3 Christmas gatherings done, 3 to go.
In the last week we have had 3 Christmas gatherings. The first with Brian's mom and sister Julie at Julie's house. Everyone had a great time with good food. The kids really enjoyed decorating a gingerbread house and sharing gifts. We also facetime'd with Brian's sister Lisa and her husband Jeff. It was nice to have them be part of the day.
Both Brian's mom and sister were headed to Nova Scotia the next day so we stayed until bedtime and then headed to Brian's dad's house to spend the night. This was followed by a nice day celebrating with him and many others. Here we had more good conversation and food, as well as a gift exchange.
Then we had an amazing Christmas Eve where we worked on decorating our stockings, and the Portable North Pole online provided a personalized conversation from Santa to our kids. Hadley was so excited!
The kids were up until about 9:30pm and then... slept in until 9:30am. AWESOME!
We woke to the excitement of the morning. Enjoyed opening our stockings and then had a beautiful Christmas morning breakfast of bacon and eggs with Christmas music in the background.
This was followed by our gift exchange, much mess, clean up, and play time.
We also phoned and facetime'd family.
I loved every minute of it. My big gifts this year: a steamer trunk which I hope to put in the great room at the new house to hold a nice blanket perhaps? I love it. As well, some decorative sticks. Hadley remembered me noting this from a while back and reminded Brian. :)
Hadley asked for a bike for her barbies to ride which Santa brought for her, and she wanted us to get her a sleeping beauty costume. She was delighted when she saw both that morning. Easton's wish list was small since he didn't really understand that he could ask for anything so Hadley asked for some train stuff for him. Santa brought him a shiny Thomas train, and we got him some tunnels, and other things to add to his wooden track set.
Of course there were a lot of other things but those are the things that stand out for me.
The major gift I got Brian was a plaque mounted artistic rendition of what the new house will look like. He seemed pleased.
The day was so relaxed. It was so nice. We were able to just totally enjoy every moment.
Since then we had a major snow fall which has lead to two beautiful days of playing in the snow with the kids. It wasn't packing snow but we used the snow ball maker, the bolder block maker, we made snow angels and the used the colour bubbles. All of witch lead to hours of fun. Unfortunately Brian has been sick for those two days so he was inside. However we were still able to enjoy hot chocolate and good conversation afterwards.
The kids and I tried out a new recipe Mars Bar Squares. YUMMY.
So far Christmas vacation = success.