Merry Christmas

It's hard to believe that Christmas is already over. We spend so much time preparing and running from place to place that when it's finally over it seems rather weird. We had a wonderful day enjoying each other, opening presents, playing in the massive amounts of snow that fell. We feel truly blessed.

Here are Hannah and Ben in their traditional Christmas Eve "new Jammies." This is what we woke up to on Christmas morning. This is why we weren't able to make it to the Christmas Eve services the night before. I was a little sad about that...but I guess safety first.

Benjamin got some new transformers for Christmas as well as a few additions to his Rescue Hero collection. He was very very excited.

As you can tell Hannah was very excited to get her own Karaoke Machine. She has spent so much time performing in her room between then and now...it was clearly the "right" gift.

What better gift for Marc than a light sabre to play with on the Wii. He also got a wonderful new camera that he purchased a few weeks ago.

Here are the kids with Santa???? Looks more like grandpa to me.
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

After a blizzardy day it was sure nice to be able to enjoy the outdoors. We bundled up and headed outside. Here are a few pictures of the kids playing. They tried to have a snowball fight but the snow is so dry that all they managed to do was blow snow around each other. They had a lot of fun as you can see. Enjoy the pics.

Christmas Musical

We had quite the busy weekend. Between two Children's Christmas Productions and two Family Christmas gatherings we kept ourselves hopping. It was wonderful for the family to be together and some of them even made it to see the kids at church. Our kids did a wonderful job for their performances and what could have been a terribly stressful weekend, turned into a rather nice one. Here are a few pictures. Benjamin was singing his heart out with the Preschool class and Hannah was a soloist in the musical.

Benjamin singing "Go tell it on the mountain."

Hannah on Sunday Morning.

Hannah on Saturday night.

Milk: It does a body good

So today was the day Ben got his cast off. I thought it would be a relatively easy procedure and Ben would be as good as new and he could once again be his independent self. Nope. Ben freaked when they used the saw even though he saw that it couldn't cut his skin. He screamed and it didn't seem to come off very easily so he screamed for a very long time. Then once it was off I figured he would walk (maybe a little wobbly because he wasn't used to it.). Nope. Ben refuses to walk. Perhaps the healing power of milk will come to my rescue as Ben so nicely put "I'll walk after I have some milk because it will strengthen my bones." We can only hope.

Building Arm Muscles

So here is Ben's foot. Sunday night he had a little incident and this is the result. Ben is such an active little guy and quite frankly we are surprised he hasn't broken anything sooner. We just had to laugh because it was such an innocent thing that caused this. He was running to the bathroom and he misjudged where the door was and smashed it either on the door or the door jamb. I'm still not sure which. He did a lot of screaming and after using the bathroom (finally) we elevated and iced it. I figured he would be good to go the next day because there was no bruising and it wasn't swelling.
The next morning he woke up and took two steps and he fell on his face. He still could not put any weight on it. I took him to the clinic and then x-rays and sure enough he broke it. So now he is in a beautiful little blue cast and even though he can get frustrated at times he is in good spirits.
The first night he asked me how we take it off so he could go to bed. And then last night he asked if could take it off tomorrow. At this point it has only been 4 days not the 4 weeks he needs.
He is adapting amazingly well and gets around just as fast as he did before (however his knees are starting to really bother him from all the crawling). My arms are getting stronger than ever because I have to carry him whenever we leave the house. It makes me very grateful that he is such a healthy boy and that this too will pass.

Halloween

I don't look as forward to halloween as I used to even though the kids seem to enjoy it a lot more now that they are older. Perhaps I'm just being a fuddy duddy but it seems like too much work. I thought I had gotten away with not having to carve any pumpkins this year but Friday morning rolled around and Ben said "So are we making our pumpkins today?" I couldn't say no to my little 4 year old so we searched around all morning looking for pumpkins (who knew they were so hard to find if you leave it to the last minute?) We settled on these squash type things that looked an awful lot like pumpkins and so began my morning of carving pumpkins. I suppose when the kids get older it will be better because right now I do all the work. Ben thought the inside of the "pumpkin" was gross so he scooped a couple spoonfuls out and said he had had enough. He drew a picture on a paper and I was supposed to copy it. Successful??? He thought so. Here are the results.

So what about costumes you say? Well my husband dressed up for work and he went all out and was Mario. He looked pretty good if I do say so myself. Hannah was Dorothy from Wizard of Oz complete with a basket carrying her little Toto. Ben was Optimus Prime the leader of the Autobots from the Transformers. We ended up going to Northview's Pumpkin Patch Carnival which was great. Ben was exhausted after about an hour so we headed home and then Hannah and I went trick or treating for a while. They ended up with way too much candy but Marc and I will help out with that. All in all it was pretty uneventful but I guess that is what we wanted. Did the kids have fun? Yes... even Marc.

Roses

The other day my husband came home with two dozen red roses for me. Reason? None, except he loves me. Isn't that sweet?

A morning of dew

Saturday morning our family headed up to the Abby in Mission to take some family pictures. It was quite chilly but an absolute beautiful morning. Along the way I took some random shots. Here are a few. (You'll have to wait til Christmas to see the family photo)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone and Christmas will be here before you know it. We had quite a lazy weekend which was great because last weekend was crazy and next weekend will be even crazier. It's weird because I'm totally looking forward to January because my life should slow down a little bit then.
Turkey was had by all (except Ben) when we went downstairs to have a family dinner at Marc's parents. It's nice to get together and really do nothing but visit. As you can tell by the picture, Marc was full of energy. I think it was all that eating that did him in.
Here is cute little Luke. He is such a sweetie and so full of energy. I love this picture of him because it captures his personality so well. He was playing dress-up and really getting into it.
My beautiful Hannah who is growing up too fast.
My handsome Ben who is as wonderful as ever.

On Monday we had the Beecham family over for dinner. We had a great time and ate a wonderful meal and way too many pumpkin and lemon tarts. The kids enjoyed hanging out together and it was a great way to spend a holiday. Here we are filling our faces.

Spiritual Osmosis?

I know that all of my posts recently seem to be about Ben but I think I've been spending the most time with him so I guess it makes sense. Sunday afternoon I was wondering where Ben was so I was looking around the house. I realized he was outside on our small deck. I went out there and he was sitting on our deck chair with his feet up on the ottoman and he had his little blue Bible with him. This Bible is not a picture Bible and he is only 4 so he doesn't know how to read yet but he was so engrossed with what he was doing and flipped through it for about ten minutes. Maybe it's spiritual osmosis...maybe there is a future preacher in the family.

Visiting the Fire Hall

Last Wednesday night Ben and Marc visited the Fire Hall for their annual Open House. (Hannah and I didn't get to go because we had Pioneer Girls that night.) I think they had a good time even though it was quite cold out. Ben got a fire hat and a bag full of goodies. He also got to go inside a fire truck. He's such a funny boy because apparently as soon as he had seen everything he wanted, he immediately said "Let's go home." He is my home boy. Take a look.

An interesting question.

The other day when Ben and I got home from swimming lessons he asked me the cutest question. I guess I'm blogging it so that I have a record of it and won't forget.
"Mommy, why did God name our city Abbotsford?"
"He didn't."
"Oh, then Jesus named it Abbotsford right?"
"No, He didn't either. A man named it."
"Oh, I get it. A shepherd must have named it Abbotsford then."

Swimming Lessons

So it's that time of year again when swimming lessons starts up. Benjamin really enjoyed his lessons last spring so we thought he should continue. (Besides every child should know how to swim.) Throughout the summer he loved swimming and was such a fish in the water. He is now registered as a sunfish and continues to love it. There is only one other child in his class so he gets a lot of one on one time. I find it hard not to compare him to the other child as she is really advanced however I know that Ben will get there. He seems to do a lot better in the deep end then the shallow. I think it's because he knows he can also touch in the shallow end but has to do his best to swim when he is in the deep end. Here are a few pictures and hopefully a video if I can get it to upload.

A Special Visit

Today Hannah's school had the honour of hosting our Lieutenant Governor, His Honour Steven Point. It was pretty neat to have something like this happen at our little school. Apparently one of the classes had written to him asking about government and his specific office. He came to the school to talk to us about his job and present the school with a book and a new literacy program. We were the first school in BC to get this program. Hannah was chosen by her class to ask him a question. She was very excited and said "Hi, I'm Hannah. What's your favourite thing about being the Lieutenant Governor?" He answered that he loved to go into schools and talk to children. I guess that was a pretty typical response but the kids loved it. Here are a couple of pictures. (sorry they are so grainy but I was quite far away)

Time at the Park

I was just looking through my pictures and realized that I had taken a whole bunch of pictures a week or so ago when Ben and I went to the park. We had a great afternoon and enjoyed the playground, the ducks, geese, and of course each other. I just wanted to post a few pictures because our day was so great.