Rudolph is still in the house

Oh look Gord, Rudolph is still here.....

Neigh....Neigh.....

Erin, how did you get your nose so red?

With a marker Mummy.....

I hope it's one of her washable markers.......

Enjoy!!

Fun during the holidays!

We have really had quite a lot of fun over the past few days. I am really enjoying these holidays - not that I never enjoy holidays!! I wanted to post up some of the pics from the last few days where Erin has been playing with Emma, Erika, and Amy. The girls have taken their ponies out for rides and today was a fun day of sliding. The hill is just about perfect right now! I think the girls spent no less than 5 hours outside today going up and down the hill! I even joined in on the fun - I'm not sure who was laughing louder when I hopped onto one of the sleds and bombed down the hill, Erin and Erika or me!! I am currently paying for it right now.... my body is quickly reminding me that I am not in shape and I am approching my 4th decade!!!! Oh well. I had a hoot, we laughed for ages, and I have every intention of bombing down the hill again tomorrow when Jo, Chris and the boys come out for a visit! You may as well make the most of the beautiful country we live in, right?

Enjoy the pics!

Fun in the Snow!!

Erin decided that we needed to try out the snowshoes that Santa brought for us on Christmas day. So this morning we set them all up and out we went! We were out enjoying the morning for a good 2 hours - snowshoeing and sliding - before it started to snow. All of that work trudging up and down the hill making a sliding hill is all for not..... oh well... I'm glad it snowed again!


My body has however reminded me that I have not been on snowshoes for DECADES!!!! Yup, my legs are a little sore!!!


A great morning indeed though, and well worth the pain! Erin woke up with a cough and had a runny nose this morning, so it was no surprise that after a big play in the fresh air, followed by a mean hour of making necklaces and bracelets, she nodded off for an afternoon nap! So did I, but not for 2 hours (I wish!!!). Tomorrow the plan is to re-make the sliding hill, and maybe invite some friends over for a play - why not share in exhausting young ones!!!


Enjoy the pics!!

The pre-snowshoe set-up!

Decades since these have been on my feet!!!

Merry Christmas!

A great day was had by all! Erin loved having North Bay Grampa here, although I'll bet he sleeps well tonight when he gets home after a wild couple of days with a wild girl!!! Dinner at Alex and Eleanors was very nice too!! Santa was very good to everyone, including Minnie and Charlie, who had treats in their stockings too!!

Best quotes of Christmas morning from Erin:

"Santa brought me just what I wanted! I love him!!"

"I must have been a really good girl this year!"

"Okay, I have opened enough things, now it's time for you to open something.... let me help you with that... I can do it... give it to me!!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve after Santa came!!

Christmas Eve after Santa came!!

I Passed!!

By the way, I was reminded that I have not yet shared my great news that I passed my last exam for my professional designation! I am officially a CHRP now!!! Yeah!!!!

Climbing the walls

How we have made it through the past couple of days is beyond me. Erin has been beside herself with the fast approach toward Santa's visit. Between Christmas parties at school and daycare, along with a steady diet of treats, she has literally been climbing the walls!

We ended up having quiet a snowstorm last Sunday. Unfortunately that meant cancelling the Cookie Exchange. Erin was disappointed, but we all knew that making sure our friends were safe was much more important. We did however salvage the day by having Emma, Erika, and their parents come by for the afternoon! It is nice to have such fun kids and great parents / friends just down the road from us! I think it helped both families to let the kids burn off energy!

Monday came with Erin insisting on going to school. The schools were open, but there were no busses running. Erin was the only one in Kindergarten for about 40 minutes, but ended up having a great day! She was pretty excited because she was the star of the day! Now this was by default as she was the only child there, but she was pretty geeked nonetheless!!

Wednesday was the big party at the Community Centre for the school. What a fun event! The parents serve up a turkey dinner for the students and teachers. I had a pretty easy table - the Kindergarten kids. These kids only eat the buns and the jello on the tables, so I ended up passing a nearly full plate of turkey on to the Grade 7 & 8 volunteers who couldn't keep up!! I guess I will be there one day! Following the lunch, the students all go back to school except the Grade 8 kids, who stay back and clean up and serve the parents. It is really neat to be part of a nice community that is so close knit. I got to meet many more of the Kindergarten parents, so that was a treat as well! After I finished my lunch, it was off to the school to help out with the Kindergarten Christmas party! The kids were remarkably calm, and had good fun eating snacks, listening to stories, and singing Christmas songs! A great day indeed!

Friday was the big pajama party at Erin's daycare. She was not going to miss the opportunity to hang out in pj's all day! This is one of her favourite things to do! Without even telling her, she senses that winter is a good time to stay in pj's for most of the day!! The had treats and played outside and got to watch a movie. Erin has decided that she does not like Jim Carrey's version of Grinch... to scary! She does however love the cartoon version ala Dr. Suess though!!!

So, we are now on holidays for the next couple of weeks - well Gord has to work in between the holidays and I have to head in for a couple of hours on two days! Saturday I woke up really early and headed into Smiths Falls to finish off my shopping. I almost hate to support the notion, but have to admit it was handy having Walmart open 24 hours so I could quietly get through finishing at 7:00am! Erin was helping Gord with the drywall work in the basement as renovations continue. I must remember to take some pictures of the progress. We did that when we built the house and it's pretty neat to look through them every now and then.

Erin's love affair with Charlie is stronger than ever! I was telling someone at work her ritual of wearing her riding helmet around the house. Yesterday she got her two rocking horses together and rigged up a sleigh (toy shopping cart and chair) and took her 'team of draft horses' out for a ride with passengers in tow (lamby, and all sorts of other favourite stuffed toys!!) I think there is a healthy love of horses in this girl!!

I can hardly believe it is Christmas Eve today. We have moved from receiving a heap of rain yesterday to having some pretty gentle snow flakes falling from the sky. I have to admit that I am happy it will be a white Christmas this year. I guess it's the Canadian girl in me that secretly always wants to see the snow on Christmas!!

Gord is going to work for a few hours today, so Erin and I are going to do a bit of visiting. We had Emma and Erika, Jamie and Richinda over for dinner last night, so the girls got a play (read: burned some energy off!!!) together and exchanged presents. Erin got a wonderful book from the girls - A personalized "I Can See" book about things and people down our road. Very neat! We must have read it 3 times last night after our guests left!! As well, North Bay Grampa is coming down this afternoon. He should get quite a charge out of seeing Erin bounce off the walls!! He will be staying through Boxing day and I imagine he will get his kicks from seeing Erin wake up to Santa's visit!!!

Well, enjoy the pics of Erin - how do you like her gingerbread house, a very good bordom reliever!! - and I want to wish all of our faithful readers a wonderful and happy Merry Christmas!! We will have lots of pictures from Christmas morning, so I'll be sure to get them posted as soon as possible!

More pics...

Here are some pics from my works Children's Christmas party. Enjoy!!

All Copyright - Coba Studios (http://www.cobastudios.com/)

Everyone loves a parade!!

Mmmmm.... brownies.....

Poof! Another 2 weeks have flown by.....

All is well on our end. We have been busy doing Christmas parties and the usual running around that has become our lives!

I can hardly remember things that have been going on, so I'll just touch on the highlights!

Last Saturday was the Children's Christmas party at my work. It was a great time! There were bouncers, a craft table, loot bags, balloon animals, face painting, presents, and best of all... a visit from Santa! Erin is much different around Santa this year. For the past couple of years, she has not been that keen on going up to see Santa let alone hopping onto his lap. This year we couldn't keep her from it!! I'll get some pics put up from this Christmas party soon!

Friday was Gord's birthday. Erin and I made a cake and ordered pizza for dinner. Erin was pretty excited that we got a musical candle for his cake. Erin wanted to fill his cake with all of the candles for each of his years.... I thought it best not to, but the cake was pretty full!!! I think Gord enjoyed his day. Erin got him a Harmony remote control - fancy remote... he loves it... he's a guy....

There has been so many wonderful pieces of artwork that have been coming home from both school and daycare! It really is quite magical to have a little on at Christmas, and since Erin gets the whole notion of Christmas so much better this year, it stands to be our best holiday season ever!! I can't believe how we have gotten into using the whole "Santa can see what you are doing... you don't want him to leave coal in your stocking..." thing this year. We don't have to do it too often, but it makes me feel like such a bad mum when I resort to the Santa-threat. Luckily, in speaking to nearly everyone I know, they all do it too, so I do take some consolation in that!!

The snow continues to pile up. There will be no green Christmas this year!! In fact, it's just storming up a storm out there today. We were planning on having a cookie exchange party, which we plan on continuing with - thank goodness for close neighbours!! We are starting to get the phone calls from friends in Ottawa though, and I can't really blame them. I would never want people to risk driving in this crappy weather!

The highlight of December for me so far came yesterday. Erin rode Charlie in the Merrickville Christmas parade! Richinda asked if we could join Erika and Emma and their pony Siren in the parade, so how can you turn down an offer like that?!! Richinda even had elf outfits made for Erika and Erin, and outfitted the ponies in bells and reindeer antlers! It was a hoot!! The girls and the ponies were amazing!! It was cold out too, but there wasn't a complaint! Erin sang jingle bells as they walked along the parade route and waved to the crowds!! It looks like she'll make the paper again too!! That'll make her happy!! After the parade, we went over to the community centre and had hotdogs, drinks and another visit with Santa! Last night we decorated the Christmas tree. This is the tallest tree we have had yet, at 13 feet! It's not the nicest tree we have had - they were all looking pretty scrappy this year - but with decorations all over it, it is lovely, and best of all, Erin loves it!!

So today's plan was a cookie exchange party, which will be scaled right down, but at least the girls will have a good play together! There will be lots of left over cookies at everyone's place though!! But, if it is anything like our place, the cookies will not be wasted!!!

One more week of work and school before a 2-week break. There is a party for the school at the community centre on Wednesday and a pajama party at the daycare on Friday - Erin wanted to go to this, so she will be there on Friday!!!

Enjoy the pics!! There will be more parade ones to come in a few days!!

December is here!

The countdown to the holiday season begins - December is here!!

The week that passed us by brought lots of interesting and fun times! Tuesday was probably the most interesting as this was the day our pool arrived! I thought they were just dropping it off while they arranged for it to be put into the ground... WRONG! The whole crew arrived that day, and by the end of it we had a swimming pool! Erin is very excited - mostly because she got to see the big digging machines! Gord said they experienced every kind of weather imaginable - snow, rain, high winds.... imagine all on a day a swimming pool is installed... only in Canada!!

The rest of the week was not quite as exciting as this, but fun nonetheless! Erin had a 3-day-at-school week, which is something she loves! Friday her class, along with their kinderbuddies got to go into Merrickville to decorate trees. The kids made 2 ornaments - one for the trees in town and one to bring home. They had great fun, and enjoyed light fluffy snowy conditions, hot chocolate and roasted marshmallows. I do not remember Kindergarten this way!!!! I on the other hand ended up (happily I might add) having my presentation bumped, meaning I had my usual Friday off! I spent the day in Ottawa. I picked up the ornaments the kids made last Friday, did some shopping, and had some good coffee! I am happy to report that my Christmas shopping is nearly done (I know - I make some of you sick - but I don't like the crowds!!). Gord even brought home Chinese food, so no cooking - what a great end to a great day!

Saturday Erin was invited over to Erika's for a play, which meant I had a quiet house to clean - and to begin decorating for Christmas! The girls had great fun - painting, making ornaments, and helping Richinda decorate their Christmas tree. They next came over to our place for a while, letting Richinda get away to get groceries. They played with horses, barbies, played school, and convinced Gord to saddle up Charlie, so got to take rides as well. Erin positively crashed at bedtime last night!!

And now it is Sunday morning. Gord is skeetshooting and Erin is playing with horses and watching Dora simultaneously! We are expecting a bad storm through the day and into tomorrow, so we are going to get away to get groceries soon. It is also Anestasia's birthday today - I can hardly believe she is 20 today!!! Happy Birthday kiddo!!! We are going over to their place for dinner tonight - Erin is anxiously awaiting helping Anestasia blow out the candles on her cake!!!

The week will be a full one for us all - next weekend is also the children's Christmas party at my work - Santa is visiting!! - so that should be fun.

Until next time.....