Merry Christmas!

Hi everyone! We're having a lovely time here for the holidays. Here are some pics:

our little tree. It's Sherrie's old one from Hong Kong, and has been our little tree ever since we met. It's smaller than the bounty of presents, but it's our little tree and I hate to think of replacing it.

We did a lot of gingerbread house making. There are scattered gingerbread house photos within today's posting; you'll see them as you scroll down. Due to the large number of photos and vids I'm putting up today, I'm not organizing them - you should see how long it takes just to upload them, nevermind editing! So forgive the mixed up order these are in.

Me at my favorite Peace River restaurant, Boston Pizza!

Sherrie baking up a storm

That's Sadie in her class performance at the Christmas Concert this year. She's seventh from the left, in the red dress.

Sadie's gingerbread house. The little marshmallows are snow.

Erin skating on Christmas Eve.

Our beautiful girls.

The girls went to a pirate-themed birthday party shortly before the holidays.

That's us in Shane and Jody's kitchen. You can see that the kids are all eating in the background. We went there for Christmas dinner this year - had a lovely time. Three families were in attendance: Us, the Kremsaters, and the Wedderburns. Six adults and nine children in all!

Voila!

I'm so proud - had to put in lots of views....

Lovely Erin helped Lovely Sadie by putting the icing on for her while Sadie stuck candies.

Amy doing her house.

Beautiful hiking.

I love this photo. I just had the camera at the right time - it's very spontaneous. I believe it's dinner time on this past Monday night. We were having the neighbors over for refreshments so I had the girls eat at the counter, as the dining room table was all set up with snacks and goodies. I just thought it looked so nice, the girls so happy together, eating together, sitting at the counter together with the tree in the background and Christmas music playing.

Erin's house - I stole my snowman idea from her.

Cookie overload!

My first attempt at a gingerbread house was a geodesic dome, to create a sphere. The main problem with it was that the shapes I baked changed slightly during baking, throwing the entire structure off. I'm going to try again next year, and will use sand paper to reshape each piece to the specifications of the plans before gluing. I'm sure it will work next year.

Sherrie's a dynamo! Bev, you'd be so proud! Those decorations were hand-cut out of maraschino cherries!

I provided some of the entertainment at the Christmas dinner. That's Steve Wedderburn falling asleep behind me.

Amy's gingerbread house.

December

Hi everybody! Here's the news:

Paul was here! He came for a week and we had a great time. As it was a school week, it was pretty mellow; He basically hung with Sadie and I in the daytime, and then saw the girls after school. Unfortunately Sherrie was away from Wednesday to Friday, but they did get to see each other for the first few days. Paul also got along with Z quite well and took him for many walks. We did some hiking, had a marshmallow roast with him, played games, and ate some nice meals with Uncle Buck. Oh - he totally got into playing video games while he was here too. I couldn't convince him to buy an xbox though.

We went to the Santa Claus Parade last week - it wasn't as cold as last year's and Amy and Erin were marching this year with the Girl Guides! After the parade, everyone went to the park for the lighting of the park ceremony and free hot dogs and hot chocolate. It was lovely - all of the kids were playing on the rink (in their boots, not skates) and then there were fireworks over the river. Sorry, no photos of the fireworks.

This is my friend Shane skinning a deer in his garage. That's his daughter, Rhylan, watching. I 'helped' a bit, but I think I was more there for some male company while he talked about hunting.

This is Sadie shooing the birds away. She apparently doesn't like them eating our berries! It was a blast watching her, and seeing how angry she got at them. She was like an old woman! She was successful for about ten minutes, then they came back. Paul and I were laughing pretty hard watching all of this go down.

Sadie and I are into baking shortbread Christmas Cookies now - This is a big deal for me, as I'm usually not much of a baker. It's fun! I love putting the candy sprinkles on them before they go into the oven, but our favourite part is definitely eating them. Yummmmm!

The girls are still enjoying gymnastics. They really enjoy the various activities and drills, and I really enjoy not having to put on their skates every week.

That's all for now - Lots to come though, Stay tuned!