Life's Whirlwind Adventures

This year we were supposed to go back to Saskatchewan for Christmas, well orginally I was going to leave on December 26th and then Adrian was going to fly out to meet me on December 29th and we would celebrate New Years in Prince Albert with my friend Estelle. Then Adrian wasn't able to book a flight out to Saskatchewan so I decided since I wanted to go to Saskatchewan as a family and spend some time altogether and he had 4 days off at Christmas I would suggest we do Christmas in Saskatchewan.  He was agreeable to those terms and so we began planning to go. I was super excited. I haven't spent a Christmas in Saskatchewan in three or more years now.  Last year I had surgery, the year before we went to Disneyland and maybe the year before we went to Saskatchewan but I'm not sure, it has literally been that long. Well you can guess by the title of the blog post that we did not go to Saskatchewan, in fact we did not go anywhere this year for Christmas.  We were quaran...

I swear sometimes I think I live under a rock, like seriously!! There is a thing called the Holiday Train that CP Rail sends across Canada every December. It stops in various towns and cities along the way and raises donations for the Food Bank.  It's done up in lights and has a band, like it's a big to do, and this is there first year I've ever heard about it let alone gone to it. It was a cool day, but we took the kids down to the CP Rail yard to see the train. We brought a donation for the food bank and then the kids got to walk beside the train. It arrived in Red Deer in the middle of the day around lunch time so the lights weren't very impressive. I'm sure seeing it at night would be way more enthralling for the kids, but they were still pretty excited to see the train up close. The band that played on the train this year was the same band that does the Corner Gas theme song.  I didn't recognize them until they played that song, and it's been...

The big question that comes up at this time of year is how do we tell the kids about Santa, how long can we keep the myth of Santa alive?  It's a conundrum, I mean some kids can believe until some kid at school tells them otherwise, then they wonder if you the parent has been *gasp* lying to them all these years.  Some kids stumble onto Santa gifts in the closet and though they don't know what they are at the time, Christmas morning when they are in the stocking or under the tree, the gig is up.  And I guess sometimes kids never stop believing, but they know the truth.  So how do we tell our kids about Santa, and why does this myth continue to have such a huge life at this time of the year? I remember when I was a kid (man a lot of my blogs are written like this) I was the kid that stumbled upon the Santa gifts in my mom's closet.  I was snooping, it was my own fault.  I'm not a huge one for surprises, I like to know, hence, why I found out what each of...

So I had my whole month of blogs planned out, I wrote what I could ahead of time and agreed to work on the rest as time permitted. Then, Life happened.  One boy needed to go to soccer, one needed to go to soccer and hockey, the flu invaded our house, another boy is teething.  So all that adds up to very little sleep for mommy+no spare minutes in the day = no writing completed. Plus hubby should have been home yesterday but now he's extended another week so what I thought I'd get done by having him home to help out is not getting done, so what does that mean for my poor little blog? Essentially it means my Christmas holidays will start after this week.  I have three more scheduled blogs ready to go and then that's it until the New Year.  I'll post a couple more blogs in the next two weeks but they won't be daily as I'm going to go on holidays.  I'm going to enjoy the time with my boys, and file away blog entries for the New Year!! I wish all you my reader...

I really love Christmas Time, it truly is the most wonderful time of  the year!! I appreciate the giving and kindness that exudes from people during this season, I think people truly are at their best.  And it doesn't matter if you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or the winter solstice, all have this time as a time of giving, a time of celebrating life and all the good things that surround us.  But I fear my kids are not being exposed to enough of the good things about Christmas and soon they will be xmas-ers . For me an xmas-er is someone who is only worried about the gifts they receive.  And they only give gifts to receive a gift and they judge the gifts they get in comparison to what they give.  They don't feel grateful for receiving a well thought out gift, they only care that the gift was the same or of more monetary value then the one they gave to that person.  To become this way at is not something I want my kids to become and in order to ...

Decorating for Christmas is a huge family tradition in our family. We usually spend Grey Cup Sunday setting up all the decorations in the house and in the yard.  It's a fun time and Christmas Carols are pumping through the house as we set up the tree, the Christmas Village and the window decorations.  We've done Christmas Ice Balls (food colouring in water and put into balloons to freeze) and we've done snowflakes, and other purchased outside decorations plus hubby always hangs lights. This year is a bit different, hubby is away working so it's just me and boys.  We started decorating on the Saturday prior to Grey Cup Sunday, I got my Christmas village set up and my partylite votive tree, and the Christmas tree was brought upstairs.  That was about all we did since Lil Man spent Grey Cup Sunday with his grandparents and Chandler had his girlfriend over. So now we waited until the weekend after Grey Cup Sunday to finish decorating for Christmas. Hubby is still...

Oh Dear Pinterest, how you come up with some very interesting ideas for us to try. Chandler came to me before Christmas, on the day we were decorating the house actually and asked if it would be possible for us to fill balloons with water and food colouring and let them freeze.  Being the loving and supportive mom that I am, I said for sure we could. Out I ventured, into the blizzard I might add, to get to the store to buy balloons.  I also bought some other Chirstmas decorating things as well, but balloons were the main reason I went out.  With the way the snow was coming down, I may have been a bit nuts to go out, but my child wanted to be creative so I was all about supporting that. Now filling the balloons was an interesting experiment, we couldn't just fill them from the tap because then they would just be clear balls of ice, so how did we get the balloons to fill with water from a pitcher that had been coloured with food colouring???  It was a bit of a co...

I am so far behind in my blogging, but the my excuse is that the Christmas Season was incredibly busy and things got crazy.  But I did want to share my Christmas decorations with everyone. I am still not really back into the Christmas spirit as it were, I am more grinch than Santa, but I do love decorating the house.  We did it one weekend at the beginning of December after we bought our tree from Costco.  I got into the decorating spirit for one day then the Christmas spirit seemed to go dormant. Truth be told, all the decorations are already down, on one hand this makes me sad on another, I am glad I don't have to do it. This year for Christmas I did more of the window decorations and built up my Christmas Village again. I love my Christmas village and I add a new item each year. Here are some of our Pictures from the Christmas Decorating night!!!

I used to be anal about scheduling family pictures when Chandler was little, then he started going to school and I used his school pictures to update everyone.   Then I almost completely stopped getting pictures done, and I can’t even begin to explain why this was.   Then Leigham was born and in the last three years of his life we have done three different family photos.   It’s not bad, not bad at all to be honest, seeing as the last family photo I did pre-Leigham, was when Chandler was 5, 6 years prior.   So this year for Christmas I thought it would be nice to get family pictures done for everyone, so I made the family get dressed up and head out to Triple Ten Photography to have a photo session.   Alicia, the proprietor of Triple Ten and the artistic talent, is a friend of mine, and she does great work.   We posed and she was patient even though Leigham was less than cooperative.   We got some great shots and I was able to get ...

Welcome to another Pinterest Project Blog.  I cannot even begin to tell you how much I am in love with that site, but I am guessing you are starting to realize, especially if you are a regular reader of  my blog. I am always looking for new ways to use old decorations, or decorate the house differently for Christmas.  I have a secret desire to have three to five separate themes for decorating my house at Christmas, in fact I kind of feel that way for all seasons.  What prevents me from doing it that now?  Well a few things, $$$ is a big one, sentimental reasons for another and third I am not always that creative, but I try.  While perusing Pinterest I noticed a pin of a person hanging the Ball Ornaments from string in front of their windows.  It peaked my interest then my friend Becky did it and I really liked how it looked so I looked into doing at the house. I love Black Friday sales, and I went to Canadian tire and bought a few supplies.  I...

So I started and finished my Christmas shopping today.  Sounds glorious?  No?  Well it was alright. We have opted out of buying Christmas gifts for family members this year, we are only buying for the kids.  So Adrian and I split that task. He will buy for Leigham and I will buy for Chandler.  I am buying stuff for Chandler in Vegas so I don't have to worry about him.  But we did have to get Santa gifts so I did my portion of the Santa gifts today. I may have one more to go out and grab, but I will get to that when I get to that.  It's not essential. I am getting that Christmas spirit more and more every day.  Even the crazy people in Wal-mart today couldn't even dampen my mood.  That is truly saying something, because they were crazy.  I have my Christmas tunes playing and I have such a mood to give and give and give.  I have two girlfriends that have had baby girls in the past three months and it was so hard not to buy little Ch...

Tis the season to be... baking.  Apparently in my house, this is what I am doing. I LOVE baking though so it makes the season so much more fun!!! I love to bake, cooking and I don't see eye to eye all the time but the baking concepts that's where I excell.  I should have gone to school to be a baker, because I love working with dough and creating new desserts.  I made maple cinnamon buns this weekend. They were delicious. I like my cinnamon buns plan, meaning no nuts or raisons.  But I like to experiment with differnt tastes and add things in that I think would be a little tasty.  And the maple cinnamon buns were exceptionally tasty.  I also made regular cinnamon buns and bread this weekend.  I have my Great Grandma's bread recipe and it is a phenomenal recipe. Adrian made chocolate chip cookies on Saturday.  They were pretty tasty but I still think mine taste better.  I may be a biased judge though.  The house smelled delicio...

This year was a busy year for Christmas in our house. Not as busy as some people's Christmases but busy enough. We had Christmas at my mom's house first and then we came home and had Christmas at our house with Adrian's family. Christmas travelling is interesting. The boys and I flew to Saskatoon on a seat sale with Westjet, then Adrian drove out on Christmas Eve. Adrian, Leigham and I then drove back to Red Deer on Boxing Day. And no I am not sad I did not go Boxing Day Sale shopping. I hate shopping during Boxing Day. While in Saskatchewan I was able to make it to Prince Albert to do some visiting with my Aunty Lila, my step-dad Emile and my friend Estelle. Then my Grandma, Leigham and I drove back to Saskatoon to prepare for Christmas. I was not able to see everyone I wanted to visit in Prince Albert but next time maybe I will stay longer. While in Saskatoon I was able to visit with Karen and Michelle but I was not able to meet up with Sharon or Roxann. Next ...

So yesterday marked the one year anniversary of my father's passing. It was a horrible day. The only good thing about it is last year the temperature was warmer where I was. I was in California trying to get my dad's estate organized because he was on life support in the hospital and the doctors refused to cooperate with the family so as it looked like he would be there indefinitely we were planning on heading home. We had already been down for five weeks by this time. The doctors said he was not going to come off life support but because of outside influences the hospital would not move him to comfort care where he could pass away with dignity and with his family surrounding him. While my mother and I were taking care of his business so we could keep his house up and running from Canada my dad laid in his hospital bed alone. Only the sounds of the ventilator and cooling blanket for company. Traffic sucked on the 580. There was a big accident and it literally took us an...

Tis the season!! So that's what people say. I find this time of year to be insanely busy. I have Christmas shopping to do, Christmas parties to attend, Christmas baking to complete, Christmas cards to send out, Christmas decorating to hang, and then the regular normal everyday activities. To be honest, I am not feeling the Christmas spirit as I used to. It's really quite sad, but I have the same feeling I had last year, if Christmas just passed by and slept through it I can't say that I would miss it. It's a terrible feeling to have, absolutely terrible because I used to be the girl that loved Christmas. I have a new baby to celebrate this season of giving with and the things I usually do to get into to festive mood is not working. I find this terribly sad. I am not unaware of why Christmas has taken a not so festive turn, I know it stems back to the events of last year. Last year on December 8 my father passed away, it left a very dampened mood over Christmas. ...