Christmas is coming...

hard to believe that Christmas is only a month away now! But, I only have a few stocking stuffers left to get, and a few presents to wrap, and I'm done my Christmas shopping. Most of the decorations went up yesterday (here's a couple pictures sort of mid decorating) and now we can get our tree next weekend. I'm sooo excited. I hate the mall at Christmas so I always try to finish as early as possible and spend the next few weeks doing things with our family.

Trinity Western University and the City of Langley have teamed up to do the Spirit of Christmas which sounds amazing. Live nativity, walk of trees, plays, hot chocolate and choirs at TWU and the Santa Claus Parade through downtown Langley.


And here's something else I've been wanting to do for a few years now, at Williams Park.

Post Bath Babies

I think someone might be teething...

Here's Tinky in my new favorite outfit...it's a long sleeved, one piece jumper. Sooo cute! Thanks to Tash, Darren, Riley, Mayah and Seth (for being a boy!!) for these amazing clothes! One day, when tink's a grown up, she will be so glad you gave her all these nice pink things so she wouldn't have to be in boy clothes for all her baby pictures :o)

Today, for the first time ever, Davey showed slight signs of jealousy with Tink. Maybe it's because I've been working and I've actually been going in to the office...anyway, I had Tink on our bed and was taking pictures of her. Davey showed up with a box on his head and competed for picture ops. Later he kept getting in between me and Tink while I was playing with her. That's fine, we just all three played together. Here he is with his box.

And he wanted a picture of Tink in the box too. I don't think she liked it.

Tinky after her bath...waving at me.

And singing for me. Now that she's discovered her voice she's taken to singing loud and long. Very, very cute.


Oh! And this is why I think she's teething. She loves her exersaucer. Lots of things to chomp on. Though she gets very mad if the ears of this little guy get out of reach!

A Conversation Overheard

Jadey: Santa is at the mall.
Davey: Hunh?
Jadey: Going to see Santa??
Daddy, pulling Davey onto his lap and asking in a deep, santaish voice: Hello little boy. What would you like for Christmas?
Davey, looking very confused and slightly scared: Hunh?
Jadey: My ask for Care Bears.
Davey: Yah, Care Bears! and tractors and cars and power tools...


man, he caught on to that gimmick fast....

This afternoon we just couldn't resist the call of the ocean. So, despite the wind and rain, we piled into the car and drove to Crescent Beach. Of course, both the kiddies fell asleep in the car, so Andrew and I left the engine running and the car unlocked and parked right on the beach and ran to at least see our little log cabin. Amazingly after all these storms it's still there. Surrounded by so much more driftwood. We're going to have to get dad's truck and trailer and start hauling it back here so we can keep it for when we build our house one day!

Those 45 seconds Andrew and I were on the beach alone I almost remembered what it was like to be out there before the kids came along. Not that I would give them up for anything, it's just sometimes you forget what it was like to go anywhere and not have to haul six bags full of diapers and clothes and food...and to talk about whatever it is we used to talk about before now...when all we talk about is how cute our kids are, or how long till we have to feed or change one of them. We're very boring now.

Speaking of our gorgeous children, this is them after we got home. I didn't notice they were both making the same faces with their hands over their mouths till I uploaded the pictures. Toooo funny.

My family hasn't celebrated Halloween since we became Christians, but I've always loved dress up and costumes so I take advantage of the Halloween sales to buy costumes. Today we got pictures of our nephew Aydan from Ontario and in one he's wearing an elephant costume. So Davey was inspired to try on his lion costume and be a lion for the remainder of the afternoon.

Kinda reminds me of that kids' book about the tawny scrawny lion...

We were so close....

I was really hoping Tink wouldn't be like her brother. In fact, for about three weeks, I was sure we had the perfect child. She would fall asleep around 930 and sleep straight through till five...sometimes even later. I think she slept till 7 a couple of times. And she was even having naps in the day time. Something she'd never really done since we brought her home. Real, honest to goodness naps in her bassinet. I was in paradise!

Then, gradually the nighttime sleep started getting unpredictable. She would go to sleep somewhere between 930 and 11. And sometime last week it got even later. Friday night it was 230 before we could get her to sleep. And even then it was only when I finally gave in and let her sleep on me on the couch that she slept. Last night I did the couch thing even earlier. Maybe 1 am. And she woke up every hour until five thirty when she finally slept for almost 90 minutes...it's 11 now and Andrew just finished bouncing her...who knows if that'll work.

I was really hoping we weren't going to have to let her 'cry it out'. I can't handle the cruelty of it. Even if Davey's the best little sleeper in the world these days. Maybe she's just teething?

I wish kids came with personalized instruction manuals.

Tinkie loves her bath time. If we put her on her tummy (one hand still holding her) she kicks her limbs and shouts with glee. Today she kept laughing the biggest bellyl laughs...until we pulled out the camera, then she played coy.

Two seconds before this picture was taken, she was hanging off my arm like a little lemur arms and legs wrapped around my arm.


And Davey found the chocolate chips in the baking drawer...mnnnnnn

My Favorite Hat

Davey has take a liking to this hat of Andrew's. Lately he wears it everywhere...even to eat. But especially when he gets musical inspiration. Then he has to have both hat and 'guitar'...so maybe I'm not getting my rocker after all...maybe he's going to be a country singer????

As I grow older, I'm realising that a lot of character traits I thought I possessed, I don't.

I used to say I thrive under stress. Now I realise that I mistook ballooning into a ginormous whale for thriving.

I used to think I loved storms. If I didn't have a tree house (or even a doorway) to go sit in and read with a thermos of something hot when it was storming I wasn't happy. After yesterday I realise storms aren't so much fun. They're cold and scary. Specially when it seems every tree in the Lower Mainland was willing to divest itself of it's home and fly into our front yard.

Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. But I'm glad we have power back.

Anyhoo, here's tink in her exersaucer. A great way to actually get to sit and eat with my family is planning it so her play time coincides with meal time and then throwing her in this thing. I love it.


Because their power still wasn't on today (it came on about dinner time, ours came on at about six am), my sister left Jade here while she went to get Ashlie from school. Davey and Jade insisted on having their naps together. You can guess how well that went!


And despite all my whining, we're just really grateful that no major damage was done in our neighborhood. We now have a great shortcut to the park next door, and the pesky screen door which always stuck has been taken off the house for us. :)

A big thank you to all the BC Hydro people who worked through a long scary night to get us our heat and lights back on.

Late Breaking News

So in all the years we've been having my sister's girls sleep over, we've never let them sleep in the same room as Davey. For some reason I'm completely paranoid about them all keeping each other up. So in the townhouse, Jade would go to bed first, in our room, then Davey in his room, then Ashlie in our room. Ashlie got to stay up a little later cause she's so much older than the other kids. We never ever slept well because we would wake up at every little noise the girls made, scared they were not sleeping well or something.

Now we don't have the option of putting them all in different rooms, so Jade is asleep in Elisabeth's crib in the same room as David.

I was totally prepared for them to be talking and throwing toys at each other for about an hour, then splitting them up till they were both asleep and finally moving one of them back into the baby room. So imagine my surprise when they didn't make a peep after Andrew closed the door. It was only 730 and both bubbies were fast asleep. And Tink is asleep now too. Do I dare hope they all sleep till at least 6????

fingers crossed everyone, fingers crossed...

Slumber Party

Tomorrow Kathi and Ashlie are going on a school field trip. They have to be on the road earrrrrrrrrrrly so Jadey is staying for a sleep over. YAY fun! Specially since we get to keep her ALLLLLLLL day. oh ya.

So Jade got here in time for dinner. Which was very, very loud. Then it was bathtime. Jade didn't really like bathing with Davey because he was way too excited to have someone to play with and kept splashing and kicking her....

Here they're playing with the awesome Caillou sticky bath toys Uncle Paul and Aunt Terri and Cousin Aydan sent Davey for his birthday.

So, then we decided to throw Tink into the mix. And yah, she loves the bath, but tonight she was super excited to have TWO people in the bath with her. She thinks she's a big girl when she gets to play with the big kids.


And our beautiful girl after her bath:

oh! this one's outta order. But this is Tink playing in her bouncy seat before she got into the bath. We have to be so careful and strap her into the bouncy seat because she can rock the whole chair.

And no, we totally didn't plan our outfits! Davey is Diego (complete with a Rescue Pack) and Jadey is Dora. WOW. that is SO cool. And don't the kids look like they think so too!!

Fun with lambie, "I help", daddy and me and miss tink: the diva...

If ever I have to do something where I can't keep my eye on tink and davey, I put lil'missellie in her crib. It's the one place Davey hasn't figured out how to climb into, and she seems to be quite happy to play in there. So today while I cleaned the bathrooms, tinky played with her little lambie in the crib. First time I've actually seen her playing with a stuffed toy. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the play on film.


Later, I was spot cleaning our carpet. Davey came along and saw me spraying, "I help" says he. Sure Davey, of course you can help me clean. So here he is dusting his crib. And under it. Great job Davey!


And again, later, here's andrew and his sweetie. I think she's waving at me!

And our own little diva. Looking stylish (thanks to the Chadvanis!) I hadn't planned on putting this outfit on her, but I couldn't find her jeans...so I had a rummage through the 6-9 month size clothes drawer. Good thing, cause this outfit fits her perfectly!!


Waving again, must be that princess/diva thing.

just another day at the beach...

Ever since the big storm hit the coast earlier this week, Andrew and I have been wanting to get back to the beach and see how our log cabin project is faring - especially since we remembered that the storm of February '06 wrought havoc on local driftwood arrangements. Though our log cabin seems to fairly safe, we thought that since today was relatively rain free, it would be a good idea to see what state exactly it was in.

Of course as soon as we were ready to head out the door the rain started falling. But since we were all bundled up, and the kids were probably going to fall asleep in the car anyway, we decided to go. We could always take turns getting out and scouring the beach.

When we got there, Andrew and Davey decided to do the first walk:

As you can see, most of the cabin's foundation is still there. In fact, the entire first layer of logs seems okay. The second layer seems to have broken since last weekend.

And as you can see in the above picture, a LOT more driftwood has been deposited all around our pile. That's actually a bonus though, since it means we have more lumber to work with and less far to drag/carry it.

It was really, really windy and cold at the beach. Davey insisted on getting out of the car, but once out, he was really too cold and too tired to do much.

...other than yawn.


(is that the cutest picture ever, or what?!) Meanwhile, Elisabeth and I stayed in the car.

She doesn't like wind very much. Though I can't say I blame her, I hope she learns to like it eventually since the rest of us usually like playing outside no matter what the weather.

Davey got back in the car and we watched these crazy guys who were out in the water doing some sort of windsurfing involving parachutes. Looked fun, but very, very cold.

Then I decided I wanted to go look at all the piles of driftwood, so Davey insisted on coming too. I had no idea it would be soooooo cold.


When we got back, Andrew was no where to be found and tink was getting ready to drive home.

and the innocent face she made when we caught her in the act....

We got to watch the most amazing sunset.

Then we took a detour on the way home...here's what the waves looked like at Whiterock's beach.

The pier was absolutely soaked. Would have been an amazing day to be out for a walk...if we didn't have two tiny, tired babies who would probably have been way too cold.


Pretty much a perfect day by our standards...