Quite a bit of catching up to do: xmas

Well hello everyone,
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Well quite a lot has happened since the last entry, so i will start at the begining. I managed to get christmas eve off work it had been so quiet the week leading up to xmas they decided they didn't need me. We loaded up our little geo tracker and left our house bound for Whistler at about 1pm, however the lions gate bridge that joins downtown with north Vancouver only has 3 lanes! This was all banked up of course so we got stuck in traffic along west georgia street for an hour, the temperature needle was starting to come up a bit, then we were finally moving again so we thought we were alright. We finally made it into Stanley park (nearly at the bridge) when steam started pouring out of our bonnet, luckily we were right by an emergency stop bay. We rang the BCAA, luckily they accept foriegn AA memberships, we had to wait for another hour for the tow truck/road side assistance to arrive. The towie put some water in it and we left it running for a bit, then he followed us over the bridge to budget rental cars by the time we got there all the water was dripping out. Budget had 1 car left a Dodge caravan (its not a caravan by our sense of the word its a van/people carrier) it was huge but we thought hey this holiday is costing us an arm and a leg anyway lets just go for it. We then followed the tow truck with our little tracker on the back round to a mechanic around the corner, which was closed of course, so we loaded up the Dodge, left a note in the window of our car and pushed the keys through a flap in the door. By 3.45 we were finally on the Sea to Sky highway heading for Whistler. It was starting to get dark by the time we got to Squamish which is half way, we rang the hotel and said we were on our way and asked what the roads we like did we need chains, we had them for our car but not for the rental. The roads were absolutely fine they had obviously been plowed and salted and there was quite a bit of traffic which was great.

Our hotel was right in the heart of Whistler village, and our room had a kichen and a fire place and free high speed internet which was cool, we would definitely stay there again. We unpacked and went for a bit of a stroll in search of something for tea, and to pick up a few little things from the supermarket that we didn't think would travel well. There was snow everywhere, and all the trees and everything were covered in xmas lights and decorations it was absolutley gorgeous. Each section of the village seemed to have different coloured lights. We wanted to get back to the room and ring everyone at home as it was already christmas back in nz so we grabbed pizza for tea which was conveniently right next to the hotel.

Christmas morning we woke up and it was snowing! snow actually falling from the sky!! It was so perfect. We opened our parcels and then went out side to frolick and explore. It was so crazy half of Whistler was open the supermarket, starbucks of course and later on that night we found a liquor store in the upper village open at 9pm madness!!! yeah so after a little frolicking we went back to our hotel room and had our xmas lunch. I had got Scott a little ham that was slightly bigger than my fist (as i don't eat it of course) and we had chicken and salad, and pavlova and we had to eat all the cookie dough flavour ice cream as it didn't quite fit in the freezer compartment and was melting, stupid round tubs of ice cream!!! Rather full we went back out into the snow to burn a little of lunch off, we went and booked our snowboarding lesson and picked up our rental gear. For $175 each we got a 5 hour snowboarding lesson, a lift pass, and rental of a snowboard, boots, and pants and they threw in a free helmet and wrist guard rental. They don't hire goggles so we had to go and buy them but we got them for $40 and we saw the same goggles for $100 in a different shop. So we had to lug all this gear back to the hotel, the guy at the rental place attached our boots to the board to make it easier, but man that makes the board heavy and awkward. back at the room we had left over chicken, salad, buns and pot stickers (you get them from chinese takeaways they are like dumplings/dim sims) for tea.