New Years :)

We spent New Years with at my sisters A's house with a fair showing of my family! The kids played with their cousins and friends and the adults chatted and ate and ate and laughed! Baby J stayed up HOURS passed his bed time and was still having fun when we left! My brother D and his wife A were here from Ab. with their 2 kids and it was really neat to see them again and see how much their kids had grown since we'd seen them last summer. My sister S and husband D were also here from Ab with their 2 kids and it was awesome to see them. I think the last time we saw them was Dad's 60th and I was amazed to find my nephew J is now taller then me at 13 years old!! He's also got a bit of peach fuzz going on there!! Their daughter A spend a part of the night giving 'horse rides' and the kids totally took advantage of her! She's such a sweet kid she couldn't say no!! My folks were there too.. so we were only missing 2 families. That's not bad out of 7 families!  K had some of his family there as well. It was fun to see them as well as we don't see much of them. Out of 6 they were missing 3. Fun full house!   We had a wonderful time and stayed until almost midnight.. we actually started out 2011 in the truck on the way home! After we put the kids to bed Papa and I went out and got the beef Bindy who'd been hanging for a while inside ready for hamburger-ing the next day.. this proved challenging as it was -25C ish and she was frozen solid! Papa ended up taking the chain saw and cutting her into 6 chunks.. The only other thing we could have done is wait for it to warm up. Even then it would have to be warm for quite a while to thaw a whole cow! We set them on tables by the wood stove over night and she was pretty soft by morning! I told Papa I felt like a sneaky person cutting up a beef in the middle of the night with a chain saw!! He referred to it as 'the chain saw massacre!' The little birds like chick-a-Dee's and woodpeckers loved it :) It wasn't until we were half way done that I realized that we were RIGHT by our wonderful neighbor Mike's bedroom!! Chain sawing like crazy people in the dark in the middle of the night! I felt better later on though when I remembered it was New Years after all and I'm pretty sure he wasn't home :)

Gingerbread House Creation!

We had a lot of fun making our Gingerbread house this year. As you can see candy was VERY plentiful and that helps :) Papa ate almost all the lego candy before we even got to creating but we had enough for a dog and a snowman! We did a tree this year as well. Papa decorated it. I put icing on the house and did a little bit on it but the kids did the rest.. Of course we had to EAT some candy too. 

That blue thing is the dog.. the snowman is on the other side.. these poor people didn't have enough snow to cover the ground so some of their grass was showing.. They also had a lot of weird stuff, shrubs? Flowers? Dog mess? all over their yard! 

It's tradition to do it all together! Normally we do it Christmas Eve but this year I think it was boxing day! 

Christmas Day!

The 1st thing we do every Christmas morning is read the Christmas Story out of Luke. Here is this years picture of Papa reading it :) 

The kids listening to the Christmas story and trying to not look at their stockings behind me :) In their new PJ's. Baby J slept thru Christmas morning.. and got to open his gifts later on with the crew helping out. 

 
Having hot chocolate later on in the morning. We'd done over half the gifts and we needed a break! We actually took almost no pictures of gift opening this year.

Floor Hockey... we got them 4 sticks and 2 nets for Christmas this year. They love it!! The sticks and nets stay outside now :) 

Baby J in his new, but very drooled on, PJ's.. 8 month size, with one of his new toys! 

He's so cute.. was fun to have a 'first Christmas' with a baby again! 

E out playing hockey.. or at least enjoying the new sticks. She holds her stick all wrong and no matter how many times Papa showed her she kept holding it that way! 

R with a hockey stick in one hand and a bucket in the other. She HAD to have a bucket? I still don't know why.. but she looked HIGH and LOW until I found her this one.. an old egg bucket. Then she was happy! 

Papa showing L how to hold a stick properly and hit a ball. 

J took to hockey like he'd played before.. here are him and L fighting for the ball. We are going to do a unit on hockey for school soon but for now Papa gave them a few rules to follow. 

Papa at net with R in front looking on. Chip in the background. They cleared part of the driveway to play hockey on and he was NOT allowed on it.. very confused dog! He REALLY wanted the ball too.. but was pretty good about leaving it and staying out of the way. 

We got several inches of snow Christmas morning and it was perfect for a snowman! Here is R rolling up a head! 

The boys debating where the buttons should go on him while the girls look on! It was pretty warm out. 

J placing buttons. 

The happy crew and their finished snowman. Notice the snowball in his hand? Our snowman is ready for some fun!! 

The rest of the day was spent being lazy, playing with new toys and games and watching How to Train your Dragon :) 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Super cute aren't they?? Baby J is almost 6 months old in this picture. J is almost 7, E is 4, R is 2 and 3/4 (she has this thing about actually looking at the camera!) and L is 5 and 1/2 !! Growing up SO fast!!