December 27, 2010 (Banff, AB) – How I love the holidays. This year, the Christmas festivities started December 7th, the night before leaving for Rossland. Good friends and fellow racers, Michaela and Graeme, joined Joey and I for a gingerbread house making extravaganza! Making the dough from scratch, baking, decorating, having dinner and watching Jim Carrey star in ‘a Christmas Carol’ took up over 5 hours of our evening, but I couldn’t have thought of a better way to spend it! This is Joey and I’s log cabin and got me right pumped about Christmas being just around the corner.

I am lucky to have my family close by, so the Christmas travel from the Condo for Phil and I was no more than a twenty minute drive. My brother Matt, made it home safely from Tofino as well as my sister, Ange, who’s home from going to University at Mount Royal. Simon, my sisters boyfriend from New Zealand, also joined us at Chez Widmer for some Swiss Zopf and turkey dinner. Mmm Goood! Is all I gotta say bout dat!

Mirror, mirror – Phil drew my name for the ‘Widmer Homemade Secret Santa’ and created this oak frame for the mirror from scratch, what a guy!

For my secret santa project this year, I had the vision of a lamp. The crew at Canmore Wood Crafters made a beautiful maple bed for my parents this year and I thought a bed side lamp for my dad would fit the bill. I called up, or rather Facebook messaged, Phil Tarchuk to help me out with this vision. After some brainstorming together, he generously crafted the lamp base from maple and walnut and I finished it off by creating the lamp shade with some copper piping and handmade paper then wiring the lamp. Check out Phil Tarchuk’s awesome website HERE.

After a leisurely morning, the Widmer bro’s went out to scope out the best ice around… they delivered! The most recent cold snap froze the remaining parts of Minniwanka, meaning that there was no snow on it and easily takes the title for the best ice in the BV at the moment.

Being his first time on skates since he was about 10, Simon, my sister’s Kiwi, was a trooper skating out to the good ice

My mom and dad teamed up in the kitchen for an awesome turkey dinner, it’s always more effort to pull off than you would think. And for dessert? We handed it off to Matt for some fruit flambé. The look on my mom’s face was priceless, no worries though, Matt had this dessert under control.

Christmas doubles as another Thanksgiving for me, in that it reminds me of how thankful I am for the family and backyard I have, plus we eat turkey again. After filling up on my fair share of turkey n’ taters in Banff, it was back to work today at the Canmore Nordic Center for some Zone 3 intensity with some of the Academy girls. Our next event will be a local Bow Corridor Regional Race Sprint Relay on December 29th.

‘Till next time!

Check out Heidi’s blog HERE.