Christmas Letter

Ok so this one's long overdue! Way back at the time of birth of my blog I revealed that I'd sent out a Christmas letter (in April I believe)... well here it is in e-form...

 

Hello Friends and Family!

Now that I am a married woman, it seems like a good time to take on the annual Christmas letter, a time honored family tradition started by my mother (also a married woman). She started writing these letters possibly 20 years ago, and got to the mailing stage 5-7 times. For those of you thinking “what the?” you may remember getting a letter around the time that the snow is melting, and the calendar page is about to be flipped from March to April… And so the tradition continues. I just hope to send these Christmas letters closer to Christmas than I did the wedding thank you cards in relation to the actual wedding (my bad… and Quincys – what’s mine is his now right?).

This year sure has been a whirlwind. At this time last year, Quincy had just returned to school after the holidays and I was rousing my friends and clients at the Vernon First Nations Friendship Center to start planning another entry in the Winter Carnival Parade. As usual, I was taking on a major project about 15 working days before the actual event. We had been engaged for about six months, and had our wedding completely planned (this, as many of you know is complete bull #$%^). We actually had some great ideas for the wedding, and had acted on none of them… and would not do so for quite some time. Despite some minor issues (enormous float, flimsy/labor intensive decorations and cold/wet/windy weather) the parade was a huge success, in which we won first prize in our category!

In anticipation of spring fever, I bought a little horse that the owner had dubbed untrainable! Monty joined the family in February about 150 lbs underweight and with a wild look in his eye. Quincy passed all of his classes and graduated (yay) Civil Engineering at the end of April much to his relief… I think it is safe to say he is happy to be out of the classroom and back to work for Emil Anderson Construction with his friends Boob (Bob) Bubbles, Hammer, Doug Carter and others. Those first few weeks on the job site I was getting phone calls at midnight from a thrilled Mr. Burr in Golden BC who had snuck onto the paver or the loader after all of the daytime crew was long gone. Axle the dog was happy too, because he was able to sleep in the bed every night with his own pillow instead of being squeezed down by our feet.

Spring arrived (albeit a little late!) to find us spending our days working, wedding planning (or not), taking Axle to the lake to swim and for me riding my new friend Monty. He proved to be quite the character, with an aversion to cantering on the right lead, jumping (actually walking over top of anything in general unless a person went over it first) and refusing to be ridden through the gate into the arena. Thank you Conti’s (barn owners) for keeping 911 dialed into your phones every time I came up to ride.

Before we knew it, it was wedding time. Oops! We hastily threw together all of the big plans we had been making for the last year in time for our June 4^th nuptials. Many thanks to all of our friends who had the misfortune of showing up early, or unwittingly volunteering to help – our families and ‘best people’ in particular! It was the best (only) wedding we’ve ever had, and we never want to have another!

Summer followed spring and found Quincy working long hours in Golden, and me working multiple jobs in Vernon (we had a wedding to pay for!). Lauren was nervously preparing to move down under, and I planned a big surprise for her – I went for a visit! In the middle of packing, working, selling her car and renting her apartment she also did a great job of entertaining me and we got in a lot of quality ‘sister time’ before she moved a daunting 24 hour flight away.

Meanwhile…Quincy continued working in Golden, frequenting The Golden Taps Pub every night from which I received phone calls that required translation into sober. His favorite pastime of the summer was to do ‘the tour’ and drink a pint of each of the 7 locally brewed beers that Taps had on tap.

In August we had a wonderful whirlwind visit in Golden with the Carnahans my long lost cousins, aunt, and uncle! We went whitewater rafting, drove to the top of a mountain and ate at a ‘50s diner. No family vacation out west is complete without these activities right? (don’t worry, they did get the ‘cowboy treatment’ at my parents place where they were riding horses and driving trucks.)

One day in late September disaster struck, and I found myself in Calgary helping out on the farm after the usual, a Susan related horse-incident. I spent a month there, and all of the sudden realized it was honeymoon time! After booking two round trip flights to Honduras and selling my beloved old Mercedes car, I took off to start the honeymoon adventure. I traveled to the interior of Honduras, a city called La Esparanza where a long lost Showriders friend now calls home, while Quincy remained in Canada for a few more weeks.

I met wonderful people, learned more Spanish than I had hoped to (mucho) and started taking riding lessons again for the first time in 6-7 years.  Dressage and jumping, and all in Spanish!!! Talk about a steep learning curve. I was lucky enough to compete in 2 horse shows before Quincy arrived – the first was dressage in which I ‘improved’ (translation: can’t get worse) every day and had a legitimately great test on the final show day… until my nice bay mare Alexa stepped on one of the dainty white fences, broke it and exploded outside of the arena. The jumping show was marginally more successful – no disqualifications! I even got a 3^rd place prize, beating a 13 year old boy (yay)! I also had my first and last experience babysitting Honduran children. never. again.

Needless to say by the time Quincy got to Honduras for the official start of our honeymoon I was fully integrated into Honduran life. Minus getting up at 4 am to walk 2 hrs to work, do physical labor all day, eat tortillas for breakfast lunch and dinner and walk home to collect firewood etc etc.

We really enjoyed our trip, visiting the smaller island Utila (unfortunately during bad weather – not that we spent much time outside the hotel anyways…). Flew to the capital city Tegucigalpa, drove to the rural city where I had spent most of my time previously, La Esparanza and settled in for the Holidays. Between riding horses, zip lining, shooting guns, buying fireworks, making 300 + perogies, punta-ing, eating, drinking etc etc. we had some good times with great friends. Quincy enjoyed a short ‘guys only’ trip to El Salvador – 3 hours into which Sara (showriders) got a phone call that the boys were missing documents for their vehicle and unable to get through the border. Leave it to the women to save the day! yea, still not letting that one go guys!

We ate a lot, drank more, met some really great people and I even extended my trip! I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to participate in another show, speak more Spanish and be there for the impending birth of Sara’s 2 baby horses! I think Quincy wanted to stay longer as well – he missed his flight and got to stay another night in Honduras, and a night in LA too!

My three bonus weeks in Honduras were spent riding horses, discovering Honduran over-the-counter drugs (the things you can get without a prescription, dios mio!), horse showing, spending time with more Canadian visitors and waiting, waiting waiting for those baby horses to arrive! (they are still in the oven). I rounded off my amazing once in a lifetime experience by getting food poisoning and experiencing the worst symptoms I have had in. my. life.. ever. along with 8 of my other innocent and unsuspecting companions. Let’s just call it a bonding experience and move along.

During all of this excitement, Quincy was stuck in the office at work, drinking coffee or something.  I flew home January 26^th, was joyously welcomed back into Axle’s life (every second every day and night for the next week). I visited Mr. Monty who is enjoying an abundance of winter fur. I didn’t eat dirt, or have my life flash before my eyes during his first ride back, and that brings us to the present.

Here I am trying to get settled in to our new home (for now). Quincy is working outside of Kamloops and we have rented an acreage close to the job site (Calgarians -think Bergen. Don’t know where that is? …exactly). We are excited to start living life as a ‘married couple’ whatever that means… maybe we will have the answer in next years Christmas (Easter) Letter.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Quincy and Heather Burr

Muchas gracias to the Turner family for an awesome (not very romantic) honeymoon!

And here is the art that I had originaly planned to hold a colouring contest with the kids in Honduras to attain... as it turned out (due to my procrastinating nature) I was the only one that entered...

And here you can see the booklet format that I spent countless hours trying to attain... I mean countless, at home and at Staples in Kamloops - I was there for longer than the day shift...