In the Spirit of the Season wraps up the Photo Blogging Challenge for 2025. I think it’s a fun theme, with many photographic options: winter season (or summer, if you’re in the southern hemisphere); Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanza; a particular batch of episodes for a long-running television / streaming series; a sports team’s schedule; adding spices and herbs to food; and a few more possibilities that come to mind.

With lots on deck this month, I took the easy route. So my photos are all about Christmas-related family gatherings and activities. Or winter. Here goes:

1. Family Time

Our oldest and partner visited the first half of December. And with both sets of (grand)parents now living in Calgary, that meant family visits on both sides. During our visit with Mr GeoKs’ parents, Grammy dug out a time capsule she and Grandpa put together with their grandkids back in 2000. She figured 25 years later was a good time to open it up. Our youngest was less than a year old when the contents were gathered up and stored in the tin, so had absolutely no memory of anything in there. And our oldest, who was three at the time, really didn’t remember much either!

But we all had fun looking at all the stuff in the tin – pins, coins, paper money, favourite tops, newspaper clippings, photographs, note cards and more. Of particular note – a newspaper ad for mortgages at a rate of 21.75% interest (I remember those days). Also, grocery flyer clippings of some of our oldest’s favourite foods at the time, including Ritz crackers, seedless grapes and iced Valentine’s cookies. I specifically remember the Ritz ad – 2x 450 gram boxes for $3.50. Today, on sale, the same volume of Ritz crackers goes for about $12.50 on sale. Also, the TSX closed over 10,000 for the first time in March 2020. On Christmas Eve 2025, it closed just shy of 32,000.

2. More Family Time

My parents moved to Calgary at the start of October, and are now settled into their one bedroom plus den apartment in an assisted retirement community. When our oldest and partner were here, they invited all of the family who could make it to join them for lunch in the private dining room. Talk about a stress-free way to enjoy an extended family meal – the kitchen does the cooking and clean up. We could just enjoy one another’s company, and the food.

3. Even More Family Time!

Back at our house, there’s no staff to cook the meals and clean up afterwards. Everyone fended for themselves for breakfast and lunch, while I cooked most of the suppers. So I really appreciated the day the “kids” prepared supper. And I very much enjoyed watching the siblings team up to assemble the Vietnamese spring rolls that they served along with home made Bánh mì and pickled vegetables.

4. Christmas Tradition – Building Lego

Pretty much as long as we’ve had kids, one of our family Christmas traditions has been for everyone to click together some Lego bricks. Santa usually brings everyone at least one Lego set. This year, he surprised us and brought Mr GeoK a Lego knock-off set from the brand Pantasy. It’s a very complex build, complete with battery powered lights. And it’s compatible with the Lego module sets, so will fit into our big Lego town once completed.

While the plastic isn’t quite up to snuff compared to Lego, nor are the brick tolerances, the design asthetic and details more than compensate.

Here are a couple of bonus pics, showing more Christmas season Lego building, including a little Easter egg hidden in the Star Wars logo set.

5. Enjoying Winter

Just before Christmas, I realized we hadn’t walked up to the big waterfall on Three Sisters Creek since some time last winter. We noted two big changes on the trail: 1) there’s a new wildlife fence, installed to try to keep wildlife on the upslope side of the fence and limit human access in that area to designated trails accessed via gates; and 2) a new-to-us bridge over the creek, an essential part of the new Cloudline mountain biking trail in Canmore.

We plowed through fresh snow to reach the big waterfall, which was not yet very frozen. The featured image for this post is from the same walk.

In the spirit of the season, I hope you’ve had a chance to create new memories with family and friends. And I wish you a healthy and fulfilling New Year!

To see what everyone else came up with for this theme, head over to host PJ’s A ‘lil Hoohaa and scroll down to the linkup at the bottom of his post.

If your New Year’s Resolution is anything to do with learning photography, creating content, getting outside more often or joining a community of sorts, then please consider joining our small (but friendly and supportive) group for the Photo Blogging Challenge. Host PJ sets a theme each month. All you need to participate are five photographs and a blog site (there are plenty of free options available). I tend to be on the wordy side, but don’t let that scare you off. Because the important thing is the pictures. You really don’t need much in the way of accompanying text.

Until next time….