Hey, check out that picture!   My daughter back on skates!! I guess we didn’t traumatize her in October afterall!  I didn’t make it, but daddy says there were still lots of tears.   However, she did say she had a good time doing it!

This picture shows the wonderful ginger bread house we decorated at Grandma and Grandpa’s.   It also shows the lovely shiner that my darling daughter has.   Apparently (this happened on daddy’s watch) she yanked down a stocking that was hanging on the top of our bookshelf from one of those cast-iron stocking holder thingys.  Well you get the picture.  Clunk.

Well it’s time to start getting used to a new year again.   We had quite the snowfall overnight/this morning.  We headed over to grandma & grandpa’s to put together a ginger bread house.   We first had to snowblow our way out of the driveway.  The ginger bread house had some structural integrity problems, aka. it didn’t stay together.   We abandoned it quite quickly in favour of playing in the snow.   It was still snowing, and all of us adults and kids had a great time.   Grandpa built a ‘snowman’, really more of a snow-blob.  Daddy built a lovely snowman with extremely round and precise snowballs.   I helped give him a nice face.   The kids had a good time playing in Grandpa’s snow covered trailer, and rolling in the snow.  M loved using his shovel, and D just loved eating snow, by hand, or with his yellow shovel.  A great time was had by all.  Gallery to be posted soon!

We had a lovely New Year’s Eve with our dear friends.   Their girls are getting older every year (yes, I know that happens).  Anyways.  R had a delightful time playing with them, as we adults prepared a nice cheese fondue.   After that yummy dinner we played games together in the basement.  We must be getting old, as we decided to call it quits at 11pm!!! We and our guests are either getting over colds or just getting colds.   R has a black bruise under her eye from a stocking mis-hap this morning.   She saw a stocking hanging up high, thought something was in it, and yanked it down.  The cast iron stocking holder came crashing down…ouch!   

We had a lovely day today.   R and i went to church as usual, and we met our R’s cousins for lunch.  After a nap, daddy started baking.   He made Fleisch Perschki.  (Meat buns for those non German Mennonites reading).   R had a great time playing with the dough as you can see.   Our home smells delightful now, I wish you could bottle that smell!

Merry Christmas everyone!  We had a lovely day at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.  The kids were so very excited to open presents.   It was an exciting morning.   We gathered again for dinner and enjoyed having Oma and Opa there as well.   The picture is of R blowing her new horn.

Well, Christmas is upon us.  Where did all that time go?  R went to Grandma and Grandpa’s this morning and got to spend the morning playing with her cousins.   M & D love playing in the snow, as they never see it where they are from!   After a nap, we got everything together and headed out to Oma and Opa’s.   On the way there R pipes up from the back seat “Good driving daddy”.   Daddy replied “thank you” and then she says “That’s a compliment Daddy”.  In case we didn’t know!  

After a yummy supper we opened some presents.   R was just delighted with her gifts from Oma and Opa (game called Lucky sock dip, and a book of sing-along poems).   All too soon we had to head home to bed. Before bed, R wanted to leave milk and cookies for Santa.  (Despite the fact that she isn’t keen on someone being in our house when we are not aware of them).   We wrote a note to santa, saying “These milk and cookies are for you”.  She signed the note and drew a nice picture.  I’m not sure how keen I am on this whole Santa thing, but it seems to make sense to her.

We sorely missed having other family members around, especially the newest cousin, only 4 days old.  We love you all, and hope you are warm and well this Christmas.

We spent a nice evening decorating the tree at my parent’s house.   The cousins had a ball.   R asked if she could sleep over.  I said she could, and she stood up in her chair at the dinner table and announced “my mom said I could stay for a sleepover!”  She is so very excited.   Well see how the night goes!