Advent Blogging done.

If you are not totally 'Christmased' out, listen to the birth of Jesus as narrated by the Bible Experience. It's my favourite audio bible: Birth of Jesus

Peace of Christ to you.

A special delivery and Candlelight service

After sleeping by the tree last night, we had an early morning wake up call. Friends of ours had suggested we join them in delivering food hampers in our village. So armed with coffee, donuts and Christmas tunes we headed over to the loading place. There was a line up a mile long of cars filled with people willing to give up Christmas Eve morning to deliver food in the pouring rain. We got our 4 loads of 2 boxes each and headed over to a low income seniors' complex to bring our boxes. Each of our ladies were super thankful for their boxes, but we got a bit of a shock when one lady opened the door naked! She welcomed us in, but I told her that we could wait while she put some clothes on. Then we had a lovely chat.

After spending some time with my family, we headed off to church for the Candlelight service. The masterpiece of the night was a huge floating pool that was created to float the candles. So fun to watch people come and place their candles as an act of worship. Some floated a little too close to the edge, so I took pictures and kept the candles from setting things on fire.


Merry Christmas!

Sleeping by the Christmas tree

I didn't think how painful this activity would be. A shag carpet on hardwood floor is no comparison to our lovely pillow-top mattress. However, the excitement of the girls is hard to say no too!

Puppets and Playdates

Another gorgeous day here and the girls jumped on my bed early in the morning with the plea to 'defrost' the trampoline. How? By putting on snowsuits and sliding on it of course! So out came the snowsuits and 20 minutes later the trampoline was defrosted and the girls had rosy cheeks and an appetite for breakfast.

The card/activity of the day was puppet making and story telling, so the girls started their puppets and set making soon after breakfast. But that was all put aside with a phone call from good friends wanting to hang out. Lunch, gingerbread house decorating, playing at the park, hot chocolate and trampoline jumping made 3 hours fly by. With such a busy fall, it was so good to just play and chat together. Sometimes you can forget how life giving good friends can be!

Then after dinner, the puppets came out and the girls and Hubby each put on a show!(I begged off because I still have a paper due for school. However, I was the audience for the night) I love hearing the girls' stories and just excitement to be doing this with us. Hubby took an old pair of socks and put on quite the show. The pictures don't quite do it justice, but they are phone pictures after all!

Pookie's Princess and Dragon Story

Bear's Princess and Elf story

And the sock puppets

Counting down the days

Today we were supposed to take our free movie tickets and head to the theatre with the girls, but there was not a single movie that they wanted to see. So when we woked up to a glorious sunny day, the girls and I decided to walk into town and pick up a DVD and some treats instead. We got Kung Fu Panda 2. I love the Kung Fu Panda movies, all 3 of them. If I could only have one kid movie/series, that might be my choice. It always cracks me up.

Potatoes and milk

A couple of weeks ago Hubby and Bear were left at home due to sickness while Pookie and I went to a family dinner. When I came home and asked what they had for dinner, Hubby answered, 'Milk and Potatoes'. Then Bear gleefully chimed in, "French Fries and Ice Cream".

Yup. They dipped fries into ice cream and called it dinner.

Tonight I worked late and the Advent activity was going out for ice cream. This time Hubby made chicken strips and fries...then they went for ice cream. Then we all met up and headed to good friends for hot chocolate, cookies and candy.

And now it is 10 pm and the girls are bouncing off the walls...I wonder why?

A strange occurrence

At first it was no big deal. Then my palms started getting itchy. I started fidgeting and shifting in place. I broke into a cold sweat and my ears started buzzing from all the noise. Finally, I could stand it no longer.

Enough! We have to get out of here!

The girls have discovered the sparkly, girly mess that is Claire's in the mall. I stood there as they oohed and ahhed over dangly earrings, rainbow skirts, makeup, nail polish and so much more. I hit my limit when Pookie dragged me over to see a feather boa that she NEEDED!

Parenting girls is going to kill me.

3rd Annual Christmas Open House

While our Ontario family had their big family gathering today, we had our West Coast 'family' gathering here. All in all, 51 friends came over a period of 5 hours and shared food, drink, laughs and fun with us. This is honestly one of our favourite family traditions in Advent. It is purposely set up as a casual drop in time where we provide snacks and drinks and folks are free to bring food to share. Thankfully the rain held off and the kids were able to jump on the trampoline and play basketball and football outside with the occasional forage for food.

One of my greatest pleasures is seeing friends so comfortable in our space that they happily rummage through cupboards to find what they need, chat with whoever is near and have their kids run wild. Seems to me that I need nothing else this Advent season that just this gift of friends, family and community.

Thanks to all that came!

Christmas Lights

Tonight we bundled up in our PJ's, made some steamed milk and got in the van to check out Christmas lights. As always, we got into the whole Santa discussion with the girls. I'm not usually a 'Jesus is the Reason for the Season' or 'Keep the Christ in Christmas' kinda gal. I do say Merry Christmas as opposed to Seasons Greetings, but there is something about Santa that I resist. I like the St. Nick story, but that is as far as it goes. We've never done Santa pictures with the girls, or given gifts to them from Santa. In fact, we've stolen a line from friend's dad who used to tell his kids that Santa was a big, fat phoney!

I don't mind if people do the Santa thing, it's just not for us. And we teach the girls to respect other kids and their views around Christmas. The last thing I need is for some kid to freak out if the girls ruined the Santa thing for them! So when the girls were pushing this year for ALL the things they wanted from Santa, I responded that if they wanted to count on Santa this year for their gifts that was fine by me...it meant I could take it easy! There was silence from the back seat. Then I heard a voice say, Forget it Mom, Santa is just a big, fat phoney!

Here's our 'Santa' picture. This house had a dancing Santa in the window that just cracked the girls up!

Some houses were amazing. One guy from our church has over 12000 lights!

A Charlie Brown Christmas

Since Advent is a TV free time for us, today's activity was extra special...watching the Charlie Brown Christmas movie while cuddled in bed.

In memory of....

Every December 15th for the past eight years I have bought my mom flowers. Nine years ago, when I was in the early stages of pregnancy with Pookie, my Oma died. She was my only real grandparent who was consistently in our lives. Every year she would fly over from Holland for six weeks to spend time with us. She spoke almost no English, and I spoke very little Dutch, but we loved to hang out together.

Earlier that year when she visited, I had arranged for a professional photographer to come and take pictures of Oma, my mom, my sister and I. Oma was eighty at the time and I knew that soon she would be unable to make the trip over to Canada anymore. Little did we know, but she was already really sick with a football sized tumour in her abdomen. One of the last things she said to me was that she was longing to see me become a mother and was praying for me in the best way she knew how that it would happen for us.

In early December of 2002, we got a call from Holland. Oma was in the hospital and we needed come quickly. I remember arguing with everyone about whether I should go or not. We had just had a scare with the pregnancy with Pookie and we were on edge about whether I'd carry to term or not. No one was sure that a nine hour flight was good for me. Ultimately we decided that I should stay home.

Almost every year at this time I regret that decision. Oma died one day after her eighty first birthday, Dec 16, 2002. The day before she died, I told her I was pregnant and my mom says that was one of the last times she smiled.

I wish my girls could have met my Oma. She was selfless and gentle. An amazing cook and just a presence that was easy to be with. Bear especially looks so much like Oma with her green eyes and left handedness.

So today the girls joined me in the tradition of honouring their great grandmother by honouring their grandmother with Christmas flowers.

Teacher gifts

Homemade card. White chocolate dipped pretzels. A Christmas ornament and magnet. Not sure if the teacher cares at all, but there you go. T'is better to give than receive.

The other part of our night included Jib Jabbing our family! Click to watch. The girls also made a Christmas rap with Julie on Monday night...but I'm not smart enough to link it here. Comment if hearing it would make your day and I'll email it to you.

The school Christmas Concert

God bless music teachers. They wrangle tiny singers, restless intermediates and awkward preteen band players and usually do it all for a bouquet of flowers at the end of the one performance of the season.

Tonight's performance was based on the book Amalh and the Night Vistors. A beautifully illustrated story about the Magi and a poor little boy they visit on their way to see the Christ Child.

Pookie played the xylophone and did a great job!

Bear sang and goofed around with her good friend B...

An eggnog latte, a new friend to chat with and a program that lasted just over an hour. A pretty good night all in all.

Gingerbread houses

Advent Activity: Gingerbread houses.

What the girls were equally, if not more excited about: Julie & Chanelle coming to hang out with them, so that we could go to Hubby's work Christmas party.

I love that.

Singing and banging the djembe

We had our Christmas Cantata at church today. Lots of singing, lots of drum playing. So sleepy now.

The Festival of Lights

Some hot chocolate, kettle corn, good friends and a lot of lights



Crazy, hyper kids


Just beautiful

Change in plans

Once in a while something comes along and forces us to change plans for an activity. Usually I can prevent the girls from knowing by simply switching the cards the night before...but not today. We chose to do today's activity tomorrow simply because we had the opportunity to have friends join us and that is a rare gift. But it meant that when I picked up the girls today I had to come up with a last minute activity. I finally remembered that I'd picked up a simple Christmas craft, so I whipped it out and Bear excitedly set to work. Pookie was less than impressed, but cheered up considerably when she realized her aunt and cousin were coming for dinner. Crisis averted!

Building a fire and roasting marshmellows

With our new abode came a working woodburning fireplace. So course we had to test it out on a cold winter's night. Tried to get some good pictures in low light, but marshmellows make kids hyper!

Love is letting your kids painting both their own and your toenails and resisting the urge to 'fix' them.

Glo-stix dance party!

This was the perfect way to decompress after a day of school and work!

Food bank and Flash mob

Today's activity was buying food for the food bank. I gave each girl $20 and told them to make a meal and buy some treats. They were so cute lugging their baskets and agonizing over what cereal to buy. Somehow I left the house without my phone, so I'm picture-less, but I was grateful to see that the girls were just as excited about this activity as they were about decorating the house. I've got some cool kids!

And just because I am a sucker for a good flash mob, check out this video made on "Black Friday" in a crowded mall:

Christmas "Chores" Advent- Day 7

The best thing about the Advent box is the ability to incorporate the "chores" of Christmas into Fun. Family. Activities! That is what today was all about: making Christmas cards for classmates and for me, the annual Christmas letter and photo. While that meant addressing legions of cards and actually writing the Christmas letter, the girls made use of my Michael's bargain find of the week:

Stamps!

A bargain on a package of 16 Christmas stamps, 2 ink pads and blank cards and away they went!

Perhaps one will show up in your mailbox!

The decorations are up!

Since Advent started the girls have been asking to put up the tree and decorate. After a busy morning of swimming lessons and choir practise, we arrived home to this sight:

So, the girls got busy:

Let the festivities begin!

Advent day 5

Christmas Parade in which Pookie was the "Angel"

Parent teacher meetings & Advent day4

Last night we had our parent/teacher conference meetings at the girls' school. Suffice it to say that our girls have 2 very different learning styles and that is reflected in their respective report cards. ****Edited out of respect for all involved..

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In Advent news, yesterday's activity was 'Play board games'. However when I got home, the girls had compiled a list(I'm not kidding here) of 22 games for us to play. Since we only had approximately 37 minutes to make dinner, eat and get to the conference, I asked the girls for their top 3. It was a unanimous decision: Hide and Seek. I thought this was hilarious since we have maybe 6 hiding spots in our new 'littler' digs, but I was IT and off we went. And it was great! We played before dinner and after we got home from the meetings. The second time was in the dark which involved a lot of screaming. So grateful for these two who remind us that play is good.