Hoggart Christmas

We were very lucky this year to have all of us together for Christmas. All 29 of us! The kids had lots of fun over the weekend playing and running!

Andrew and Ty keeping up to each other.

Travis hanging from the ceiling.....just because
Daniel, Wyatt, and Mackenzie

All 13 grandchildren!

Alex and Kortney with Grandma.

Cheri and Mackenzie

Surprise, surprise, Daddy with a baby!





Uncle Dan with nephew Daniel.

Grandpa and the girls.

Well the year is over, and I'm hoping to add to this blog a little more often this next year with more pics. Stay tunned for more!

Christmas up north

After a wonderful Christmas day, we headed up north to Grandma B's. The kids couldn't wait to get there and see everyone.



My girls!
Marc and Heather

My boys insisted on fooling around!

Pictures with Uncle Marc and soon to be Aunt Heather!

Now daddy's getting in on the fooling around!

Kortney and her new Webkinz lamb!

Here is Heather, Kaitlin, Travis, Marc and Dawson all playing their Nintendo DS'

Dan and me!

Kortney and Grandma making music together.

Christmas cookies

Of course every Christmas we bake cookies. Today in the midst of "school snow days" we kept busy trying out a new cookie punch with our sugar cookies.

Kaitlin just loves getting her hands messy! I have to stop and try to have patience while letting her knead the dough and roll it out. I just want to take over and do it myself, but baking forces me to let go of the control of making "perfect" cookies. Kortney and Dawson really like to help too. Everyone wants to play in the dough and flour!

Punching out circle cookies with snowmen, Christmas trees, and snowflakes embossed pictures on them.

Dawson's turn rolling.

And Kortney's.

Decorating the designs.




Ready for the oven...doesn't he look proud!

The final product!

6 weeks ago

Wow, times has gone by fast. Here I am updating pics from the beginning of the Christmas season!


Here we all are decorating our real tree we receive as a gift from Dan's boss each year. The kids are always very excited to dig into the Christmas boxes and find our forgotten treasures from the year before.

Dawson is always willing to help out! He was determined to decorate the top half of the tree. I guess he thinks the lower half is for little kids. He just had to stand on a chair and reach as far as he could.

Kortney posing for a picture!
Daddy and Kaitlin helping add decorations.

We were a little surprised that Travis didn't want to decorate the tree this year. He was more worried about his homework he had left till this Sunday night. I tried to get him to help and not worry about the homework, but he wanted to get it done. He did however love decorating his own smaller tree afew days before.
Kaitlin and daddy taking a break.

Posing beside the tree.

Halloween 09

To be honest Halloween is my least favourite holiday. I enjoy thanksgiving and fall, but after that I can't wait for Halloween to be over. The kids on the other hand love it, and this year they were very excited for the day to come. At school there is always a costume parade that the whole school participates in, a gr 4-8 dance, and little parties in the classrooms. This was Kortney's first time experiencing this and she was on cloud nine! Other years she has watched the kids come home with treats and crafts and she is a bit left out...well not this year. She took her costume and was very excited about heading to school for the Halloween festivities. Poor Dawson ended up home sick that day and missed out on the parade. Instead he watched a movie with one of his best friends Sara, who was also home sick. He was feeling better the next day for trick-or-treating. Travis was also a tad excited this year again. He was heading into town with some friends to see how much lute they could get. It's the only time I've heard him say "walking is way better then driving" when trick-or-treating!

Kaitlin was a witch, Dawson a vampire and Kortney a unicorn. Travis was already gone, but he was a grime reaper.

Notice Dawson and one of his Webkinz! He had to dress him up as a vampire too! Oh, the scythe he had to carry even though vampires don't. Is he not the cutest little vampire!?

Carving the pumpkins! Travis of course doesn't like to clean his out. He won't touch the yucky stuff. The carving he does on his own. Dawson was very particular about how he wanted his pumpkin to be. Scary. He drew the eyes, nose and mouth.

Kortney, enjoyed taking the yucky stuff out (surprise, surprise) and told daddy how she wanted her pumpkin to look. After it was done she spent another half an hour poking things into it and making holes. She just loved adding her own little touches to it!

Kaitlin doesn't mind the inside stuff and willingly scoopes it out. She had went on the computer to find a stencil of what she wanted her pumpkin to look like. Daddy also helped carve it out.

It's hard to see, but this is the fire face that Travis carved into a pumpkin at school.

This is Travis' pumpkin from home.

Kortney's little pumpkin with her added touches.

Kaitlin's cat pumpkin.

Dawson's scary pumpkin.

One of my favourite things

For as long as I can remember rainbows have been one of my favourite things. I can remember drawing them when I was little (maybe since they were easy) flowers and rainbows over and over.
Whenever we see one Dan laughs since he knows how much I love them. They're like a little gift of happiness that is guaranteed to turn a bad mood to good. Who would have thought that in this house we would not only see rainbows but full rainbows! Right across the road from one end to the other the full thing. And sometimes it doubles! Whenever it's rainy and sunny the kids and I always look for one out the windows, and if by chance (usually twice a year) we find one across the road outside we run with camera in hand to watch it before it fades. This one came on Oct 4 right around supper, so yes Dan was home to watch me outside in the rain to take some pics! Here's what we found that night....

Anyone who knows Dawson has seen his high energy and love to run. He is always doing laps around the inside of the house and constantly wanting to play something with a ball. One of his favourite things to do on the Wii is see how many pushups he can do on the Wii fit. For Christmas he wants to ask for a treadmill! He has seen one at a friends house and thinks it's very cool. He's a very active little boy who thinks he can anything and always want to show me how he can balance something, jump some way, run so fast, and do some trick.

Today was the schools Cross Country meet at our school with 5 other schools coming to compete. This is optional for anyone to participate. Of course Dawson was very excited and "trained" at school before hand.

Here is the 6 and 7 years old boys from Hullett. Dawson is third from the left on the bottom.
At the starting line waiting to go!

This is near the finish line and Dawson is coming!

Even with having to stop to fix his shoes Dawson ended up 7th in the 6/7 years olds group from all the schools! He was very happy and can't wait to do it again next year!