I'm sure everyone knows by know that we had a little dump of snow on Monday night. We really only had maybe two inches of snow, but it's amazing how it shuts down life. We live about 1/3 of the way up a mountain, really not far at all. But cars trying to make it up to our part of the hill had tons of trouble. In fact, a lot of them just parked at the bottom and walked up. Seriously. On Tuesday morning, we saw this car in the ditch. Scary!


But we also had this amazing view as Andrew drove us into Langley.

Santa made a surprise visit to our house. Davey got quite a kick out of it.


Santa-in-training:

When I was Davey's age, and my hair finally grew, I had a 'fro. WAY curlier even than Davey's. But when I got my hair cut, the curls disappeared...So understandably when I cut Davey's hair in October I was really worried he'd lose his curls forever. I'm happy to report they're still there!!

And tonight Kat and Cody had their work Christmas Party in Vancouver. So we have the girls overnight. And did our annual trip to Great West Life's Spirit of Christmas at Trinity Western in Langley. Here are all our kidlets:

Let me just say that it has improved a bazillionfold since last year! As we were walking from our car on site, we followed this horse drawn wagon. We made it to the wagon station in time to hop on for a ride of our own. All the kids loved it, but Tink happily mooed and neighed and bounced the whole time! And every time we saw the horses after that she tried to run after them...

The path to the main attraction in the Student Centre.

This year they had a whole section for the kids with crafts. The Beat (radio station) was there and wanted to do an interview with a child who had been there to get their opinion on the event. They asked Ashlie to do it and she got to do a live interview. She was so excited to be famous!

They also had a balloon guy do cool balloon shapes. Davey was RIGHT THERE in front and got the first balloon...a balloon candy cane. I couldn't believe he was so bold.

Waiting to do Ashlie's interview.

Then my batteries died. But we also did the Live Nativity which was awesome.


The event goes on all day tomorrow. We totally recommend it. Check out the link above...

Sunday Stuff

Yesterday Andrew took the kids to the beach while I went to my mum's and visited with mum and Dave. It was a GORGEOUS day.


Today on the other hand is kind of miserable and gray, plus very very cold. In fact, it's supposed to snow this afternoon.

I don't know much of what the did at the beach, other than Davey was playing with a little boy about his age until three women showed up. Then he decided they looked more interesting and went and played with them.

After Andrew and the kids had seen Grandma, we decided to go get our Christmas tree. Do you know that most places don't sell cut trees until December 1st? UH HELLO lots of people are crazy like me and put their tree up early.

After calling about five places (including one which had advertised as opening MID November but doesn't open till next week) I found Murphy's Christmas Tree farm. Here we are...



Plus, they're right across from Krause's Berries. They have a LOT planned for Christmas. Those of you who live in the area...check out their calendar.

Well, here's our tree. Looks great when it's in the field, doesn't it?!

Here it is going through the wrapper...

And they have the cutest little minitree lot for the kids. They decided they needed a tree too.


Wooop, tree is finally ready!

On the ride home the moon looked so amazing, I tried to get a picture of it. I finally put the camera on the 'sport' setting and got a good shot. But I liked this one better. The big orangey heart is the moon. The rest are cars...

Elisabeth eats the Christmas lights.




She was a lot more into decorating than Davey. He wanted to help, but got frustrated when the balls kept falling off. Tink just threw hers under the tree.


Daddy showed him how to do it properly.

Then, while Elisabeth was having her bath and I was in the kitchen, the tree fell over. Our stand had broken. So Andrew had to go buy a new one. Luckily we knew that Superstore had them cause it was already late on Sunday.

So here's Davey's tree in the broken stand and ours is all fixed and nice again too.

Yesterday we had our Christmas pictures taken. I managed to get Tink's hair in a pony tail for the occasion. See?
I distracted her by letting her playing with my makeup. The pony tail lasted until nap time. YAY!

This is my friend Nicole, who took our pictures. She was sitting in this chair when Davey sidled up and perched himself on the arm rest. He had something in his hand and coyly said, "that's my girlfriend."
WHAT? I'm thinking?! How does he even know that word?! "the thing in your hand" I ask.

"Nope."

NICOLE is your girlfriend???"

Yup and slides into her lap.

HMNNNNN
Elisabeth was also very taken with her.

(post nap hair. Very cool). She didn't want Nicole to put her down!

Chillen' together while Andrew hooks up our Wii.

This is Andrew demonstrating his bowling move...

How'd that work out for you hon?

Nicole is a very focused player.


But I shouldn't poke fun. My form was so "good" I have massive pain in all the areas lunges give you pain in...I can barely walk. OY!

Tink had a rough go of it on Wednesday night. She was awake from just before 3 until almost 6 am. The funny thing about this girl, and my mum insists I was like this too, is that she doesn't cry when she's awake. So long as she's not in pain or discomfort, she just sings or plays. Still, she was awake for a long part of the night.

However I had plans for my Thursday so she'd just have to adapt.

We headed for Langley and school as usual. We stayed at mum's until early afternoon and then headed to the park with Jadey and Davey. Two minutes from the park she was wide wake. When I pulled up to it, she was like this. Luckily this particular park has great roadside parking so I left her in the car to snooze and Davey and Jadey went to play.







Today we decided to get outta the house and head for a walk. I'm assuming that this is because the sun's position changes during the year, but there wasn't a single direction we could have walked in that would have had sun. The whole of our section of mountain was in shade. Which translated to VERY cold. I mean, I was wearing long pants, socks, closed shoes, long sleeves AND my vest and I was still frozen. Still, we managed a loop around the block.

Here Tink is very focused on walking down this gravelly hill.

But then she noticed I was taking pictures and immediately started posing.

Since I didn't really get any cardio out of the morning's walk (both kids walked the entire walk, which makes for a slower pace), after Elisabeth woke up from her nap we went for another walk. This time we bundled up a bit more!!

At the top of our road we encountered this patch of ice. brrrrrr...

By the time we got tour park, dusk had fallen. But since we've been wanting to get out for a walk when Christmas lights would be on, this was a good thing.




So, I try to keep a tally in my head of things I want to blog about. Like how Tinker is such a little mimic. She totally copies word we say. Which I don't really count as talking until she seems to use and understand them of her own accord. But the other night I was in the kitchen after she was in bed. We had the baby monitor on and I could hear her playing with baby Tad. She would push a button on him to make him say a word. Listen, push again then repeat the word. Hmn...Baby Tad is teaching her to talk!!


One of the phrases she learned was "I love you" which she says to her daddy quite often. Not so much for me. But even worse, lately if you ask her to tell mummy you love her she says, "hmnn...no!". Oh all the stories about what a little rat I was as a baby are coming back to haunt me! I wish I hadn't laughed quite so hard when my mum used to tell me them!!

Another favorite phrase is "ooooh, YUCKY!". (only she pronounces it "gucky".) Anyway, I've been trying to teach her not to play in the toilet, not to empty garbage out (especially when she's hunting for food!) you know, general hygeine rules. So today she kept coming in the kitchen and lifting up the lid on the garbage can and wrinkling her nose...."ooooh yucky!" Seriuosly, I've got my work cut out with this one!