Christmas Time 2012

The month of December flew by with the kids and I spending 2 weeks in Sherwood Park to celebrate the holidays. Unfortunately Pat had to work Christmas and New Years so we had an early Christmas in Airdrie with Grandma & Grandpa. Santa even made a special trip to our house so the kids could open presents....Julia enjoyed opening everyone's gifts for them!

Truer words have never been written!

Skating at Jen & Brett's house with Owen, Sydney, Cole, Brodie and the Brenans

Julia's first time on skates...which lasted about 5 minutes! 

She preferred to skate in her boots!

Playing with the Hamilton boys

Playdate with The Wilsons and Brenans...hard to believe Ben is 2 months younger than William!

New Years at Festival Place

Their faces during the fireworks...priceless and super unimpressed!!!

Playing with Avrie, they were so cute and played so well together!

Ben discovered the joy of sticking out his tongue!

Christmas Day

Christmas Dinner...and we were missing a few!!!

Christmas morning

4 months old already!

Christmas Eve at the Stachniaks

Julia LOVES, LOVES, LOVES her "beautiful Cinderella dress" from Aunt Fern & Uncle Rob

Christmas in Airdrie

We went to Banff for the Santa Clause parade. This was Julia's favourite part...decorating an ice cream cone with green icing and candies, then eating it in 2 seconds!

Airdrie Festival of Lights

I'm pretty sure he's saying "Yay, its Christmas!!!" 

 Ben - Christmas 2012                                         Julia - Christmas 2010       

Happy First Christmas Little Ben!

Happy New Year

We had a pretty low key New Years Eve, Pat was working so my parents and I took the kids to Festival Place to watch the fireworks. This was Julia's first experience with fireworks (lights in the sky)....her response...."turn off the lights mommy, big noisy, no like it, turn off the lights". Below are pictures we took of her unimpressed face, they aren't great but I think they get the point across!

Once Upon a Dream

Julia singing Once Upon A Dream from Sleeping Beauty (aka: Slipping Bleauty). She knows all the words now and usually asks us to spin with her while she sings it!

"I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
Yes, I know it's true
that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
the way you did once upon a dream"

Chatting with Ben

Ben loves to talk, he is a great conversationalist although he only seems to have one volume setting! I love his chatter...he's so stinking cute!
Its kind of hard to hear me in the video, this is how our conversation went:
 I ask him to tell me a story, so he does. Then I said "really, then what happened?" Ben explains and I say "is there more" and I guess there was cause he responds. Man, I love this baby!

Sweet Nightingale

Julia was introduced to Cinderella in October after Heavy T (Grandpa) gave her the movie. We have watched it about 600 times since then and Julia loves to sing along with the stepsisters when they practice Sweet Nightingale...she sounds just like them!

Its Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas!

I use to love Christmas decorations, there was a time when I would get giddy to buy them but now with babies who like to touch things I really don't want to put them out since 90% are breakable! But the Christmas tree makes me happy and now it makes Julia happy! Every time she comes down the stairs she says "oh look, come see mommy, come see the lights!" She had such a great time decorating the tree, she was a girl on a mission and did an amazing job decorating the bottom of the tree, even though numerous ornaments hung on one branch! She kept checking all the boxes to make sure we didn't miss any, then she discovered the singing Christmas stuffies...oh man, they sure don't get annoying quick! Here are a couple pictures of Julia's decorating talents!

We took the kids to see Santa last week and Julia was so excited until she had to sit on Santa's lap, the pictures below show the emotional roller coaster of the Santa visit. As a parent part of me finds the tears amusing the other part struggles with the "If you sit on a strange man's lap, he'll give you candy!"
Ben didn't seem to mind Santa until the last picture and my friend Lisa's caption seems to explain it best!

"Haha, look at Ben's face 'If my sister is scared and crying then by GOD I should be terrified too - right Mum!?! MUM!?!"