Boxing Day at Our House

The plan was to go sledding in our backyard on Christmas day, but that just didn't happen, so we went out on boxing day insted.

All of us went.

The whole family!

Our little snow Baby.

The boys.

We got a huge 4 seater sled on Christmas eve.

It's so much fun!

Mom and the Princess on our smaller sled.
Look at them go!

Ready, Set, Go!

At the botton of the hill.

 We had to check on our night tree to see if how much the little critters enjoyed their treats.

We saw quite a lot of evidence that we had some bunny visitors, and they were very pleased to have something special to nibble on.

These are the garlands I made.
It was supposed to be the kids' job.... but they just kind of wandered off, and I kept going.

SLEDDING!

We are still having a nice relaxing holiday season.

It's so nice to have a special time where we can all just relax, enjoy our time together, and play as a family.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

This has been a great holiday season so far, and I'm sure it will continue to be so.

Christmas Eve was lovely.

I don't have any pictures from then, but I might try to get a few from my friend.

We decorated our neighbours pine tree in the back with garlands of popcorn and dried fruit for the little critters of the night.

We had a late night sledding party, surrounded by our glowing ice globes.

You make them by filling balloons with water and leaving them to freeze in the snow and then popping them before they are frozen all the way through and you have a globe with a hole in the middle, perfect for a candle.

They look great.

We didn't spend very much time decorating the tree, but we are still finding evidence that the bunnies are enjoying the goodies we left for them.

Gramma slept over this year.

She's always with us on Christmas day, we usually have to share her, just for a little bit, but we love having her over for most of the day.

Having her around is just a part of our Christmas Tradition.

These are our advent candles Christmas morning.

Dad had a service to do at work, so we opened a few presents before he left.

And then we had to wait until he got back.

Poor Baby wasn't even up yet and totally missed out on our first batch of present opening.

But that didn't stop him from looking through the presents we had already opened without him.

He found the lipstick the princess had asked for, and somehow he knew exactly where it went.

                     For Christmas lunch we just had leftovers from the party the night before, and the kids got

 to eat "Gramma's Noodles" (aka Kraft Dinner)

Kratf Dinner and Cranberrie Juice... mixed together?
Yum?

                                                   Dad finally came home and we started back at the presents as soon as we could.


I gave the Princess there clip on hair extensions, and she enjoyed wearing them all day.



The Baby became a pro at ripping through the presents in no time.

What an angelic little guy.

 We got our little Superhero completely outfitted for every super-experience he could ever come across.

He got everything from Batman, to Superman, to Spiderman, to some I've don't think I've ever even heard of.

Here's the little guy in full Spiderman gear, complete with webslinging device(not pictured here).

                                                                   

                 The Little Princess got all dolled up too. The three most important things on her list were: lipstick, a tutu, and red highheels.

They aren't necessarily the reddest shoes out there, but they were the best we could find.
And they do have highheels, so we're good.

              

This is what our candles looked like by the end of the day.
We figured that since there weren't any days left to count down, we might as well burn them until they were gone.

For dinner we had a lovely turkey dinner with all of the trimmings.

                                                                  



We love having a relaxing Christmas day, at home, with just the family.
Every year just seems to get better.

tis' the season

Here's a quick montage of this past month, leading up to Christmas.

This is one of our favourite times of year, and we like to celebrate it as much as possible, in as many ways as possible too.

The little Princess was so excited to be a part of her very first show this month.

She was a part of the Christmas Pageant at the new church we've been attending.

We practiced her line with her over and over again, so she could say those few short words with as much gusto as possible.

And that definitely paid off.

She positively shone.

Our little princess was the best sparkly blue butterfly she could have possibly been.

One of our many traditions at this time of year is to be a part of a homeschooling Christmas craft sale.

We always have a great time finding ideas for things to make.

Getting ready for the sale itself is always fun too!

This year I made re-useable tea bags, and the kids made Christmas Tree ornaments.

Here's the Princess at our table.

This is one of the kinds of ornaments we made this year.
We also have quite a few hanging on our own Christmas Tree now too.

  A couple days ago we were invited to decorate ginger bread houses at a friends house.

We kind of cheated, buying a pre-made ginger bread house, that was already put together.

But whatever, decorating it is the best part anyway.

We had bowls full of candy on the table, but I think most of that never even made it onto the houses themselves.

How can you resist the sugary goodness, especially when it's sitting there, right in front of you, just begging to be eaten?

Our finished product.

YUM!

 Our family has many ways to help us count down the days until Christmas.

One is to watch as many Christmas movies as possible.

We have a very large collection, and even after a whole month of them being out, we haven't gotten through them all yet.

Mind you, we do have a few favourites that get watched over and over again.

There are several advent calendars hung up in our dinning room.

We have two that you lift the flaps and each day you get to read one more line of a poem, and the other is a short Christmas story.

The calendar with the story we've had every year for as long as I can remember.

Just looking at it makes me feel like Christmas is on it's way.



This advent calendar is new to us this year.
Every morning we add another ornament to the tree's little felt branches.



We've had this advent calendar for a few years now. We bought it was while back from one of our friends at the homeschooling  craft sale.
Each day the little crepe paper angle moves one star closer to the top.



We also light our advent candles every morning, and at dinner time(just for the fun of it, and so both kids can have a turn lighting  it each day).

 All these little things we do are what really make it feel like Christmas to me.

I love this time of year.

Santa is coming!

Yesterday we headed over to the mall to visit with Santa!

We got there before St. Nick did, so we had time to go buy some tea and stop at every shoe store was passed, just to keep the little princess happy.

Once 11 o'clock finally rolled around we were already waiting in line, all ready for the jolly old guy to hurry up already.

Here my festive little superman is all smiles, waiting for his turning to see Santa.

 It took forever to be our turn, and the line wasn't even very long.

All the kids in front of us were getting their pictures taken, and most of them were less than co-operative, so that made everything take a little longer.

But once my little superman was able to climb up and tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas, the waiting didn't matter one bit.

 The Princess decided she didn't want to sit on Santa's lap this time.

She was going to take the baby up, but he didn't want to sit on any ones lap either.

The Baby settled for a high five and agreed to admire the jolly old fellow from a distance.

Who doesn't love Santa Clause?

Latter that evening, after the Princess had gone to bed, the little superhero was still rearing to go after his impromptu after nap in the car.

I got to play with him for quite sometime, which was really quite a treat.

We shared a candy cane well we read some books and then we decided we needed to make some cookies.

We opted for our old favourite, chocolate chip, but threw in some holiday flare.

We put a spin on a classic and turned our mixture into candy-cane chocolate chip cookies.

Yummy.

As you can see, it won the little superhero's approval!



Skating with Friends

Yesterday we headed back to City Hall for another round of freazing fun. This time we had some buddies to slide around with us.

It was supposed to be a homeschooling event, my mom opened it up to the large group, but it ended up being only

two families(ours included). It was actually quite nice, and the kids definately had a blast.

There were actually quite a few of us even with only two families...

 Skating is such a fun winter activity.

There's something magical about gliding across the sparkling surface, balancing with all your might.

You would think going around and around the same frozen surface over and over again would get tiresome, but just watching the smiling faces of the kids will tell you otherwise.

winterwonderland

It's December.
Christmas is almost here.
Are we anywhere near ready?
No, but that doesn't really matter anyway.

This year the kids are loving the ice.

The Princess is gliding along like a pro, and my little Superhero is getting braver.

She doesn't fall down very often, and she's really good about getting herself back up with out much of a fuss.

All smiles!!!!

The Baby even got to toddle around the rink in his boots for a while.

Falling down can be half the fun. Especially when you are completely padded from head to toe.

 The Christkindle market was going on. There were all kinds of vendors at City Hall selling many varieties of festive German items. There was everything from fudge to jewelry, from winter hats to toys.

In one of the rooms there was a huge model train set up.

The kids loved it.

It took us a while to actually leave because the kids just wanted to keep going back to see the trains one more time.