Christmas upnorth

Every year we are blessed with nice weather to travel to LionsHead. We are also lucky to be able to stay for a few days to visit with family. Here are just a few pics of another wonderful Christmas!

The girls and Great Grandma.

Kaitlin and Dan

Travis and Dan

Playing with dominoes

Little Miss knocking them down!

G&G B playing Blokus

The VERY long game on Nintendo Monopoly!!

One of many

Today was our first family Christmas of the season. The kids were very excited to be celebrating with Grandma and Grandpa H in their new house!

Mackenzie

Ty and Wyatt

Kortney and Kevin

Kevin and his favourite gift....a wooden calf to practice his roping!

Kortney and Alex riding the calf!

Travis with his gift card which was hidden in a baby book! Took him a while to figure out why he was given a itsy bitsy spider book from Sandra and the boys!

Travis, Chris, David and Dawson. The big boys!

My little angel!

Ty and own stick horse!

Kaitlin

Dawson who LOVED his new broomball gloves and football!

Our great idea!

This past fall the store flyers we receive in the mail changed from coming in a plastic bag to being bundled up in paper. A change for the environment I guess, but I saw it as large blank paper coming to our door every week - perfect since the kids go through paper like crazy with all their drawing. I started saving this wonderful paper in a drawer. After Christmas shopping one day and coming home to wrap, it dawned on me that this paper would make great gift wrap! I had seen before the idea of making your own gift wrap, but never searched out where to buy the rolls of paper I would need. But now, these perfect sized sheets of blank paper were being delivered to us!! So out with the box of Christmas stamps and it didn't take long for the kids decorate all the paper we had been collecting. When it came time to wrap presents it was great and the kids were proud of the work they had done and their contribution to every present!

Christmas talent show

This year Kaitlin decided that she would like to be part of the Londesboro United Church Christmas talent concert. Since we are not members (but Dan's parents are) I wasn't sure if there would be room for Kaitlin to join. She took it on herself to find out by asking her friend then Barb who is the organist of the church if she could dance. Barb then phoned me to ask if I knew about the concert and to tell me about her conversation with Kaitlin. She was very happy Kaitlin had asked her and of course she would add Kaitlin's name to the night. From there Kaitlin told me what song she needed and by herself danced in her room very excited about the upcoming concert. She picked out one of her costumes from last years ballet and every time I asked her if she had a routine planned out she would just reply "kinda, I'm just going to make it up as I go!" Needless to say I was a little nervous, but right up to the night I didn't see any nervousness from her. She was just so confident that she would do a good job and acted like she did this all the time!  I'm so proud of her and am always amazed by her self esteem. I have been told by many people how wonderful of a girl she is and how lucky we are. We are truly blessed to have her in our family. I'd like to think as parents we have helped mold her into this great girl, but I really think she was born this way and we are just very lucky to call her ours.
 
Here are some photos of the night. Not great photos, but the best I could get. There were almost 20 different acts to watch. They were are great, cute and priceless!  Here are just a few.

The first act we saw was from the Brohman family. The sisters Brette and Darcy were helped by their mom to put the pictures on the overhead. Teag and his Dad told the story of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. They did an awesome job!

Here are the girls with their hair up as Suzie Lou of Houville!

Here are Cassie and Chloe singing Rodolph The Red Nosed Reindeer!

Shayna reciting the poem Five Little Bells

Sydney talking to Mrs Claus before playing the piano.

And Sara singing Nuttin For Christmas.

One of the favourties was Jane and her dog Daisy showing of their many tricks.

Another Christmas song preformed.

The group of kids all waiting for Santa to make a special visit!

Kaitlin and Kortney both sat with Santa after the show. Kortney's turn was before I got downstairs. The boys wouldn't take part!

And here is Kaitlin's performance I recorded on my camera. It's a bit dark. She was the only one not to perform a Christmas song, but she didn't care!

So much snow!!!!

As a lot of you have heard on the news, our area in Ontario has been blasted with an ongoing storm now that's lasted almost two weeks! Schools have been closed, the kids have had 6 snow days in a week and a half, roads have been closed and Christmas shopping for many people has been at a standstill. Twice we've have had a friend bring milk and bread to the end of our lane way where we had to walk out to get it! Dan has been blowing snow before going to milk in the morning then most days had to blow out the lane way again (here and at the barn down the road).

The kids and I have been snowed in here most days. Yesterday while we could get out of our lane way, we got stuck on the road in a drift/ditch! We have been keeping busy doing lots of baking, playing games and trying to break up frozen water bowls for the animals in the shed.

All my plans have been canceled this week, but today the kids went to school!!! Hopefully the worst is over and next week when they're actually on vacation we will be able to get out and visit with friends and be free to leave the house...Dan has asked me to please stay home if the road is bad again....I said I'll try :)

Here are the kids at the beginning of last week making forts in the drift out back.






Dawson in his hole!
Kortney still trying to swing!
Travis not happy I'm taking his picture!
Kaitlin shoveling out her hole!
Now here is the same drift this week.


The girls
The front trees.
And Kortney on the porch!
As much as I love having snow before Christmas, I hope Mother Nature has run out for now and we all can have a great Christmas with family and friends!

Halloween 2010

We celebrated Halloween this year as always with excited kids, undecided costume ideas and in the end with lots of candy!

The kids couldn't wait to carve their pumpkins, and had a hard time deciding which pumpkin they wanted. Then the next decision, how they wanted their pumpkin to be carved. Travis, using his Ipod had to check out some pumpkin ideas from the internet before deciding on a puking pumpkin. Travis always hates scooping out the inside of the pumpkin, so this idea was perfect for him. He was able to use a fork and pull some of it out the front without cleaning out the whole inside. He was very happy with the finish look!
Kortney knew what shapes she wanted for the face, but then wanted to continue to cutout pieces from her pumpkin. It had little holes all over it that she carved out herself. Had we not eventually stopped her, I'm sure her pumpkin would have been well carved all around!
Dawson knew right away what he wanted - a vampire pumpkin. He helped with the carving and tried adding red marker around the mouth. He also wanted to carve bats into the side.
Every year Kaitlin likes to use a stencil to carve her picture into her pumpkin. This year she choose a ghost and carved in the word BOO into the sides.
The Friday night before Halloween I brought Kaitlin, Dawson and Kortney to a dance/party in Auburn. They had loads of fun with lots of other friends there! Here is a just some of the kids that came that night!
Kortney and her friend Cassie.

Dawson and his friends.
Chloe, Avery and Brianna.

Kortney and more friends.
Kaitlin and Avery.

As for costumes this year we had some changes in decisions. Travis was of course his regular Halloween self. Dressed up in a long black robe with his face covered. Kaitlin had decided to be a devil, but then changed her mind and was a black cat. Dawson copied Travis and wore a black robe with a mask and Kortney who was going to be a devil too ended up dressing up as a pumpkin! I don't have too many pictures of Halloween night since I forgot with all the comotion about pictures until it was too late. And Travis was gone with friends trick or treating in Clinton.
So that's it, another Halloween gone and done....Next, Christmas which is my favourite time of the year!!