Cookie Painting with the Abelmans

We had the Abelmans over to try our hands at some cookie painting. Alexis introduced us to this activity back in '06 and I hadn't had the opportunity to try it since. But last year Dave bought us our own supplies so this year I baked the cookies, iced them and invited people over to paint and eat with us.

Riley could hardly wait to finish painting before eating.


I think if we were giving out prizes for best cookies, Tash would've won hands down.


The kids even got in on the action, painting two cookies each. Messy business.


Can't you just see the wheels turning there? Tash is wondering what to do next. Hmnn.
And here are her finished cookies. Well done!

All of our cookies.


Then it was time for pizza!

The Christmas Lights at Van Deusen Gardens (a joint Hahlen-Rossi venture)

You'll have to take my word for it, because I don't have any evidence (photographic or otherwise,) but the Rossis invited us to join them at Van Deusen Gardens this week. Though we couldn't join them for the Indian food afterwards, we happily trotted off to see the lights. We were a bit late thanks to people who will remain nameless, but who have no children of their own to blame, but still managed to find each other.

My angelic little cherubs, above and the three elves below!


The lights were spectacular. I think we might have to go again next year when Santa is still there.









Here is my one piece of evidence that all of US were there.

The Mighty Fraser

What we really wanted to do on Monday was head up to Mount Seymour and try out all the sleds Andrew's coworker and carpool buddy keeps passing on to us. I think we have 8 sleds now and since we haven't really had any snow to speak of, we're all dying to try them out. Failing that, we wanted to check out the ice palace in Cloverdale. But, we decided to put off sledding in the hopes that Uncle Rob could join us. And when Monday morning dawned, David didn't want to skate. So we went to Derby Reach instead. Packed up some lunch and branches from around our yard and found a camping spot to have a fire.

Unfortunately, we haven't been drying our wood out, even though every time we try to have a fire and the wood won't burn we talk about moving it out of the rain. So it took almost a whole bottle of fire starter fluid and a lot of paper and all we got was a lot of smoke.

Still, it was enough to cook some marshmallows.


And it wasn't raining so it was still fun.


If cold. Seriously, I haven't been that cold since the Cloverdale Parade.

Me and my hubby. xo

Since the fire was a bit of a disappointment, we decided to try and catch some fish.

We used marshmallows as bait.


(don't we live in the most beautiful spot on earth? I think so!)

And when we got home, we turned on the fire, made some hot drinks and vegged on the couch. Pure bliss.

Homemade Christmas

We were all in crafty mode this season and I just happened to have a lot of crafting supplies that I've collected over the years and been storing in my linen closet. So we made teacher presents (the blocks the kids painted, stamped and glittered), wreaths, sparkly Christmas villages and Christmas words. And then when we ran out of blocks and paper and paste, we baked. And decorated and painted and ate. And it was good.

somewhere along the way, we all got lost...

Happy new year, everyone! We hope you had a wonderful Christmas. At our house, it seems to have stretched on forever. But for once, I'm ready to march on into the new year. Well, that might be pushing it, since we're still dragging our tired selves out of bed between 8 and 9 every morning (the best Christmas present EVER: our kids have slept in almost every morning of this Christmas break!) but I'm confident that with a few early bed times we'll all catch up on energy before school starts!

In the interst of starting fresh for the new year, I spent this morning browsing through my Picasa folders and checking the blog and I see that since November I've skipped quite a bit of what's been going on around here - and that's my explanation for this posting's title too. So, here's a bit of a rundown of the things we missed:


There have been a lot of variants of dress up going on around our house. I like the above picture because I think they look like they belong about a hundred years ago. I can just picture them sitting like this on suitcases on some London street. Maybe I read too much fiction...

Mummy's safety glasses are another popular dress up accessory. No wonder I can never find them when it's time to prune the trees...

And of course there's always the role playing games. I have no idea what they were playing here, but it probably involved a princess, a hero and some sort of space ship. And as you can tell, puddles and no rain gear.

This one is rock bowling. And from before we discovered the Retro Toon channel and Fred Flinstone ;)




David went to The Most Awesome Birthday Party Ever in December. He made this reindeer hat (a clever ploy by the mom to make sure all 14 kids had their names attached to their bodies so she could at least attempt to control them), a picture frame (which holds the santa picture he had taken later at the party!), a gift bag and countless other crafts. And then in his goody bag he got this set of cars to make too. So fun!


Elisabeth had her first every Christmas concert. I really can't believe we didn't blog this one. Well, except that I wasn't really there. I was helping David's kindergarten teacher clean up for Christmas so Andrew went and recorded it all for me. I have video, but the only people who sang the songs were the teachers, so we'll make do with some cute pictures of all the reindeer.


Elisabeth got the stocking above and they made the reindeer sandwiches below. So much fun!


As soon as their party was over, Andrew brought Elisabeth down the hall to David's class where we were just about to start our own party. And even though Elisabeth apparently ate a TON of food at her own party, she continued and ate two platefuls at David's party too!


And finally, Christmas Day. For some reason my camera was not attached to me like it usually is. So all I have from Christmas Day are five very fuzzy pictures. But let me assure you, it was a raging success. Kathi and Cody's family came for dinner (they provided the DELICIOUS turkey and stuffing and gravy! which only left me on the hook for veggies. YAY!), Rob came to town (he's still here), and David was finished work by late afternoon (though we were all sad that he had to work Christmas Day, but at least he was home for dinner.)

This was the first Christmas where we absolutely had to be strict about our spending. I really had no idea it would be so hard to find a job this time of year, and we had a strict no-credit rule. Thankfully, our kids are awesome and we were able to give each of them exactly what they had asked for. And they have incredible aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends who spoiled them rotten. So I don't think we even noticed that it was a slimmer Christmas than previously.



The only thing David wanted for Christmas was a spiderman sponge. You know, one of those things that you put in water and it grows? He got that in his stocking.

And as long as it's got princesses, Elisabeth is happy. Here she is sporting her Tinkerbell necklace and nose jewels.