It’s been a long time since Patrick Dennis, who is originally from England, threw a snowball. For his wife and daughters, it’s the first time they’ve ever seen snow, let alone touch it.

“It’s cold” Dennis muttered, rubbing is hands over his arms, as he walked out of the airport on Monday. Looking across the parking lot he proclaimed “there’s snow, let’s go touch it.”

For a about half a minute, his wife, two daughters and a boyfriend threw the powdery snow back and forth at one another during an impromptu snowball fight with puzzled people looking on.

The Dennis family flew here from sunny Tenerife on the Canary Islands. They landed at St. John’s Airport on Tibb’s Eve with plans to spend Christmas with Carolann and Bryan Riggs of Burin.

Their connection is, as Patrick Dennis puts it, “unique.”

In 2002, Dennis helped translate a message in a bottle that was found by a woman walking along a very remote beach on the Canary Islands. That moment would result in a connection like no other between two families on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

That message had been sent by 6-year-old Siobhan Riggs and her older brother AJ. What Patrick Dennis didn’t realize is that in the sixteen months between the two children from Burin setting the messages adrift and Dennis finding them, a tragic ATV accident had claimed Siobhan’s life.

Hearing this news from Siobhan’s mother, Carolann, when he called the number on the message was “devastating.” But that message and that call forged a friendship and connection that has lasted almost two decades.

The Riggs family travelled to the Canary Islands in 2004 the meet Dennis. They went there again in 2017, but this year it was time for Patrick Dennis to make the flight this way.

Remember the two families connected by a message in a bottle in 1992? Today the family from Tenerife (Canary Islands) touched down in NL for Christmas. They also touched snow for the first time. The full story tomorrow on the @590VOCM Morning Show @VOCMNEWS @GerriLynnMackey pic.twitter.com/2AbIYRX7iy

— Fred Hutton (@Fred_Hutton) December 23, 2019

“I’m not sure what to expect” Dennis said when asked what he thought it would be like to spend Christmas on the Burin Peninsula. “I’ve done some research and I know it will be cold .. and something about screech ins and mummers.”

Day two of the trip provided the snow. Carolann Riggs says they have a big party planned for Saturday and the other two things will likely happen then.

Before Dennis and his family landed, Carolann said she was nervous. She was worried it wouldn’t be what they expected.

Moments after they embraced at the airport, and the brief snowball fight, it was evident that although they live an ocean apart, the spirit of the season and the memory of a little girl had bridged that gap.