A big thank you to Tom from The Doubting Thomas for tagging me in the Blogmas Tag 2021. With just eight sleeps left to go until the big day, today feels like a good day to respond to a blogging tag that conveniently has eight questions.

Blogging Tags are always a nice change of pace but, for those of us doing Blogmas, they are a godsend. It isn’t easy to come up with 12, 24, or 31 blog post ideas depending on which version of Blogmas we’ve decided to torture ourselves with. A blogging tag is a welcome break and I’m always interested in how my responses to the questions compare to those of other bloggers.

So…here we go…

The Blogmas Tag 2021

What is your favourite winter treat?

I love this question because a treat could be so many different things. It might be a favourite food or drink, but it can also be a fun activity.

When I thought about my answer, my mind immediately jumped to sweet chocolatey treats—because I do love chocolate. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there’s nothing better on a cold winter day than a steaming bowl of homemade soup and some freshly-baked homemade bread.

Before the pandemic, my mum used to come over every Friday for lunch and she’d bring homemade soup. I really miss those visits. I recently bought a new Crock Pot so I’m looking forward to trying out some new soup recipes this winter.

What Christmas traditions do you celebrate?

Now that my daughters are both adults, our Christmas traditions have changed from the things we used to do when they were small.

One tradition that has held on over the years is our annual family viewing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The first year my daughter Laura was away at college, she told us we were forbidden from watching it until she came home for the Christmas holidays. Every year, we plan an evening to watch it as a family. She’ll be home on the 20^th, so you know what we’ll be doing one evening next week!

Are you wishing for snow this year?

Living in Canada, many people just assume we get a white Christmas every year, but that’s not the case. As I shared last year in Dreaming of a White Christmas, the probability of a white Christmas in the area where I live is only 55%.

Last year, we were blessed with what Environment Canada calls a “perfect Christmas”—snow on the ground and a fresh snowfall on Christmas day—something that only happens about 45% of the time in this area.

I love snow at Christmastime so I’m definitely wishing for a white Christmas. We had snow on the ground a couple of weeks ago, then it warmed up and rained and it all melted. I’m crossing my fingers it will return!

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What is your favourite Christmas movie?

I think I already answered that in question two but, in case there’s any doubt, it’s Christmas Vacation. It isn’t officially Christmas until we’ve had our annual family viewing. We pretty much have the whole script memorized but we still howl with laughter every time we watch.

Honourable mentions go to The Polar Express, Four Christmases, and The Santa Clause.

Have you ever built a gingerbread house? What is your technique?

I openly admit to being pretty lazy when it comes to baking. I bake a couple of favourites every Christmas and buy the rest. A gingerbread house would be far too ambitious for my baking skills so it’s something I’ve never attempted.

What hot chocolate do you like best?

I’m actually not a huge hot chocolate lover, but I do sometimes whip up a batch of my slow cooker hot chocolate when we’re having a larger winter gathering. If I must pick a favourite, I’d probably say salted caramel hot chocolate because chocolate and caramel are two of my favourite flavours.

What gift are you hoping for this year?

I already have too much of just about everything, so there’s not really anything specific I’m hoping for.

For me, gifts of experiences will always win out over more stuff. My daughters know that, and they were planning a surprise Christmas gift—until I spoiled it. They bought me tickets to see Keith Urban in concert next summer in Toronto. I heard about the concert and told them I was planning to look into buying tickets, so they had to tell me they had already bought them. That is such a fabulous Christmas gift and will really be something to look forward to.

What is your warmest wintertime memory?

Hmm…this is a difficult one. I have a lifetime of memories so it’s hard to isolate just one.

As I look back over the years though, I think some of my warmest winter memories are of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. My girls were 6 and 9 at the time and it was so exciting that the Olympics were in Canada.

A couple of days after Christmas in 2009, we went to see the Olympic Torch Relay when it passed through our area. It was pretty cool to see that flame as it made the very long trek across Canada on its way to Vancouver. (The 45,000-kilometre torch relay took 106 days and passed through hundreds of communities across the country.)

Canada went on to collect a national record medal haul in those Vancouver 2010 games—winning more gold medals than any other country. When our women’s hockey team won gold, the pressure was on for the men to follow suit. And they didn’t disappoint! The whole country erupted when Sidney Crosby scored that golden goal in overtime of the gold medal final as the games drew to a close. It’s a moment I will never forget.

My daughter Colleen—who was six at the time—kept track of every Canadian medal on a sheet of paper.

I’m passing the torch to…

With all this talk about the Olympic Torch Relay, I couldn’t resist the pun. It’s late in the season and a lot of my blogging friends have already been tagged. I’m passing the torch to Krista and Alison, Forever Saving For a Rainy Day, Jaclyn, and anyone else who wants to participate in The Blogmas Tag 2021.

Thanks again Tom for tagging me in The Blogmas Tag 2021 and letting me relive some of these memories.

Did any of my answers surprise you? Tell me what you think below.