Christmas is over for this year and this year is almost over! Erin celebrates the holiday with a sleepover. She invites a friend over and they dress up in far out wigs. It reminds me of Hannah Montana.

The dull winter weather continues, actually we just officially entered winter and we have much more left before spring returns to Ontario. The shot above was taken by my brother, Joe Hamilton, during our November trek exploring waterfalls as we head to Niagara Falls for the Winter Festival of Lights. The Autumn had turned the leaves yellow and the falling leaves had made a thick carpet on the ground. I an in the bottom third of the picture wandering along the creek bed taking pictures and looking at the fractured rocks lining the walls of the creek.

Ahhh - we still have made no decision regarding plans for New Years Eve fun and it is fast approaching!

The kids had some gift cards so we decide to try out the boxing week sales at the Eaton Centre. The crowds and the line ups for purchasing stuff were immense so it didn't take long to tire of the shopping. We head out on Young Street heading to HMV and we find a group providing free hugs!

I had to go over and get some hugs and some pictures of the group. I had ran into a similar group last year at the same spot. The Free Hugs Campaign was started in 2004 and is based on the concept of a random act of kindness. It is funny because they just want to give out free hugs while many people are very suspicious of the act. For more information you can go to Wikipedia and then later you can give someone a hug.

I bug Joe for an adventure so we head out to Hamilton Harbour to see if anyone is surfing in the frigid waters in late December 2007. No one was crazy enough and the wind wasn't that strong so we continued to LaSalle Park in Burlington. The park looks onto the steel foundries across Hamilton Harbour.

The boat launches and floating docks are stacked out of the water and the area is home to hundreds of birds and geese - including large populations of Trumpeter Swans, Mute Swans, Canada Geese and Mallard Ducks. The tagged birds pictured above are young Trumpeter Swans. Later they turn all white. The Mute Swans have the large bumpy nose with the bright orange colour.

The Ontario Group of the North American Trumpeter Swan Society was on hand banding some of the large swans. Trumpeters were extinct in Ontario and have since been reintroduced by the Society. The Society first fed the multitude of birds getting them ever closer (see youtube video here) and then one of the volunteers caught a Trumpeter Swan by the neck and the banding began!