TV interview first thing in the morning. Everything off schedule, we left our recycling at the curb, and it still sits there - New Year's is just around the corner. It's colder today; and everyone's talking about how this unseasonably warm weather is affecting everyone. There was a piece in the Toronto Star, and Gord was interviewed! The warmth is definitely challenging us.



The tent is cramped, progress slow, JC is consumed with organizing details for this installation and planning for Toronto, also an outdoor tent situation.



There's doesn't seem to be a moment off work, over meals every conversation is another detail about how we're going to get it done. There's gonna be a crunch just after New Year's when we go to Nathan Phillips Square!



But James at To The Net printing has gone out of his way to get us our invitations on time! A delay in drying them led to disappointment this morning, and every courier says, "No" it can't be delivered before New Year's. He's bringing them down himself! Thank you James! Best wishes for reuniting with your fiancee coming in from Europe.

This weekend, we're going to open all those exquisite prints -- and all together, name them, using Italian names from our memories of our part in the Cultural Olympiad of the 2006 Olympic Winter Games.

The prints arrived yesterday! Two crates of them from the west coast. Gord and JC pried open the wood boxes, ripped into the paper.



Images from the Torino collection, with names like Val Chisone and Les forcats -- each word a reminder of the layers of our experience in Italy.

This will be our first exhibition of this work - at The Shaw Festival Theatre - indoors next door to the outdoor 'live' installation of the new Paintings Below Zero. The Icewine Festival is planning a big opening on the 20th of January.



It seems far away, but already there's pressure to adapt schedule, design, everything to the warm weather. We were hopeful when we saw the snow flurries yesterday morning, but we're back to warm and green by the lake. Here's our tent at The Shaw, which buffets the warm winds. This exhibit has to last more than a month - in fickle outdoor conditions.



Meanwhile: thanks to our pre-Christmas hustling, our books & invitations are being printed; business cards designed. We'll have to pull Jaz off the Core Crew to update the web site so we can show the permanent artwork online. Here, first frozen pours have been put to bed.



Last night the crew came dragging in to dinner. JC walks with a limp: he played goalee at the Halloran ball hockey game on Boxing Day in Mississagua. Here's a photo of the teams, taken by Lauren Kulokas. Thanks, Lauren.

Boxing Day.



We're in the land of White Christmas, and yesterday, not even a flake. Warm rain. This could slow us down, as we try to keep the cold next to the plates. But we buttoned up and took a couple days off, even as a strong wind shook every corner of the tent.

Why is Christmas Day so strangely difficult? Is it the songs? The "here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore . . " when we aren't like that at all? The grandparents who filled in our sense of family with a history they carried around with them, are gone. We follow in the spaces we took up as children, somehow yearning for the comfort and joy we had when someone else worried about the boogie man.



Yesterday, Christmas day, in the town where Gord grew up, where he watered his backyard rink from the basement window of the house his father built on Queensway Gardens, where he caught the passes at the football games, where he won golf Junior club championships, where he and his brothers and sister sat in deep snow and tobogganed down the steep hill at Firemen's Park -- the wind blows through these spaces. No one sits on the rickety bleachers in the middle of the field. The bank on the corner where he worked summers, is gone. The car dealership - his father's business - which held a place in the community -- the genesis of many Halloran family stories -- is a parking lot next to a Chinese restaurant in neon. Last year we were the parents. This year, we are the grandparents.

As a child, a day lasts a long time, and you fall asleep exhausted and spent, with a smile on your face, clutching the baseball glove or the hockey stick.

But as you get older, it's just another rainy day - and the White Christmas you hear about in every store - has gone the way of the sleigh bells. We have supper together, and tear into forgettable gifts and hug each other's warmth, making a memory for our offspring.



Friday the 23rd, together, we saw Joyeux Noel, and I cried through the entire film. It's the story of the spontaneous cease-fire on the front during World War I - and how that amazing event changed everyone's lives -- the French, the Scots, the Germans. It put us In The Mood, put our lives into perspective the day before Christmas Eve. I fixed pasta and we all gathered together in the large living room to watch - from start to finish - with sing along -- The Sound of Music. On Christmas Eve, It's a Wonderful Life.



During the day,Christmas Eve, we visited the new Buddhist mega church where we met a wonderful old man with sparkling eyes and true happiness reflected in his eyes. 10,000 virtues each sat in rows on the walls, brass statues covered in gold.



Then, up against fenced off Nature with a capital N. Niagara Falls.



The sky was darkening and suddenly it was 4:30.



We had a half hour left before the touristy stores closed on Clifton Hill. We were sort of boycotting the buy-frenzy but we had a team game where everyone gets one gift, so we had to set out. Here's The Don having a dog.



Here's Jaz overwhelmed by the hype.



Here's Erik and Jaz on Christmas night, voting as one for the gift they wanted to keep and treasure -- a snow globe.



To shake down the winter. To make the snow fall.