights) has already started out well. Mt Lorne weather has been very comfortable, with some light snow and temperatures around 10 (that's what Yukoners call -10 in the winter). The forecast for later in the week is a slightly more wintery 20, but then it is supposed to warm up again and stay around 10 for a while. The daylight is pretty wimpy now, even at high noon. Sunrise is 9:45am today, and sunset is right about now, at 3:55pm. The sunrises and sunsets are stunning, if you can catch them!

We went out this morning to Icycle Sport, a great local shop for outdoor gear that has a coffee place inside!

Along with Mom and Dad Barrett and Grandma Barrett, and for each other's birthday and Christmas presents, we both bought beautiful new backcountry ski packages! They are Rossignol skis, and are still at the shop getting the bindings installed and a wax job. We will pick them up on Monday, and hopefully take them over to the our community golf course, along with the dogs, and have our first skijor!

Maybe it's the beautiful snow in the forests and on the mountains, or maybe a bit of homesickness from our recent visit, but the Christmas decorating bug has hit one of us, and our home is starting to get dressed up for the holiday like never before.

The Barretts gave us their old collection of felt tree decorations,
and they are so sweet that we  put them up even before getting a tree.

That's our new 2011 Christmas quilt from the O'Neills on the left, along with our collection of lounging blankets. 

We have had some nice reunions with Yukon pals this week, and tonight we are having some friends over for dinner and board games. Tomorrow is the Mt Lorne Ski-a-Thon, to raise money to put towards our new snowmobile and track-setter for the cross-country ski trails. Colin is working at the community centre for this event, and just like old times in the Rouge, Lauren is volunteering :)

This photo from the Yukon News shows the conditions on a trail at another local ski spot, Mt McIntyre

Happy first December weekend, everyone!

Love Lauren and Colin

PS- Check out these beautiful photos from the Yukon News story on the Chilkat River (in Haines, Alaska, about 4.5 hours away from us http://www.yukon-news.com/multimedia/slideshow/25905/ )