The photo above is of a lawn in Joshua’s neighbourhood – only in Canada would someone add a Canada Goose to their lawn decorations!
January 7th, 2026
Happy New Year!
Yes, it’s been a little while since we’ve blogged.
After a week of cooler weather here in Henderson in mid-November with a few days of rain (sometimes heavy), the sun came out and stayed all day as we had become accustomed to – we’ll take it. The temperatures hit between 18-21C / 66-71F everyday with lows in the single digits C / low 40’s. By the middle of December we were back into the low 20’sC / mid 70’s F. We love although to be fair, they say this is unusual. We’re enjoying the sun (as well as a hot tub) every day and until early December, we took some time most days to look through a scrapbook album or two that Fran made in our “prior life”. It was most enjoyable thumbing our way down memory lane as we’d not seen the albums in over twelve years!
We continued to put finishing touches on our apartment. Fran’s been framing photos and culling household goods while Doug’s been going through the garage doing the same and the things that we don’t expect to use again, we’ve been trying to sell on FB. Fran also through her jewelry boxes. We decided to take what we believed were real gold items she now longer wears into a gold buying place and to our astonishment, it netted us $630!!!!
We worked on blackout curtains to darken the bedroom as the apartment has those useless vertical blinds and managed to get a rod that extends the full length of wall and we’re sleeping better.
Fran has taken over the dining room table to do some scrapping of the last few photo albums to complete our collection. First she went through all the existing ones, touching up and re-gluing things that have come loose. She has the years from 1998-2002 to finish up – project for the year. She will not be scrapping our overlanding years (can you imagine how many albums that would be?!?!?!?) but has made a few collages of that time to display on the walls of our apartment including a set of her fave snorkeling photos taken over the years in the 22 countries we’ve snorkeled in.
Sadly, our Tundra doesn’t really fit in our garage as it’s too tall to fit under the storage cupboards at the back but we have put locks on those cupboards and they actually hold a lot. Doug has arranged his tools along the wall and uses the floor area for his exercises so he’s not jumping on our floor and possibly disturbing our downstairs neighbour.
We took advantage of a Delta Skymiles sale and purchased flights to Taiwan in mid March for a month. We plan to go to the Philippines as well to some islands we’ve not seen.
On December 4th we joined in the Winterfest festivities at the Henderson City hall where they had entertainment: a high school choir and a fun band, a little marketplace, food trucks and ended the “party” with Santa lighting the city’s Christmas before a drone presentation of lights. It was a nice little outing.
Not having a home for over 12 years meant we had no Christmas tree; Fran found a deal on Amazon and we got 6.5′ prelit tree which we had fun decorating with all our ornaments from around the world. Good thing we didn’t get a smaller tree!
Another thing we’ve noticed not living in an RV anymore is that we kinda got out of the habit of carrying our “house” keys. This got Fran in a spot once when we both went out for walks at different times and she came back first. Luckily Doug had his keys and she just sat in the sun on the front porch where we’ve left a chair. There is no where on our front porch to hide a key and putting a spare key in the truck is no good as we wouldn’t be carrying a truck key either. Putting one in the garage is also no good as you need a remote to open it (which we keep in the apartment) so now we have a lockbox on our front door with a spare house key.
There is an “institution” here in Vegas – the Ethel M Chocolates. They have a large chocolate selling operation of course, but also have a free tour you can do inside. Even better is a lovely large cactus garden outside the building. We’ve visited it before but went again one evening as they do a large Christmas light display for which they charge $3 a head. It opens at 5 and we got there a bit early but still had to wait in a long line only to discover when we got to the front of it, that seniors were free! It took about 15 minutes to walk around it and they had a photos with Santa area, a hot chocolate stand as well as a bar with beer and wine.
The weekend before we left for Canada, Fran did some Christmas baking – been a looooong time and she forgot how much work icing shortbread cookies take! Sunday she did squares and that was easier and less time consuming. We are going to give a batch each to the office and maintenance staff and a small bag for the postman.
The day before we left for Canada our property management held a little Christmas get together in the Clubhouse that was rather sad with little attendance.
On December 18th, we flew to Buffalo, via Baltimore to spend Christmas with Josh and the grandkids. We arrived at the Buffalo airport maybe 20 minutes later than expected and took an Uber to our Honda. The couple that stores it, had received our packages and put them in the car as they weren’t going to be home and we went straight to a hotel. It had rained much of the day here and melted most of the recent snowfall but there were still snow piles in parking lots.
We opened boxes and sorted things out (one package was missing), got some Subway for dinner and went to bed around 11 (felt like 8 to us). We did not sleep well and were up early and on the road by 7:45 for the border. Enroute we stopped at Walmart to do some grocery shopping and by then heard from Amanda that they’d find the parcel (apparently they could tell from their security cameras it had been thrown onto the front porch and blew off as they found it on the front lawn). Now they wouldn’t have found it if it hadn’t rained yesterday and melted the snow! We were already about 30 km / 20 mi away and opted to just get it when we return as it was a gift for one of us, not Josh or the kids.
We arrived at Josh’s in the early afternoon and got our bed set up, wrapped presents and organized our stuff before he got home from work (he’s off till after New Year’s).
The kids arrived around 5:30 and we spent that evening, Saturday and Sunday playing several board/card games. The kids (as many of you know) are home schooled and do over 2 hours of “sch00lwork” a day. Now that they are nearly teenagers, we do find they spend more time on their own and less asking “what can we do?”.
Saturday, we took the kids to the nearby Dollar Store and did stocking stuffing shopping. For dinner Saturday and Sunday, we watched a Christmas (The Santa Clause and Home Alone). The weather could have been worse but we found it cold (just below freezing and a biting wind much of the weekend). Doug managed his runs and we got out walks in but it took a while to get dressed enough to be more comfortable in the cold! Monday morning the kids were picked up around 8:30 and returned in the early evening on Tuesday as it’s Daddy’s turn for Christmas with them. We had a reservation at our fave Italian Restaurant in Tottenham and started the visit with dinner out.
We brought Josh a few keepsakes we’d found unpacking including a few Christmas ornaments and a bucket with a Lego Santa Clause he made every year.
Tuesday morning, Josh was having a new washing machine delivered and a part replaced on his heat pump. He and Doug stuck around the house. Fran went into town (Bolton) and did some last minute shopping and got a pedi on the last gift certificate that Josh had given her for Mother’s Day. Now keep in mind it’s winter here and it’s around freezing. In the shopping she did before the Pedi she got some cheap rubber slides to wear to and from the pedi so as not to have to put boots back on afterwards – she got some strange looks heading back to the parking lot from the spa!
Christmas Eve day the kids began opening presents as they like to play with things once they are open and it’s nice to spread the gifts over a few days. That night we had tourtiere for dinner (French Canadian meat pie – a family tradition) and the next day we had the Christmas dinner that the kids had made and brought from their mom’s: chicken, stuffing, potatoes, carrots, gravy and a huge cheesecake with blueberry sauce. It was all serve yourself and nuke your plate and it was very good. (we do not post pics of the grandkids on this site)
Here’s the chicken before it was cut up at their mother’s house:
and this is the cheesecake before it was taken out of the pan at their mother’s (it had sunk and apparently cracked but they hid it well with loads and loads of blueberry sauce when they served it!):
Boxing Day continued in the same vein: some gifts, some playing and some eating. Doug managed to get his runs and walks in despite the cold and Fran went for walks except on the really cold days when she used Josh’s treadmill. It snowed just a little that day and mostly melted.
The kids left mid morning on Saturday and we had a quiet day before driving to Kingston the next day to see Fran’s sister and spend one night – Josh joined us as well. We were at her place before noon, had lunch went for a walk, played some board and card games in the afternoon. Cynthia made homemade tourtiere with our mother’s family recipe and we chilled in the family room that night watching mindless tv.
During dinner freezing rain began but by morning, it had stopped and the roads were wet with icy sidewalks.
We left after a light lunch and were back at Josh’s by 4:30 after a windy drive with some blowing snow but we hit no traffic either day which is quite something in Toronto area!
We had a quiet day at Josh’s on the 30th, doing laundry and packing. We went over to the local legion to play some pool and watch the first period of the hockey game. Josh made us homemade pizza for dinner.
Wednesday morning, after washing our sheets and putting away our “bedroom” in the basement, we hit the road.
The weather was cold but dry and being New Year’s Eve day, traffic had no problems going around Toronto and on to the border.
On our drive back to Buffalo, we had appointments at the Border to renew our NEXUS cards (for those who don’t know, NEXUS allows us to cross the border between Canada and US in an expedited lane as we have been “pre-vetted” – this works at the airport too when returning to Canada or the US). We obtained these cards back in 2010 and they need to be renewed every five years. Our last actual interview renewal was back in 2015 as in 2020, the pandemic provided an interview-less renewal and this year we tried to renew before the expiry this year (our birthdays) but appointments logs were backed up and we were granted “conditional approval” pending an interview. Finally in October Fran was allowed to book an appointment and before the middle of December, Doug received the same notice. These interviews can only take place in certain places (at certain borders and major airports) so we were lucky to get the date and times we wanted. At first Doug couldn’t get the 31st but after checking back daily he got one – must have been a cancellation. On the 23rd Fran heard from DHS advising she was “approved” and the appointment was canceled! Doug did not hear the same so off we went to his appointment.
Doug went for his 12:50 pm appointment where we learned that if you are part of a couple, only one must attend to the renewal interview. That explained why Fran got approved without one. He had to meet with both an American and Canadian agent and was out of there in less than 15 minutes. We’re good for another five years.
By now it’s snowing and getting harder so we were glad we’d not made later appointments than we did and opted not to get the car washed as it was pointless. We arrived at Amanda & Kevin’s before 2 and gave them $20 to get a car wash on a better day and thanked them again for taking such good care of our car. We had had no issues, noticed the noise in the rear were gone but there was a now a minor noise up front so he’ll have a look. The car does not have the greatest suspension any more and the potholes of Buffalo (aka “the pothole capital of the world!”) were felt.
Our flights to Las Vegas were through Chicago and the weather here delayed out departure 40 minutes which made us concerned about making our connection. It was supposed to be over 75 minutes but by the time we landed (as we’d be delayed again de-icing the plane), we heard “last call boarding message and there were at least another dozen headed the same way. We began to run to our gate (naturally, we landed at the A gates and our next flight was at a B gate) and Fran really had to pee so she had to stop running (she was also beginning to catch a cold and her breathing was becoming difficult when running). Doug ran ahead and got to the gate, explained there were several others trying to make this flight. Fran made it to gate and seems the plane waited for several others and we left about 15 minutes late only to be held up on the tarmac for some reason for about 45 minutes. We did wonder if our bags were going to make it but at least we were going “home” and didn’t need immediately from them.
So instead of landing at 10:15 we landed around 11, our bags did make it with us. We Ubered home and by 11:30 were in our own beds saying “Happy New Year” – it felt like 2:30 for us though.
We spent two days at “home” before loading up the truck again on Saturday the 3rd to head to Reno to spend a late Christmas weekend with Serena and Kurt. By Thursday Fran felt a sore throat and knew she’d caught Arya’s cold.
We left Saturday morning the 3rd and made it to Reno in about 7.5 hours (730 km / 454 mi) and checked into our hotel (J Resort). The drive up US95 is a pretty good one and we had a variety of weather conditions today: cloudy, thick fog around Goldfield (a 50 km / 30 mi stretch give or take), heavy rain and continued moisture into Reno. We checked in to the J Resort around and got settled. Serena met us for dinner after she finished work. Fran was beginning to feel sicker with her cold and so Sunday we stayed in our hotel and chilled so Fran could rest. Doug went out for food at meal times and we actually enjoyed the break – at home we get doing too many “things”.
The weather was cold – just above freezing and it was on and off wet though it never snowed. Monday it cleared up and warmed up a bit. We didn’t want to get Serena and Kurt sick as they are going on vacation on the 11th so we debated about going over to their house. We all finally decided to make a go of it and we’d all wear masks and disinfect out hands often. So we had our little late Christmas exchanging gifts from across the room after eating lunch outside on their patio as it was just warm enough while the sun was shining.
They gave us a pickleball set complete with a net and told us there were courts nearby so after gifts, we walked over and played three games with them. We couldn’t remember all the rules but we had fun time and were able to be outside. The wind was a bit strong but the sun was shining.
The view from our hotel:
Around 3 we headed back to our hotel although they invited us for dinner but we really felt we shouldn’t push their luck. Doug went out for food again and despite 3 terrible nights’ of sleep due to Fran’s coughing, we were up by 7 and left for home within 45 minutes. The drive took about 30 minutes longer as we had to swing by Serena’s to pick up a forgotten box (Doug forgot he’d ordered more gifts but luckily they were all for Fran so no biggy about not opening them the day before), we hit some traffic and then a ten minute construction delay so we were home before 4. We unpacked the truck and went for a hot tub.
Fran had signed up for swimming lessons which started on Monday while we were in Reno and were twice a week. Since she’s still feeling poorly and now Doug has the cold, she went over to the Rec Centre and was able to cancel the lessons and use the credit for lessons next month.
Again, Happy 2026 all and let’s hope the year brings us all more wonderful memories.
