Our December (so far.)

So much to say but no time to say it!

As always, we've been busy!

Starting last weekend...
What a great weekend we had - starting with (my) Christmas party on Friday night, then the children's party on Saturday afternoon, then (Paul's) Christmas party on Saturday night, followed by a day/afternoon of "taking it easy" because, well, we had to - we were snowed in.

This past week was quite hard on both Paul & I - juggling daycare plus the awful weather, so when Friday finally came, we both let out a massive sigh of relief - somehow, we've managed to survive four weeks without structured daycare!
My mom will be caring for the kids come the new year, and we couldn't be happier about that. Looking forward to things...returning to normal :)

But before that, I've got almost two weeks of vacation! Before I get ahead of myself, let me go back to last weekend.

LAST Friday night, we went out to my boss's home for our staff party (the consultant party was hosted the week before.) Given this was pretty much my first time with this group of people in a social setting - I was a tad bit nervous. But three quick drinks later, and all was well :) Paul and I had a fantastic time, and he's so impressed with my colleagues - I do believe he totally understands why I was so lured from my first meeting with my (now) boss. Have I mentioned how much I love my job?
Saturday afternoon, we packed the kiddies up to go to the annual Bell Children's Christmas party - the kids had a great time, with loads of junk food, an inflatable jumpy thing, a clown, face painting and of course, the big guy. Peyton and Paige did fine with Santa; Leah, on the other hand....well, you know Leah. So mommy had to sit in the picture. Santa doled out the gifts, and we all came home tired and happy. Pictures are dissappointing, at best. But I've got them anyway...









Saturday night, De came by to watch the kids as Paul & I were going to his Christmas gathering. Two date nights in a row - you'd almost think we didn't have children!
Sunday, the wonderful Chatterjees - despite the 83 feet of snowfall - picked up Peyton and brought her with them to Mitchell's hockey party. They bowled for a couple of hours, Santa dropped MORE gifts off there, and Missy P was returned to us totally exhausted - it's all good. Paul & I had tentatively planned to hit the malls (seeing as we were one kids down) but instead decided to lay low and not bother fighting traffic/weather AND people in the malls.
Kids playing in the front yard Sunday night:





Monday night, I got out on my own to stroke a few items off the list. Tuesday night, Paul had drinks with colleagues after work. Wednesday night, hm. Don't remember, so likely uneventful. Thursday night was FANTASTIC! Paul's parents came by to watch the kids so that we could finish shopping. We left just after 6PM, and shopped until 11PM!! Tiresome, a bit - Paul felt hungover the next morning - ha! But we accomplished so much, and, well, I love to shop! My kids got a visitor while we were out - Santa came by!!




Friday, my office shut down early, then yesterday (Saturday) Paul's parents came by again to watch the girls so that we could party with the neighbours. Which we did. And I now want an IPOD (Paul's going to stop me from going over there one of these days.) Seriously, how come I don't have one yet?
Today we planned to go out to Sammy's Christmas party (Vicki & Gord) - Paul went ahead with Peyton & Paige, while I stayed behind with a very sick little Leah. Congested, runny nose, bad cough - you name it (poor thing.) Anyway, aside from her being ill, I will admit that I *loved* the day. It's very very rare - in fact, it never happens - that I am alone with one of the twins for an afternoon. Isn't that sad? She was totally spoiled with all my attention, and in return she spoiled me with lots of hugs and cuddling. In the meantime, Paul was saying that Paige was asking for Leah on the ride out to Kanata - isn't that sweet? The trio were back around 5PM and the girls had a really good time.

So Christmas is just two sleeps away! It is the eve of Christmas Eve.

Tomorrow, Paul is working in the AM, then we'll be heading out to Deb's in Kanata around 5 - 6 ish. Eric, Helen, Elizabeth and Claire will be there - it's been a few months since we've seen them (early summer, I think?) Peyton's excited - she loves the girls. So it's an evening of junk food and cheer.
Christmas morning, we'll be having my mom & Deb's family over for the day. They'll be arriving first thing in the morning; we'll have a massive breakfast, then open gifts, then complain that we ate too much, only to eat a big dinner (steak & chicken on the bbq this year - ha!) We hope to see Paul's parents in the morning too - who could pass up watching the kiddies open their gifts??

Boxing day, we'll be going to Paul's parents place, along with Erin, Peter and little Mr. Nolan as well as (I believe) Betty Anne & Ken.

Speaking of little Mr. Nolan - he was baptised at an intimate ceremony out in Alexandria earlier this month. He's so big and healthy...just a doll.

Anyway, that's it for the update now - I've told Paul that we absolutely MUST take good pictures this year on Christmas Day (last year was too crazy!) so with both of us planning, hopefully I'll have something good to post.

Merry Christmas everyone!!
xoxoxoxox

Random photos:
Before bed one night (Paige destined to be a weatherperson?)





Cutie Patutie Nolan with his cousin Paige:



Cuddling with Mom:


Sigh. Fighting over an exersaucer. (note, Leah is grinning.)

The Berenstains' "B" Book

Enjoy!!

Big brown bear, blue bull, beautiful baboon, blowing bubbles, biking backward, BUMP, (bam) black bug's banana boxes and Billy Bunny's breadbasket and Brother Bob's baseball bus and Buster Beagle's banjo-bagpipe-bugle band...

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

...and that's what broke Baby Bird's balloon.

De has SOME TALENT

...but then again, her subject matter is pretty cute too :)

No November update

Ugh - I'm a couple of minutes past midnight in starting this entry, so I guess I've let a whole month go by with no update - ha!

So much has happened - that's my excuse!!

We'll go back to mid-October, when I started interviewing for this new job - that I knew I wanted from the moment I had the job description in hand. Totally appealing, totally what I want for this point in my life. 2 interviews later, and tah-dah! Got the offer on the afternoon of Haloween. What an absolute relief - for those who know me well, you know I've had my eyes and ears opened since returning to work from mat-leave in April. I've had good times at HRC, but it was evident from...well, my first week back that I didn't "fit in" anymore. I guess that's what happens when you take 15 months off, right? Anyhow, a few prospects surfaced, but this one was different. I'll elaborate another time, but suffice to say that the work hours, location, pay, the job itself - hell, everything is an improvement, so it was definitely a good move for me.

I just completed week # 2 and it's turned out to be exactly what I thought it would be. No surprises. But oh-my-gosh it's been busy - their year end is 9/30 so we've just wrapped up the audit, closed the Oct statements, they were in the final stages of ISO certification (got news of being recommended yesterday, woo hoo!) ummm...we're developing a new time entry system and I've jumped right into that - add into that the fact that my department is holding out a lot of hope that I'm coming to this position to make a lot of changes and make everyone's life easier. No sweat!! Anyway, I love it. Nothing more, nothing less.

On to the kids. PAIGE has given us another "month from hell" with respect to sleeping. It's totally behind us now, but wow! I thought our life as we knew it was over for a period of time. Poor thing, I think it actually turned out to be her eye teeth that caused the hell, but the result was that she had us up consistently between 4&5 every single morning. And wouldn't go back to sleep! So there was a period when I would put the babes down and be in bed at 8:30 myself...which leads to, well, nothing getting done. So this was happening, then it peaked at the beginning of last week (coincidentally the night before my first day of work.) She spiked a seriously high temperature at about 11PM (which we brought down with meds) then she was up moaning and crying almost every hour throughout the entire night. Ha ha, I had no time to think about being nervous for my first day...was too focused and worried about missy Paige. So anyway, by Wednesday, we figured out what was wrong - she woke with spots, so we figured THIS must have been roseaola. So we watched Leah, who never ended up developing it. Anyway, THIS week, Paige has been sleeping really well, and with any luck, I wont get out of bed before 8 AM tomorrow (I could dream, right!?)

We had a bit of bad luck at the end of last week with both our furnace breaking down PLUS the little sewer hole in the basement backing up. How funny is that, the two totally separate - serious - issues happen the same night? Anyway, Paul took the day and worked from home, and it was all resolved with a swipe of a visa card. Ouch.

Pictures - this hasn't been a picture heavy month - I don't know why, but Christmas is coming, so surely we'll have a lot to post soon. In the meantime, I've got some Haloween pics....









And a couple of random November photos that Rachel's taken:




So that's the update for now - a little lame, I know but time doesn't allow for much more that this.

Know that we are well. The kids are healthy, happy and developing/changing every single day - Paige's word of the day is "Mine!" and Leah's is "Bunny!!"
I'm settling into a good place with respect to work now, and that's going to make a load of difference on everyone's life here - so we're in a positive swing right now.

OH! And before I hit save, I wanted to say one final thing - WE HAVE A BOY!! OK, well not "we" as in Paul & I, but Erin & Peter welcomed our new nephew NOLAN into the world a month ago - on October 30th. I'm so anxious to see him - we haven't seen him since the day he was born (due to a pile of colds/flus, etc in the household) but they're coming out tomorrow and the girls will no doubt smother him :)

As always, I hope everyone is happy and healthy, and I'll try to update again very soon.