Christmas

Well, the Christmas rush is finally over. I have noticed that with a child it seems to last a lot longer than it did before, there are so many people that you have to get together with, so many friends who also have kids. I think this year we have had about 5 'Christmases' so far and there are still a few more friends that I haven't seen yet. Even though I know T* is being spoiled, I don't really mind, she's our only child so I figure why not?
This month has been great. We had my family Christmas, all my Aunties and Uncles and cousins. I love getting together with my family, we always have such a good time. This Christmas was great too because we got to see one of my cousins who lives in British Columbia, because he lives there we don't get to see much of him so it was a really great surprise to have him here. It was a great time had by all. We all get along really well, we talk about all kinds of things together, I never feel out of place with any of my family, they are truly great! All of us (the adults) get something for all the little ones and they all go crazy over their gifts, ripping a tearing all the paper off. Then for the adults we do the best thing. Each couple buys 1 or 2 gifts that can be for a guy or a girl, wrap it up and then we put them all in a pile. We each pick a number (depending on how many presents there are) and whoever gets the number 1 goes first, that person chooses a gift and opens it, the next person can either steal that gift or choose a new one. The game goes on like that with everyone trying to get the presents that they want, it's a total blast! We put a $30 spending limit on the gift so you don't go all crazy with anything, I think its actually more fun trying to figure out what to get that way, you not only have to get something that's not really expensive but you also have to try and find something that anyone would like to get. Gift baskets are a good one, most people will be happy with one, you just have to come up with a theme, then go find it all, and home made gift baskets are much better than store bought ones. This year was actually pretty quite for the gift game, there wasn't a whole lot of stealing, oddly enough we were kind of disappointed that the game didn't last too long. We had a great time though, catching up and hanging out.
R*, T* and I had another Christmas with my brothers and their families, we tried to save money this year by doing secret Santa's, though we all knew who was buying something for who, it was still nice, it gave us all a chance to figure out what the other person really wanted, then we all just hung out and relaxed.
T* had her Christmas pageant at school the week before holidays started, it was so cute, her class (senior kindergarten) and the junior kindergarten class were all together singing Do a Deer and Rock Around the Christmas Tree. They were so cute to watch. T* always looks so shy when she is on stage for the pageant, she sat really still and didn't move very much, you could see her moving a bit but they were very soft movements, she was singing too, though it was probably pretty quiet. The last day of school had us going to a Christmas party at one of her friends houses, the kids had a blast and even got a visit from Santa. He was great, he read them The Night Before Christmas, got pictures with all of them, and he just did a great job with it. T* was hilarious, I had taken her to get her picture with Santa at the mall the week before so when it was her turn to sit on his lap at the party, she puts her hands on her hips, looks at him and says, 'I already got my picture with you!', but she still sat on his lap, let all of us moms take pictures but then Santa asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she got all indignant, looks at him and says 'I already told you that don't you remember??' Santa was great and recovered quickly, telling T* that he just wanted to make sure she hadn't changed her mind. He really was a great Santa, apparently he has been playing Santa for friends and neighbours for about 30 years. It was a great kids party, even all of the parents had a good time.
After the party T* and I had to run off to her dress rehearsal for ballet. It's so cute to watch all the little kids dancing in their little costumes. This is the first year T* has been in a Ballet school that does a huge production with all different age and grade levels. It was really cool seeing the older girls dance in their toe shoes. T* though it was really neat to see it, even asking me if she would ever get to dance in those kind of shoes. I told her she just has to stick with ballet and one day when she is older then she will have toe shoes. It pretty neat to think that even though she is only 5 she has been dancing for 2 and a half to 3 years. She loves it, any time you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she says a ballerina princess, and has been saying that since she was 3.
Christmas eve T* put out her milk and cookie for Santa, she was so funny this year, soooo excited about doing that, last year it wasn't a big deal but this year she was so excited to leave it out for him. She had gotten this little Ziploc baggie from her teacher that had (reindeer food) in it from her teacher (it was oats and some silver glitter), she was to put it out Christmas eve so that the reindeer could find their way to our house, we had R* put it out by the windows so that we could see it sparkle. Then we checked the Santa Tracker to see where Santa was and T* played some of the games before going to bed. Christmas day saw us with R*'s parents, sister and her husband and son. T* was up bright and early, running into our room and yelling 'Mommy, Daddy come look what Santa got me!!' She is always so happy Christmas morning, it so cute to watch her face light up as she opens her gifts. I really love Christmas, I would be totally happy not getting anything but just watching other people open their presents with a smile.
Last year I started this thing with T* that I am happy to see has stuck with her. Before any holidays where presents are involved T* and I go through all her toys and get rid of the things she doesn't play with or the things she has more than one of, then we put them all together and give them to a second hand store. It's our way of helping others that might not be able to get many things. It makes me feel really great to know that my daughter is able to think of others at a time like this. She has actually started bringing it up on her own. Randomly throughout the year she will tell me 'Mommy, I think we should go through my toys and give them to kids who don't have much', it's great to see. I would like to find a place that actually just gives the toys to kids but I don't know if there is anywhere.
All in all this has been a great Christmas. I am actually writing this from the comfort of my couch on my new laptop! My Christmas present from R*, I love it!!
I hope you all had wonderful Christmases too!!

Commercial love

I don't know what it is about Whiskas commercials, for some reason they just make me laugh like crazy. I enjoyed the ones with the people pretending to be cats, my favorite out of those ones was the guy pretending to be a kitten. But my all time favorite commercial by whiskas now has to be the tee time one, it cracks me up every time I see it so I thought I would share it with everyone, just in case you haven't seen it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV4WjCM2S_c
Enjoy!

Lost in a good book

For the last month or so I have been rather busy, lots of places to go, things to get done, and that kind of thing. I have had all kinds of things that I have been trying to work on, projects that I want to do. For some reason though I have spent a lot of time with my nose in a book. I just can't seem to get enough these days, I keep finding new authors that I just love, different styles of writing, different subjects, though in some ways I guess they are all mysteries in one way or another. So I though that I would share some of my new favorite authors with everyone. Like I said they are pretty much all mysteries, and all very good.

Rhonda Pollero : Her F.A.T Mystery series is great, I have read all 4 of them and can't wait till she writes more. They are a lot of fun.
Victoria Laurie : Sooo much fun to read both series that she writes, I've read most though not all of hers. Everything that I have found at my local library has been devoured by me lol.
Madelyn Alt : The Bewitching Mysteries, very interesting reading. Totally worth a look. It's kind of neat reading about 6th sense and that sort of thing, they way you feel certain things for certain reasons.
Katie Fforde : I guess these aren't really mystery, they are actually romance and very good ones at that. They are a lot of fun to read because no one in them is the perfect person, every gets things wrong and acts like a knob at times but you still get your happy ending. I love them!
Victoria Holt : I'm surprised that I never stumbled onto her books before. They are a little odd, but still a good read. I guess she actually wrote under a number of different names but I haven't read any of the other ones yet.
Julie Kenner : Seriously, her Demon Hunting Soccer Mom series is hilarious! I love reading them. She throws all these day to day problems of a stay at home mom in with hunting and fighting demons, soooo funny. It still has the sad parts of parenthood and couple hood in it, and the edge of your seat parts, just great writing all around.
So those are some of my new favorites. I'm sure I will find more in the next while. Until I stop reading all together (never going to happen) I will always be on the look out for something new to read, or old favorites to go back to.

Pumpkins, Birthdays and Christmas, oh my

Okay I know, it's been a long time since I wrote in here. I'm not really sure how many people read this but I do apologize that I haven't writen for a while. It's been a really busy few months. So I will start where I left off and try to update everyone.
Halloween was great this year. About two weeks before T* and I went with a friend of her's from school to get pumpkins. It was a great time for all of us, nice to spend some time with friends (for both T* and I) and also to see people that I haven't seen in a while. We went to Snyders Family Farm on the Saturday ( it was either two weeks before Halloween or the weekend before, still can't totally remember) with some friends as I said. It's a great place to take the kids. They are only open for a short time every year, mainly for October, and only on the weekends, but it's totally worth it. I think we adults have just as much fun as the kids, or that has been my experience anyways. It doesn't cost a whole lot to get in and once you pay the entry fee you have use of everything inside, the only other things you have to pay for are the food you eat and the pumpkins you want. There's all kinds of things to do, a small petting zoo, a hay castle, a bouncy castle, "tractor" races, a haunted hay ride, mainly things for the kids but isn't that the point anyways? We were there for most of the afternoon (about 3 or 4 hours). The kids were able to do all the things that they wanted, and we all went on the haunted hay ride. It was the first time for T* and I and I must say that it was a lot of fun. Seeing the kids faces light up and how "scared" they were about what was going to jump out at us. The hay ride during the day is pretty tame, it's day light and they don't actually have anything that jumps out at you. The scariest part of the whole ride was when we entered the "witches forest", although this year there were no witches, only pirates. We went through the corn maze, I pretty sure we missed most of it but when you have 2 adults and 3 kids 5 and under you don't want to go through the whole thing, maybe next year. The second last thing we did was get the girls a pony ride, they loved it of course, what little girl doesn't? And then we went to pick out our pumpkins, again a lot of fun. They pumpkin patch is huge and you can pretty much find any size pumpkin. We got a few small ones, not really for carving, more for decorating. A great day had by all. The following weeked I went to another pumpkin patch with T*, my sister-in-law and my neice, to pick out carving pumpkins and then we had a family get together. On the Wednesday before Halloween T* and I did our pumpkins. I gave T* some markers and paint to decorate her's, and then I found these really neat stencils for pumpkin carving on the Better Homes and Gardens web-site. It was really cool and I was totally happy with the results as it was the first time I had ever tried to do something intricate with a pumpkin. T* had school on the Friday and was able to wear her Bee costume, after school was a Halloween party put on by one of the other mothers from T*'s class. That was a great time, the kids had a blast running around in their costumes playing games, we parents had a nice time chatting as well. During the day I had made some Jack-o-lantern cookies for all the kids. Halloween finally came on the Saturday and the 3 of us went out as a family with some close friends that we have gone with since T* was 2. T* was a ladybug for trick-or-treating this year, she had 2 costumes last year as well. It was so cold out that night that the kids run to each house and we were only out for about 45 min. A first for us, usually we are out for at least an hour and a half. Then we went back to our friends house for a drink to end the night. It was a busy Halloween but still a lot of fun.

There have been a few more birthdays between my last blog and this one though no where near as many as there were before. Most were just at friends houses but the one this past Saturday was a bowling party, fun to watch the kiddies bowling, they did pretty good too, I was impressed.

Now Christmas is almost here, it's starting to snow a bit every few days though none of it has stayed yet. I am almost finished all my Christmas shopping and look forward to the family party coming up this Sunday. I love Christmas time, the heat inside, watching the snow fall, drinking hot chocolate, spending time with family. My family likes to have fun at Christmas and so instead of doing secret Santa's for all the adults (we all buy gifts for the kids) we all get one non-gender specific gift, wrap it and put it in a pile. We only spend about $30 on the gift and you can either get one as a couple or get one from each of you. We don't put names on any of the gifts, so no one knows who gave what. Then each of us draws a number for however many presents there are and whoever has the number 1 picks a gift and opens it, the next person can either steal that gift or open a new one and so on, till all the gifts are open and everyone has one. It's always a lot of fun with everyone fighting over gifts, we have a blast with it every year. Home made gift baskets are pretty popular.

Some of the parents from T*'s class have found an indoor play ground that is free to use in the mornings, you can usually find a few of us there on Wednesday mornings. It's nice to have somewhere to take the kids where you don't really have to worry about them. It's especially nice this time of year when it's cold outside and you don't know what else to do with the kids. They all have a great time running off some energy and we wnjoy the time to chat and have a coffee.

I had my parent observations at the school last week, it was nice to have a chance to talk to T*'s teacher about how she is doing. It was great to hear that T* is doing well and the teacher enjoys having her in the class. T* is unbelievably well behaved at school, sometimes funny to see because she is so different from home.

I took T* to get her new Christmas out-fit ( she gets a new one every year) and then to get pictures with Santa (also something I do every year). She's not really crazy about getting the picture done and always looks more upset than happy, but I kind of like that better, it's funny to see the pictures. School photos also came back and they make me a little sad because she looks so much older than she did last year, my baby is growing up........

It's been a busy winter so far and I'm sure that it's just the begining. Christmas parties, Christmas, New Years, and of course more birthdays to go to. I'm looking forward to it though, I love having things to do.