Our Holidays

We've had a good couple of weeks - slow and relaxing, but that's all good! We spent Christmas Eve at Deb's as we have in past years. The kids played, the dogs (and Rico) wrestled, we ate yummy cheese, meats, and wonderful other appetizers, then we headed back home (I believe) around 9PM - Paul + I were exhausted and we knew we still had a fair bit to do before going to bed. Though the kids fell asleep on the way home, Leah + Peyton awoke and insisted on helping Paul set out the milk, cookies, carrots and other reindeer food while I took Paige up and tucked her into bed. Once the other two were settled and Santa had come and gone, and Paul had finished (pre) making the french toast, we finally collapsed in bed. I was the first to wake on Christmas morning at about 6:30AM. I had a quick shower and when I got out I could hear that the twins had climbed into bed with Paul. Thankfully, they hadn't clued in that it was Chrismas, so they weren't anxious to come downstairs. I quickly got dressed then popped downstairs to take some pics before the mayhem broke out:




So the big gift from Santa this year is a trip in January to Disneyworld - we tried to think of the most creative way to let them know, but in the end we figured that it is Christmas, and Christmas to kids is more about receiving presents/toys - so Santa brought a bunch of disney/princess themed gifts (jammies, figurines, treasure boxes, even candies.) Santa wrote a letter to the kids telling them about the trip, and also made a countdown calendar, but when the kids came down, they didn't have a lot of interest in either the letter or calendar (as expected, I suppose.) So once they opened all their Santa gifts, and Peyton noticed the big yellow board on the floor, we sat down and read the letter together (CLICK PLAY BELOW):




Paul's parents, along with Deb, Gary, Shane + Tristan all arrived promptly at 9AM, and then the kids opened the rest of the gifts...as in past years, I simply don't have a lot of photos because I was helping the kids open their gifts, while Paul's mom was on wrapping paper cleanup and Paul was alternating making breakfast with snapping photos here and there.










After the kids opened their gifts, we sat down to enjoy a massive, fabulous breakfast. Then every adult in the household spent about an hour opening up the plastic packaging on the kids gift (NOTE - next year we WILL own those special scissors that easily cut through packaging.)
Paul's parents headed home, and Tanya popped in for a visit. The boys went downstairs to play Shane's XBOX (not entirely sure what game, but at one point Gary was "bleeding out." Nice, Christmas game, surely.) I put the kids down for a nap, then Deb + I attempted to watch YEAR 1 while Peyton played on her new DS and Tristan messed around with her new laptop. (movie not recommended, by the way.) The movie couldn't compete with Tristan's built in webcam - which had us laughing until we were crying as we morphed our heads and changed out voice tones/accents, etc.
Paul barbequed our dinner (souvlaki) then Deb, Gary + the kids headed home around 8PM - it was a great, though long, day.

Boxing day was exactly that - the decoration boxes came out and the tree came down - it felt so good to reclaim the area!! What was a disasterous space 24 hours earlier was now tidied, put away, vacuumed...so nice. Paul popped out to buy his club at golf town, but other than that and a license for office for the new laptop (future shop) we didn't do any shopping on boxing day (unheard of for me!!)

We were originally supposed to go to Paul's parents for Christmas dinner on Boxing Day, but a glance at the forecast earlier in the week indicated that the 26th was going to be crappy, and so the dinner was postponed to Sunday night. Which worked out really well, as after a busy hectic Christmas, we had a quiet day to wrap up and relax. And yes, the weather did hit as expected. Rain all day, that turned to freezing rain, that resulted in an overnight 2 hour blackout Saturday night...which meant I got to sleep with Peyton and Paul got Casey :)

Sunday we headed over to Paul's parents house, and had a traditional Christmas meal with Betty Anne + Ken in attendance, as well as Erin, Peter and 2 year old Nolan. And his very popular recycling truck.

Before heading out: (wearing outfits that Laurie + Jenna picked out a couple of weeks earlier)



Monday, we along with Rich went to the new theatre that just opened up out here to see the Princess + the Frog (it was fabulous, by the way.) Then Peyton and I headed to St. Laurent because she had decided to finally get her ears pierced. Of course I forgot that Monday was still a stat holiday, so the mall was a zoo and we had to return on Tuesday to get someone to pierce her ears:



Monday night I got out with Tanya + De - we went to see New Moon (finally.)

Tuesday I shopped until I dropped...first with Peyton in the morning, then I dropped her off to meet Paul at his parents house (he took the girls for a tour of the airport) and I hit the shopping again.

Wednesday I played Peyton's DS...like, all day (oops.)

Thursday (NYE) was really quiet - we just chilled all day (and night.) I did stay up and see the ball drop :)

Yesterday I got in a purging mood, and Purge.We.Did. I threw out a pile of broken toys, I've got three black garbage bags of toys in the living room that will head out to the food cupboard, we packed up and put away a billion little people and their homes/garages/farms...etc. It felt so good and everything is so nice and organized...for now.

Today Peyton's hockey started again...I just did housework for most of the day while Paul worked at chipping away all the grout in our shower - while replacing a cracked tile he's decided that all the grout should be replaced at the same time. He's cooking dinner for the kids right now and we'll be heading out in about an hour for an adult evening at Chantal & Colins - I've been so house-bound, it'll be nice to get out and socialize a bit.

Tomorrow Grandma comes back from St. Lucia - it seems like she's been gone forever and we've all definitely missed her. I don't return to work until Tuesday, so a couple more days of holidays for me. :)