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Christmas with Mountain Mike

January 27th, 2010 | Add a Comment

CHRISTMAS WITH MOUNTAIN MIKE

written by Debbie Williamson

Hi everyone! This is Mountain Mike. I am the oldest of the Canadian brothers. I want to tell you about how I spend my Christmas season.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year, especially living in the mountains in British Columbia, Canada. The Christmas season is almost magical here. It is so beautiful with fresh Christmas snow falling to the ground. It makes you feel alive and makes you feel so good.

All summer long, while working in my bush land, I search for the perfect Christmas tree and I remember where that Christmas tree is, because come the middle of November, I am there to cut it down. Now, getting the Christmas tree home is another story. I bring a team of horses up into the bush with me and I tie the tree to them and we drag it down the steep mountain slope. Getting that Christmas tree from the bush to home is a lot of hard work, but it is always well worth it.

I leave the Christmas tree outside for a few days to let the needles cure, then I bring it into my log cabin. Decorating the tree is always so much fun! In fact, I always invite my neighbours over to help me out. We enjoy good company, good Christmas carols and excellent food while decorating the tree. The very last thing that goes onto my Christmas tree is the angel. I look forward to putting the angel on the tree. This is like the highlight of the evening.

The next few weeks are spent on purchasing gifts for my family and friends. Now, purchasing gifts for my friends is actually the easy part because they live right here in BC. However, my family is spread from coast to coast. My brother Prairie Pete lives on a ranch in Saskatchewan, City Cecil lives in Toronto, Ontario and Fishing Frank lives in New Brunswick. I always try to get them something original, something from BC that they don't have where they live.

This year, I decided to get them the closest thing to BC that I could find and that was a trip to come see me for Christmas. We haven't seen each other in years and I was very excited about this. I purchased the plane tickets for each of my brothers and then sent them by courier to them.

About a week before Christmas, I took a trip into the nearest city to me, which is Kamloops, BC. I purchased everything that I would need for my Christmas dinner. I didn't need to purchase a turkey because I had one in my freezer already. I purchased some baking supplies, yams, fresh vegetables and other goodies.

When I got to Kamloops, I was surprised at the little amount of snow that was there. See, in the mountains, we always get way more snow than the valleys and the city of Kamloops is a valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains.

Back at the cabin, I spent the rest of the week baking and cooking. Then, Christmas Eve came and I went to the Kamloops airport to pickup my brothers. I was so excited to see them and they were so excited to see me!

"What a perfect Christmas present!" exclaimed my brother, Prairie Pete.

"Yes," said City Cecil. "I never really knew how beautiful British Columbia is."

"It is way more beautiful than I could ever imagine," said Fishing Frank.

"Well," I said to them. "I always try to get you a piece of BC each year for Christmas and this year I thought, bringing you out to British Columbia, you would definitely get a piece of it!"

My brothers and I had a wonderful Christmas in BC. We enjoyed late night talks and good food. My brothers were very pleased about their Christmas gifts.

Familiar Christmas (Fear Familiar, Book 11) (Harlequin Intrigue Series #542) by