Gingerbread House Party

As previously mentioned, Dad came over on Tuesday with gingerbread houses.
Here's the house he made with Davey and Jade after it fell apart.

Davey kept repeating, "Oh dear." He was very upset that their house was ruined.


Not so upset though, that he couldn't enjoy it's bounty. Everyone else dug in as well.


And days later, he's still enjoying his house. That's the beauty of making gingerbread houses. The calories stretch on and on and on...

Two steps forward, three steps back...

Way back in October, Tinky was being such a peach. She'd have her last feed around 730, be asleep by nine and wake up around 5 or 6. Oh it was heaven.

Gradually that lovely schedule eroded until we get to where we're at today...she eats around 7, is asleep by 8. Wakes between 11:30 and 1 and eats. Usually she eats closer to 11...then she wants to PLAY for a while. Eats some more, goes to sleep. Wakes around 3 to eat. and then wakes at around 6 for the day. OY vey. I feel like a very, very crabby zombie.

We still haven't started her on solid foods (Davey was eating bananas and had even tried baked beans by this point). Mostly because the few times she's been given stuff by very bad people (hello, Grosspapa and icing!!) she hasn't seemed to know how to keep the food in her mouth. Supposedly a sign of readiness for solid food is the ability to keep the food in their mouths.

Last night I was so depressed - I haven't been outside of the house (not even in the yard) since Monday. I was really hoping to go do something normal. Like read the paper in a coffee shop. But by the time Tink was ready for bed it was 9. So I just went to bed too. By the time she woke for her midnight feeding, I was feeling pretty good. That was the most consecutive sleep I've had in a long time. Then she woke up at 230. Only 1.5 hours of sleep. I was stubbornly rebellious. Andrew finally got up with her. No way she's hungry, I think. She just needs Andrew to work his magic on her (he can get babies to sleep like...like magic). Well, fifty ounces of formula and about an hour later, she's finally sleeping. And you know what? She didn't even sleep in. Three hours later she's up to eat again...and up for good judging by the singing she's doing from her exersaucer...

well, our camera is still sort of half dead, which is part of the reason why I'm not blogging so much these days. Sometime between getting our Christmas Tree and watching the Santa Claus parade, the part of the camera you plug the cord into (to download pictures) died. We can still download pictures by plugging in our memory card to our printer, but right now it's only set up for Andrew's laptop...and I'm not using that camera these days.

Anyway, technical difficulties aside, things are going pretty well these days. Davey is getting some kind of molars. At any rate, they're the teeth right at the very back of his mouth. Which means he's in full drool mode. So much so that two hours after we've put him to bed at night we have to switch him to the other bed because he's drenched the first one. Once he's asleep he's usually fine, but it's that falling asleep period where he does a lot of singing and talking...

Which is why I'm glad that Elisabeth is still in her bassinet. I don't know what we're going to do once she either starts moving or gets too long. Both of which seem to be fast approaching.

She had her four month shots yesterday and our nurse was awesome! With the first two pricks you wouldn't even have known anything had happened. Plus the nurse was one of the friendliest women I've ever met.

Tink's latest 'thing' is to reach out and hold both sides of your face and slowly move in for a nice smoochy smooch. So sweet. So far Jade and I are the only ones she's bestowed her kisses on.

Dad (or poppa as Davey calls him) was over today with gingerbread houses. He and Davey and Jade spent a good hour creating an amazingly beautiful, if very decorated house, only to have it collapse under the weight of it's bounty moments after they finished. I guess they work better if you let the foundation set for a while. Hopefully dad will post pictures on his blog once he's back in GreenLake.

IT Christmas Party

Tonight was our only Christmas party of the year...Andrew's departmental party. We decided not to go to his work one because it's just for adults and Elisabeth is not drinking bottles so we can't leave her at home. And our church part will probably go too long and isn't really suitable for young kids.

None of which rerally bothers me because I'm not a big socializer anyway.

But tonight's party rocked. It was a potluck at one of the guy's complex clubhouse. We had a collection for the Salvation Army instead of presents, games for the kids, and each famil got to make a gingerbread house. Elisabeth got really tired about 2/3 of the way through so we did end up leaving a bit early, but it was SO much fun.

Here's a shot of davey, all dressed up and ready to party.


Afterwards, we drove through Williams Park and looked at the lights. In fact, Davey asked to go through again so we drove through twice. And I found something else out about my firstborn. He's totally inherited his mom's taste in music. I have two Christmas CDS in the car right now. When the one song by Elvis came on, Davey sang along and insisted on playing it through twice more. Awright! Another little elvis impersonator in the family!! 

The artistes. 

Here are some of the gingerbread houses. It was so funny watching the little kids with the kits. Most of them were scarfing the candies down as fast as they could while one or both of their parents were trying to make the house while there were still some candies to use on the house!! When Davey and I first got to the table, he immediately started helping to himself to candies off the house next to ours. Then he proceeded to taste allllllll of the candies from our kit. So many of them were pretasted. Very fun, and SUCH a great idea for a family Christmas party. 

Davey and the finished product.

incidently, you can't tell from his rather bad picture, but that little girl sitting behind Davey just might be the cutest little girl I've seen in a long time (other than ashlie, jade and tink of course!) Wish I'd gotten a better picture and her phone number for about oh....18 years from now... 

Christmas Portrait Outtakes

Sometimes the outtakes have a whole lot of personality. I can't believe how old Ashlie is looking, especially if you look at say this portrait from 2004.

 

Traditional Christmas Portraits by Andrea day....

Though I think it was Andrew who fetched the briefcase and took pictures of our budding entrepreneur with his case 

 

 

 

Froggy Came a Courting...

Today we all went out to Greendale to visit my friend Tash and her daughter Mayah. Unfortunately, Riley is always in school, so I haven't seen her in eons. But Davey and Mayah are only six weeks apart, and Tash is due with Seth any day now, so I'm sure Tinky and Seth will be good friends too.

Natasha is the angel who gave us all the wonderful clothes for Elisabeth. Can you believe she is in size 6-9 months in almost everything now! I know, crazy how time flies. That means that a lot of my favorite things are already too small, but it also means that I get to pick new favorites. This outfit is adorable!


Last time we visited Natasha, Davey and Mayah played alongside each other some of the time, but I wouldn't really say they ever really played together (except when Davey kept bringing her drinks. He's a gentleman that boy!) Doesn't this look like the classic picture? It looks like Mayah's trying to impress David by being all cute and coy, and he's not taking any notice. Really what's happening is Tash is standing over behind David and he keeps getting in the pictures!

But then he found a pair of sunglasses too and they spent some time gazing into each other's eyes....

And some more time posing...


Meanwhile Andrew and Elisabeth spent some time rocking out on this Tinky sized guitar.

And naptime happened in the car today.

So apparently little Elisabeth had a birthday yesterday. She turned Four Months old. And every two months you have to make a trip to the doctor to get checked out. Our visit was on Tuesday. Elisabeth weighed in at 15 lbs 1oz and 26 inches long. She'll pull to sitting if you hold her hands and tries to sit up when she's done nursing. She will sit if I have her on my lap, or on the floor in front of me, but she's not making any effort to sit on her own yet.

On the other hand, she's constantly rolling on to her side and you have to be so careful whenever you're changing her. Very mobile. Though she hasn't actually rolled from back to front or front to back, but that'll happen when she needs it.

In the last couple of weeks she's become very vocal. If there's music she likes to sing along (she's a lot like her brother that way, remember how he used to sing along to the blender and vacume cleaner) and she talks a LOT. She has a cute low little voice. Loves to swim in the bath, in fact she almost splashes Davey right out she gets so excited.

Oh, Andrew's back and both kids are in bed, so we're going to play some board games! yay :)

Oh Christmas Tree, and more!

The camera is still not downloading to the computer. All is not lost however because technology savvy husband figured out that he could put the CompactFlash card from the camera into our bubble jet printer and download them to the computer that way. Yes, I'm so happy to be able to upload my pictures again!

Saturday was a grand day to get our Christmas tree. We got it in the morning and by afternoon it was all setup, defrosted, unbound with the branches down, and decorated. Here it makes a great background for a holiday scene starring Davey and his dad.



Later we endured the cold to watch the Langley Santa Claus Parade. Here Davey and Mom smile for the camera just before the parade begins. Don't they look eager with anticipation! Actually I don't think Davey has any idea what is going on. This is his first Santa Claus parade.



David is really into anything automotive right now. Sometimes he insists on having all his cars and trucks in bed with him while he sleeps. He finally started getting interested in the parade when he saw vehicles like this going by.



After watching a few good floats and a great many very bad floats pass it was finally time for Santa himself to make an appearance. Once again trusty Rudolph leads the way! Yeah, Rudolph the red nosed smart car!



A good time was had by all, although it took at least an hour for my butt to thaw out after sitting on the curb beside Davey for all that time.

Dag Nab It! or SoC Part Three

Last night after the kids were in bed, I got on the computer all excited to blog about our third Christmas event of the weekend: the Langley Santa Claus Parade. Only for some reason our camera won't download pictures to our computer anymore. When we plug the cable in the camera turns on but nothing else happens. When I try to import the pictures manually, I just get an error message that the computer can't detect the camera.

So until we figure out what happened in the few hours between my first blog and getting home from the parade I guess I won't be posting any pictures.

In the meantime, last night was the Langley Santa Claus Parade (duh!) so at 430 we packed into the car and headed to downtown Langley. Here's one thing about Langley, does nobody know that you're supposed to shovel your sidewalk when it snows here?

Davey fell asleep in the car, stayed asleep while we put him in the stroller, and in fact until I woke him up an hour later when the parade was starting. Andrew helped me get settled in a good spot along the parade route, then he headed to McBurneys to grab a couple of hot chocolates. he wasn't the only one with that idea...it took almost 40 minutes to get the hot drinks!!

Parades have changed a lot since I was a kid. At least half the parade seemed to consist of cars with Christmas lights on them, and maybe a decal advertising a local business. Luckily kids like lights, so they were impressed. some weird things though... there were a LOT of cars that didn't get moved. Why didn't they have them towed? There was red tape up, but no signs telling people to move their cars. And then in the parade, there were four horses...just being ridden along the route. With no one to clean up after them. Of course one of the horses had to take care of business directly in front of us...and directly behind the horses was a troupe of little kids (Judy the Manners lady and what I assume were a bunch of well mannered children) who had to negotiate around the business. Gross!

Well, one day when our camera is fixed you'll be treated to the visual delights of our family at the parade. This is it for now....

Spirit of Christmas: Part Two

At our house we like to celebrate as many days of Christmas as possible! So this morning we got up nice and early and headed off to Potters to pick up a Christmas tree. If you're in the market for a live tree, their prewrapped douglas firs are $24.99 as long as you don't unwrap them. And they have the hugest Christmas store in the universe and this weekend Santa was there. So good times.

Here we all are posing in front of one of the trees. If we look a bit crazed, it's because some scroogey old geezer (he was at least 55 ;oP) just swore at the kids. They weren't doing anything wrong, so I guess we'll give him the benefit of the doubt (though Andrew was wishing he wasn't carrying babies so he could deck the guy and there aren't many things in this world that drive Andrew to anger, let alone violence!)

We didn't get a great picture, but they also had the cutest little 3 foot trees...perfect for a tinkerbell to pose beside. I love little trees...

We stood in the really long line and got the kids pictures done with Santa. This was Davey's first time seeing Santa Claus, and he cried. But he was a trooper and stopped long enough to get his picture taken. No smile, just big, sad eyes with huge tears in them. The girls all posed nicely though. Even Jadey who has been adamantly declaring all week that she likes Santa but she's not sitting on his lap.


The santa at Potters gave them all a candy cane AND a little bath scrubby. cool.

Here's Andrew and the kids beside our tree. As our family increases in size, so too has our tree been increasing. The first year we were married it might have been five feet tall. It was adorable. This one is a mere two inches from our ceiling and very, very full.

Daveybear loved this train. It's actually at least six feet long. The picture is deceiving.

Helping mamma decorate the tree. Alternating singing "Jingle Bells", saying Merry Christmas and "Santa Clause"

The first year Andrew and I were married, we made our own decorations. Very homespun Christmas. And yes, this is one of my creations. Hard to imagine I actually want to get an Art degree when you see the tackiness that this little decoration is. I'm better at drawing than painting...

Spirit of Christmas

Kathi and Cody are at Cody's work Christmas party tonight, so Ashlie and Jade came to our house for a visit. Their visit just happened to coincide with the Spirit of Christmas event being put on by TWU and the City of Langley, so we decided to check it out.

Here's one of the first sights to greet us upon leaving the car. Ashlie promptly took of running, leaving Jade buried in a snow drift in the parking lot (seriously) while Davey kept repeating "Lights, Hooks, Lamps" all excitedly.


It was a little confusing trying to figure out where to go. I think mostly because the main parking was full and they waved us to the very far end of the campus. I know my way around very well after going to school there for five years and then working there for four, but I still wasn't sure where we were supposed to be at. Eventually we just went inside to look at the Christmas trees. Davey immediately started undecorating the nearest tree while a TWU staffer was telling us where all the events were at...

If you know the campus at all, the whole hallway from the entrance to the cafeteria down to the Atrium was lined with real trees which various departments/student groups on campus had 'sponsored' and then decorated.


The new president and his wife, judged the trees and deemed this one the winning tree:

Ashlie didn't believe me. We wandered around somemore, checking out some of the stations in the live nativity. There was a petting zoo too, but it was too dark to take pictures (I didn't want to scare the animals!)

Then we headed back to the cafe for hot chocolate, candy canes, mandarin oranges and gingerbread men. But there was no room in the inn, so we brushed the snow off some outside tables and sat outside.


(as a side note, Tink really seemed to enjoy the time out. She was super excited to be around so many people, the lights...and then sang herself to sleep on the way home).

Davey loved the snow covered table. Made for a great place to rest his cookie in between bites.

Then the kids posed for a quick picture (don't the look like they're having fun?)

And we wandered through the lawns back to the parking lot. You could really tell the students had three days of no classes, there were some very creative and beautiful snow sculptures...






This is what Andrew would do if we let him spend that much time playing.


Great evening had by all. The three older kids are now asleep in Davey's room and it sounds like Tink has fallen asleep in ours. So I'm off to catch some winks too. Night all!