Home for the holidays after all

We rarely get to go home for the holidays with my family up in the Okanagan.

A snow covered 5 hour drive requiring snow tires, or chains, over a mountain pass, that may or may not be closed without warning during winter. You might make it through, but there is always the chance that you may not get back until spring.

Also when you work retail, the hope of more than Christmas day off is very slim. I have made my peace with it, I am not happy, but I live with it.

So when a friend lent us a web cam a few weeks ago, my mind started to whirl. And it wasn't just from the busyness of Christmas.

I downloaded Skype, and found out that Skype to Skype customers can make free calls to one and another. And then the scheming began.

We would connect via Skype to my sister's house and surprise my Mom and Dad. Pretending to have emailed a video of Christmas good wishes to them.

It was fun to sit beside Gar and pretend that this was a taped video. With our little speech and happy wishes almost done, my Mom remarked about seeing themselves in a box visible on the bottom of the computer screen.

This was the point that I told her, that the box was the reason we could see, and hear them. The look of surprise on both my Mom, and Dad's faces was priceless.

We chatted with everyone for a while, talked and laughed. They got to meet Bootsie, he even waved a paw at them with our help.

So although it is not the same as being able to give them a hug in person, it certainly felt that in some ways, we were home for the holidays after all.