Christmas Shenanigans

We went to Chilliwack to decorate gingerbread houses and look at Christmas things.

The boys of course had to do it in costume.

 No trips to the Abelmans is complete without food. And it's always dang good food.

Even Daveyboy thinks so

 Kay so we finally started the decorating.

Some of us got a little crazy with the icing.

Oh Mayah. I love this face.

Once the houses were fully decorated, we jumped in the car for some more fun!

 Minter Gardens for the Christmas train!

 I wanted a picture of the bird. My kid wanted to be in the picture.

 Then we looked at Christmas lights. These ones had music too.

Posting these cause they are cute

I love this coat. Only got to wear it for one year. Also, look at my eye shadow!!

And look at how cute me and Tara are and were! We were gift wrapping for charity.

more parading!

 The great thing about living in Langley is there are back to back parades in Langley and then Cloverdale. So no sooner had we finished the Langley parade, we turned around and did it all again the next day in Cloverdale.

This time our friends from Chilliwack joined us.

Darren bought the kids glow in the dark light sabres.

 The Cloverdale parade has a solid half hour of lit up semi trucks. It's literally the best
 thing ever.

Christmas Parading

The glory days of parenting - when we had our big group of friends and did all kinds of kid things together. Eventually the kids grow up and get different interests or move away and the group shrunk. But these days were so fun!

Our family had a tradition of going to the local parades at Christmas. This particular year we decided to make a full even day of it. We started with a gingerbread competition...

Gingerbread house decorating is SERIOUS business.

Well, not that serious!

Some of us lost interest a little sooner than others.

We decided to have hot dinner waiting for us when we got home from the parade.

Some of our finished products!

And then things got a little out of hand - with the boys challenging each other to a push up competition.

Finally it was time for the parade.

Good memories.