A Christmas Post

Yes, finally the dust has settled and I can post about our Christmas. Perhaps you were wondering if we even did Christmas this year. Well, yes we did, and it was very lovely.

We have had a very busy Christmas season in our house. Between the kids all doing things with their classes as they wrapped up before the break, skating with our church, church services and kid's production and an amazing Christmas Eve service, I am finally starting to feel like I am relaxed. 

Our Christmas Eve service was a real highlight and challenge for me. I played the cello which I am teaching myself. I don't get too nervous much on stage anymore but my hands were shaking as I played this instrument in front of strangers for the first time! It went well and am proud of myself for pushing out of my comfort zone and doing something scary!

Christmas Eve was also memorable for our girls who happen to both loose teeth on this night! Crazy right? Never happened before. Cici lost hers just before we left and Bean lost hers during the service! Didn't know if the tooth fairy worked on Christmas Eve, but she did and deserves some overtime for it too!

It is a tradition in our house to open our stockings right after we get home from Christmas Eve service. The kids were very excited and as expected, we all got new Christmas PJ's to wear to bed.

It is also a tradition or ours to take a picture of the kids first thing Christmas morning. 

Here it is.

We have had better "in front of the tree pictures."

This is one of J Man's toys that has now become my nemesis. It looked like such a great idea in Costco.

He opened it and was overjoyed to have a marble run. He opened the box and out spilled bags, lots and lots of bags with lots and lots and lots of tiny parts. Oh, boy. The first instructions are to count all the pieces and see if they are all there. Ya, right. Anyway, as the morning progressed he decided to open many of the bags and dump out the parts. They were all together on the floor, no big deal. Until though as I began to put it together and realized all the bags were numbered and to put it together you needed to match the numbers with the pieces that matched the instructions. Oh, boy. I did put it all together though. It took 4 hrs. 4 long, long hours. It required much patience as I turned each page on the instructions and found all the mistakes I made in the pages before as the pieces would not match up.

 It is together. It works. It is NEVER coming apart. 

We were honoured to host Christmas dinner at our house this year and blessed to have my parents, Paul's parents and my grandparents over for dinner. It was such a great time with them all and the meal was very yummy! My grandpa always rejoices in "4 generations" under one roof. That is something to rejoice in!

A few days later, we headed to Paul's brother's house to celebrate with them and Paul's parents. Again, so great to see them and spend time with family. We ordered in Chinese Food, also really great!

Well, I guess the year is coming to a close. We will take down all Christmas things soon and get our house back into order. I always miss Christmas when it is gone but am looking forward to a new year and what it will bring!

Our Guest

This is our house guest. She has been a bundle of energy and joy around here for the past few days. She is my parent's puppy but has been our guest for a few days. 

She has fit right in. The kids are over the moon for her and she is never bored with the kids around! We have kept her busy with hour long walks in our forest, meeting neighbourhood dogs and getting lots of cuddle time. We call these walks "socialization by immersion." She has had no choice but to follow her new pack and meet lots of kids at the school and lots and lots and lots of big dogs on our walks. 

People we meet on our walks marvel at our family and think we might be a bit crazy having 3 kids and a puppy. Thats when we say she isn't ours and we are just puppy sitting. They sigh with relief.

There are never any dull moments in our house and adding a puppy to the mix has been lots of fun. Will one of our own be in our future,? Don't know, but we are getting some great practice in!

It's Beginning....

Dec 1 has been a tradition in our family. For the past 5 or more years, we take the day off, break out the Christmas music, set up the tree, bake gingerbread men and decorate!

Yesterday was our first time doing our tradition in our new house. 

One other first was our tree. See, every year we cut down our Christmas tree, but for the first time we set up a "fake" tree. Yup, we caved. It was really fun though to break out that box and let the kids have turns "fluffing" the tree!

Though there have been some new additions to our first day of Christmas tradition, there are still those that last year to year. Like the hats and the gingerbread men. Those stuffed men have been with us since 2004 and are the most anticipated item in all the Christmas storage boxes.

The Christmas train has been with us for 2 years but it may have seen it's last Christmas. It was near disaster when we realized it may not work. Tears started to flow from our little conductor, but daddy came to the rescue and got it working again.. for now.

He enjoyed every minute of it once it was working again. 

This little guy is joining us for his first Christmas. By the look of it, I may have to watch out for him, he has a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

Changing

The seasons have changed again, but here on the coast it may not be so obvious as it was when we were in Kimberley.

One big change in the past weeks that has brought us from Fall to Winter, is that the leaves have finally made their final journey to the ground. 

This is our "backyard." If you walk up our street a block you enter kilometres and kilometres of amazing crown land. Our kids always ask to walk in the forest. They run the whole way pretending to be forest animals in need of rescue.

We meet lots of dogs, people and thankfully, no bears.... yet. I know they are in there, we just haven't had the pleasure yet.

The winter forest is a bit foggier, and a whole lot wetter than the Fall Forest. Beautiful just the same. Our nightly walks in the Winter Forest are less frequent and happen much earlier in the day while there is still light. But, when it does happen it is so enjoyable. I seriously love living here. 

It's November

Can you believe that it is already a week into November?? It is flying by. Christmas will be here very soon.

Thought I'd share what our street looks like, or what it did look like a week ago.

Pretty amazing. I knew in the summer that it had the potential to be incredible, and I was right!

It is sunny today, actually we have had a few days this week of sun. J Man and I went with a friend and her kids to the park by the ocean today. Amazing. Watched a seagull eat a crab. Still amazing but a little more gross.

The kids all went to the dentist yesterday. The place is amazing. It is a pediatric dentist that has video games to play, huge cool fake trees and a "toy tower" to pick a prize from. Yup, they had a great time. Which is good cause Cici needs to go back for two more visits for some more work. When we were all done, it was commented that I had three amazingly well behaved kids. I agreed. They rocked it. Even our little J Man sat there, mouth wide open and didn't mind at all. There was a young girl there who was not too happy having a cleaning. I was just glad that the screaming wasn't coming from my clan. Also loved how involved I could be in it all. I sat with all of them for their turn and was always asked if it was ok to have X-rays etc. I also had to sign their chart saying that I understood what they had done. The kids actually said on the way home that they had so much fun and they love the dentist. 

I am painting our kitchen. I am realizing now that I haven't put pictures of our new house up yet. Perhaps I will take an after picture of our kitchen when it is done. 

It is crazy quiet in the house right now. I am actually home alone. Paul is at a meeting, the girls are at school and the playdate that was started in the park this morning moved to J Man's friend's house this afternoon. I'll pick him up after I get the girls. Speaking of which, that needs to happen, so I will sign off. 

Happy Halloween

It has finally come and gone. It has been weeks in preparations, and now it is over. Our Jaguar, Owl and Dragon had a great time, though the mood was dimmed a bit by the pouring rain. Our Dragon made it for a few houses and then gave up, but the other animals stayed strong and were out for a long while. We even had their baby cousin, a Zebra join them!

All in all a good evening and they had lots of fun dressing up for school too! We have way too much candy and some very tired kids. Our night is done, they are in bed, but the fireworks are just beginning around here. Gonna be a fun night!

Happy Halloween!

The Fish

Yesterday we went to go watch the Salmon. See, where we live, the Salmon come every fall to spawn. It is quite the sight. These huge fish all swimming up the streams to spawn, and then to die. We saw our fair share of dead fish but saw lots of live ones too doing their spawning thing. 

We live right on the ocean, so these guys didn't really have far to go to get to their spawning grounds. In the spring we saw them release thousands of baby salmon in the creek by our house and now we get to see the grown ones come back to their home. Pretty cool!

Here are the kids checking out the ducks, and dead fish, on the ocean shore that the creek feeds into.

Here is one of the live Salmon. The girl's didn't want me to take  pictures of the dead ones, though we named one "no eyes" you can guess why.

I hardly get in front of the camera, which I am trying to change. Beaner has become quite the photographer and so she snapped this one for me!

When living on the West Coast, you need to be ok with rain, spiders, rain, more rain and slugs.

This is what Cici has been doing non stop for about a week now. Seriously non stop. At Ikea, in parking lots, at school, on the streets, in the house.

On the way back from the Salmon walk we past by the ice rink. We couldn't pass up the huge pile of snow. In fact, we raced home, had dinner and brought Paul back for a family snowball fight. All the fun of winter without the winter!

Catching Up

I feel like life has been flying by lately. Between kids at school, homework, more homework, getting meals ready and the looming event of Halloween, life has been in a bit of a tailspin. 

In all the busyness, we were able to head out to the Island this past weekend for a weekend off. We had this planned for a few weeks and then we heard that the camp Cici went to this summer was having a weekend retreat the same weekend. Cici of course wanted to go and surprisingly so did Beaner! She hasn't wanted to go to camp because of the fact that she would have to sleep away from us. But, this time, she got up the nerve and went for it. Needless to say both girls had an amazing time, and we got a weekend with just J Man at Paul's parents place. 

Other things keeping me busy...

Halloween costumes, I have an owl, a leopard and a dragon to get ready.

I made lots of perogies today. I am getting pretty good at it.

Playing the cello, yup, the cello.

Reorganizing the art in our house.

Going to Ikea to get random things. Did you know that they have a vending machine for spare parts?Yes! Got my shelves put back together because of that machine.

Getting ready to teach the preschool Sunday School class this Sunday.

Trying to find a dentist for my kids. 

Getting two of my kids ready for field trips this week.

Thought I'd introduce you to our little buddy.

This is Jumpy.

He is around all the time now and loves to eat the maple seed thingies on our trees.

I thought I'd get a picture of him, this was the best I could do. He's fast, it was getting dark and the focus on my old film lens was crazy to get right. Move it a hair either way and it was out. Oh well, it was fun to try. My family thought I was crazy with a tripod set up in the sink trying to get a shot of Jumpy!

Even though the pictures aren't great I still like the details.

Like his tiny teeth and the way he holds his tiny hands.

Or the crazy skills he has to hold himself on this branch with just 2 toes!

Or how he looks so cute holding his seed.

Or the way his tail curls around to keep him balanced.

That's Jumpy.

He's awesome.

The Last Days of the Sun

Last week, on the last sunny warm day of fall, I had the honour of taking some family photos of some good friends of ours.

We had lots of fun and captured some great moments of this great family!

Bailey

This is Bailey.

She is cute.

Very cute.

She is not ours.

She is the new addition at my parent's house.

Now I can be grandparent. 

I can play with her, cuddle her, buy her things but then leave and let her "mom" stay up all night with the crying and the trips outside!

Ranch Style

A few weeks ago, as a church, we went out to Timberline Ranch. 

It was so much fun. The church goes every year but this was the first year that we had gone.

One of the highlights was the petting zoo. Our kids named all the animals. 

This is Buddy.

This Llama is "Model",  I called him "Tick".  He was friendly but had this habit of throwing his head around.

I don't think this guy got a name.

The horses were also a huge hit. They also had names but I can only remember one...

... this one's name is Farrah.

Another huge hit which may have been the funnest, was archery.

Our kids loved it and all got turns, then I stepped up and showed them how it is done!

Later we feasted Ranch Style on some amazing food, hung out with great people...

...and watched the sun set on an amazing day.