All I Want For Christmas...Is A Hamster

Christmas is over for another year for most people, but for us, we're still in the thick of it, as tomorrow we fly out to Edmonton and do Christmas at two more houses!

I have some video of Lincoln's Christmas Concert, but I am having some trouble uploading it, so you will have to wait for that I am afraid. I also have an audio clip of him singing his song all by himself, so I will work on getting those posted here once I figure out the problem.

We took quite a few photos of the two rugrats on Christmas morning. Naturally the little rotters were spoiled. The four of us totally enjoyed the day together, playing games and eating treats, and trying out our new presents! It ended up that we did not have guests for dinner, which was just as well, even though I cooked for 15 people (as always). I think I made enough stuffing to fill half a dozen birds. Tonight I am portioning it all out into homemade TV dinners for freezing and eating later on.

Here is a slide show of the photos from Christmas Day. Just click on the arrow button to view:

Tomorrow night our flight leaves for Edmonton, and the kids are looking forward to that very much. Unfortunately, Sydnie seems to be coming down with some sort of flu. This evening she was running a bit of a temperature, seemed lethargic, and got a bit sick at supper. We put her to bed with a shot of children's Tylenol for the fever, and hopefully she feels better in the morning. It could be a very long flight tomorrow night at any rate. Please keep your fingers crossed that she gets better and not worse.

Despite that, we are sure excited to see a bunch of you. We fly into Edmonton and will be staying at Mum and Dad's there until January 2nd. We head down to Rocky Mountain House that day and stay with Mum and Rayna (Dad will probably be away for work during our visit) until the 7th, when we drive back to Edmonton and catch a flight home. Not nearly enough travel this trip, as compared to our last one in October, which is nice although we won't see as many people.

For those of you we miss this time, we are planning a very lengthy trip out in July. It will be just the kids and I for the first half, and then Jay will join us for the second half. Not too many details on that just yet, but I'll keep you posted.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you all an excellent New Year as well!

No More Monkeys Jumping On The Bed

Well, we are hurtling towards Christmas at record speed this year. Things seem to just keep happening one right after the other, so I apologise for the lack of updates here.

Earlier this week we received some very unfortunate news. Jays grandmother passed away, peacefully in her sleep, at the age of 100 years. Despite the fact that she was long lived and it had been expected for some time, it's still been very difficult for him, and for me. The kids are too young to understand yet, which is probably just as well.

Due to the timing, I'm not going to be able to go with him to the funeral this Friday. It's in Regina, and since we've already booked tickets for Alberta on the 28th, it seemed ridiculous for us to all trek out to Saskatchewan, then come back, just to fly back out a few days later. Also, most flights are sold out and it was hard enough to get a ticket for just Jay, let alone the kids and I. Admittedly I am rather upset at having to miss it. We have no one to watch the kids though, since everyone is trying to get ready for Christmas. Jay was asked to be a pallbearer, and his Aunt Reta and mum and dad and Brian are going to be there, so I am sure he will manage.

He will get back very late on Saturday night, so I intend to distract myself with the last minute Christmas baking and grocery shopping while he is away. I have also been entrusted with checking on the pets of a friend I made recently through the gym while she is away at her parents for a week. She and I became friends a couple of months ago and she has a couple of cats and rabbits and small rodents. The kids and I get to go over and feed and water them twice a day, which they are really excited about. I don't mind helping her at all since she was able to watch the kids for us the other morning, on last minute notice, while we did our first walk-through of the house.

Speaking of the house, they are actually working on it at a fairly good pace these days. We got a new site supervisor (I think our third or fourth since the house got started) and he doesn't waste any time. As I mentioned above, we did a walk-through with the electrician last week, and everything seemed to be going well.

We have another walk-through tomorrow morning, and I am going to ask Sarah (my new friend with the pets) if she would be able to come over and hang out with the kids again while we do that. Apparently there was an inspection of the framing this week and our house failed. I kid you not. The site supervisor claims it was just a few minor things that needed fixing, but it doesn't give me a lot of good feelings about our builder.

They want to start insulating and so forth next week, so I suppose that's good. I am starting to believe we actually might make it in by January 31st as they promised. More pictures are coming.

On an additional note about pictures, you may have noticed something about My Daily Photo on the side of the page there. I decided to create a separate page on which to post my photos not related to family/house/etc. Every day I put up a new picture I have taken, so I hope you will take a look. Yesterday I received a bit of an exciting e-mail in regards to one of my photos. It seems that a picture I took of the Peace Keeping Monument in Ottawa is being considered for part of an online guide to Ottawa. The photo will include credit to me and will be linked back to my collection of photos on Flickr (the photo hosting service I use online).

Here is the photo in question, snapped in August during our visit to see Tina over the summer:



I won't get paid for the use of my photo, but it's still very flattering, and who knows what other opportunities might come about as a result.

Tomorrow is Lincoln's school Christmas concert. He is playing a lamb apparently. I will be taking the camera, and I will attempt at least a few clips of video. He has been very secretive about it all, which is very cute.

Last weekend we picked up their final gift, which I have to say I might be more excited about then they will be. We decided (or rather I decided and then prodded Jay into agreement, HA HA) to get them a hamster from Santa. Since we are going to be going away right after Christmas, I went and got the cage and food and all the hamster related stuff one needs, and Santa will leave it under the tree with a note about picking out the hamster themselves with Mommy and Daddy. That way we don't have to worry about having someone look after it while we are out west. I know they are going to be thrilled.

Most of you heard about the big dump of snow we got last weekend. Jay figures just over a foot of it fell here, and it seems to be staying, which means we will have a white Christmas. The kids are quite enjoying having snow to play in, and I'll admit that as much as I dislike the cold, I prefer to have snow for Christmas than dead grass or slush.

I can hardly believe that Christmas is only 6 more sleeps away. Where has the year gone?

Counting Down To Christmas

15 more sleeps until Christmas!

We are sure excited around here :D The kids especially. Jay and I are pretty much finished up our Christmas shopping, which is a great feeling. Most of the gifts are already wrapped and under the tree.

Over the weekend we all took a trip to IKEA to get a filing cabinet (which will eventually go into the den in the new house). While we were there we found a few extra odds and ends for the new place. Bathroom hard wear for one (the builder only had one option for us, really cheap white plastic stuff, so we just removed that from the plan) and some light fixtures for the kitchen (we have two spots for light fixtures going into the kitchen). I found these product images on the IKEA website to show you guys!

Or Kitchen Light Fixtures


Toilet Paper Holders For Each Bathroom


Towel Bars For The Bathrooms With Showers/Tubs

I really like the towel bars we found because they have the double rods. You can hang the bath towels in the back and the hand towels on the front.

Also, the lighting fixtures are actually three rods, with two flexible connector sections between, so you can make them into different arrangements, like 'Z' or 'U' (as shown) and all of the light holders themselves are movable, so you can point the lights the direction you want. I think that will provide a lot of light in the kitchen.

The filing cabinet we got is actually quite attractive looking. I found an image of something similar, except the one that we bought is only two drawers high, not three.



In the future den we plan to have two cabinets like this, one for filing (the one we already have) and another with doors on the front like this, to hold our printers, scanner, etc.



There are also some really nice wall cabinets that go along with it that we are going to put up in the den, for office supplies, books, binders, etc.



All very exciting, ha ha. We got rid of our big old corner desk before we moved, so for a work surface we are just getting a small table type thing.



Can you tell that we really like stuff from IKEA? I think that the espresso brown furniture will go really nice with the golden yellow paint I have picked out for the den.

Enough about that, I don't want to bore you all to sleep!

The kids are getting super excited about Christmas. Every morning the first thing they want to do is open a new door on their chocolate Christmas calendars. Generally I make them wait until after breakfast at least, hee hee.

This coming weekend Jay and the kids and I are going up to visit Uncle Elmer and Aunty Vera at their place in Bobcaygeon. They live within walking distance of the lake and I'm looking forward to visiting with them. I'm going to take my camera too, so I promise photos once we get home.

I also plan to take a lot of photos, and maybe some video clips of the kids on Christmas morning for everyone. I've figured out how to post video online, so I'll do my best to get some put up here for you guys.

There are some pictures of the inside of the house I'll be posting within this week, so check back for that.

Just Call Me Picasso

I just wanted to do a quick update because I finally got around to taking some pics of the paint colors I've chosen for the new house. You can check them out full-sized by clicking on them:


The Living Room, Kitchen, Dining Room Color


The Main Floor Bathroom Color


The Den Color


Sydnie's Room Color


Lincoln's Room Color


The Second Floor Bathroom Colors
(I'll explain them later)


Guest Bedroom Color


Second Guest Bedroom Color


Craft Room Color


Our Bedroom Color


I still haven't settled on a color for the ensuite bathroom. I want something soothing and relaxing, so I'll get that posted when I pick it out.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

Greetings from the snowy lands of southern Ontario!

We are just enjoying some hot chocolate, after playing outside in the snow with the kids, and I wanted to share some of our recent photos.

In case you hadn't heard, we've gotten a bit of snow here in Guelph. Oddly, we are enjoying it rather than grumbling about it. The kids had a great time playing outside this afternoon, helping Daddy shovel and making snow angels.

Click on all of them to see the full-sized version.





















The house is coming along, although they still aren't done the shingles. They put in temporary stairs so we could check out the upstairs. The kids really enjoyed taking a look around, and they both got to check out the beginnings of their new rooms.

It's looking good inside so far, we haven't taken too many photos of the inside because it really won't make much sense until the dry wall is up. Hard to really visualize much.

Here's a front shot though:



The Kitchen, With Pipes



The kids are getting soooooo excited for Christmas! Jay bought us some really cute stockings, even though there is no fireplace/mantle.

None the less, I hung them up. The kids get the two big ones, and the smaller ones are for Jay and I:





We've gotten most of the Christmas shopping done, which is one less thing to do this month. Lincoln has a bit of a Christmas concert coming up on the 22nd, and I promise to take photos and maybe some video of that.

It looks like we are going to have a few guests for Christmas dinner on the 25th. We invited some of Jay's co-workers over, who came from Calgary as well, and who aren't going home for Christmas either. I'm looking forward to cooking a turkey and all of the trimmings.

We are hoping to have our sitter, Shay, come and watch the kids one more time before it gets too close to Christmas. His company isn't having a Christmas party this year, so we wanted to get in one more night out together before the holidays and then our trip back to Alberta and all of that. I'd like for us to see a movie, or maybe go out for pub food or sushi.

Our last night out, we had dinner at The Aberfoyle Mill, and it was amazing. It was the best dinner I'd had out in a long time. The atmosphere was rustic and festive, the service was impeccable, and the food was absolutely delicious. We plan to go back there again sometime, maybe for our anniversary in January.

The kids keep asking for Shay, and when we got home after dinner at the mill they told us all about the games she played with them, and showed us all of the pictures they had colored together. We are so lucky to have such a wonderful sitter for the kids, so that Jay and I are still able to spend some time with each other out of the house.

This week we have our brief parent-teacher interview with Lincoln's teacher. Also the food drive starts at his school and I am going to have the kids help me bag up some donations with me to drop off there. They are also collecting some items for a group home here in Guelph, and I want to donate to that as well.

We are all counting down to Christmas here. The kids have those chocolate Christmas calendars, and Lincoln brought home an Advent Chain from school, which is made out of paper and ever night before bed he gets to take one of the rings of the chain off. Of course Sydnie wants one too, so I will help her make one this afternoon.

I hope everyone enjoyed the photos :)