Our friends world trip.......

Someone asked if I could post the link to our friends blog about their world trip.  Sorry it's taken so long, but I wanted to be sure it was ok to do so - and I've only just heard that it is!!  So here is the link to Derek and Sarahs World Trip

Goodbye wonderful Charlie :(

Sadly we have said goodbye to our beloved Charlie.  Her bad leg (which she had when we first got her) had deteriorated in the last year and despite the vets help, we were unable to ease the problem.  Charlie collapsed several times and although we were able to help her and make her comfortable the first few times and help her with food and water etc. it wasn't enough.

We had hoped to have her with us for many MANY more years :(

It won't be the same without her.

X

Tired....

Tired out after a busy day, but I did have a nice evening!  After supper, I worked on my JYC album and then we settled down and watched Disneys 'A Christmas Carol' while eating some British chocolate that we bought at Bulk Barn today  (thanks Sharon!!).

After that, Abigail and Samuel went on up to bed, and Susannah and I sat and watched the original movie of 'Fame' together!!  I was explaining about how I was madly in love with Leroy and Bruno when the movie first came out, but I preferred the series as the movie was a little 'before my time' but I was sooooo in to leg warmers!!!  I also thought Coco was FABULOUS!!!  I wanted to go to a school like Fame!!  (kind of funny how soon I might have two kids in a performing arts school lol),

And now of course leg warmers are back in style :)

It was a nice evening after a nice yet busy day.....

Tuesday.....

Lloyd has the day off today :)  He's just taken Chris in to the transit so he can head off to school.  Laurence and Susannah have headed off to school on the bus.  I'm sitting in bed drinking coffee and Sam is snuggled next to me watching Treehouse TV.  Abigail just popped in to say hi and is now downstairs either playing with the dogs or having breakfast in front of the tv.   It's definitely a day off of schoolwork.

Our plans for the day are to go out for breakfast and then to go to the hobby store.   Lloyd has this thing about building a steam whistle, so we're going to go and see if he can get any parts there without having to order them online.  We have to renew our Costco card too and get some groceries and stuff (you know, interesting stuff like 'toilet tissue' hahaha....lol)......we might pop in to Kidz Quarterz for a little while too....

Last night we watched 'Merry Christmas Mr Bean' - another of our Christmas traditions!!!  :)   so silly that it's funny!  The children are always so sad that it's only half an hour long!  It's magical this year to see Sam enjoying these shows properly for the first time!!  He was laughing hysterically at the turkey scene!!

Tonight we're going to watch Disney's 'A Christmas Carol' which is on tv!!  On Thursday we're going to see the play at the Citadel.

I was thinking this morning that I will be so sad when JYC finishes!!!  Luckily it ends January 6th, and January 7th is Sams birthday.....but January 8th will be sooooooo sad!!!!  :(   it will all be over :(

JYC has changed my December soooooo much - it has made the whole of December sooooo festive and has made Christmas sooooo much MORE!!!  :)   It stretched Christmas into a whole month and it's wonderful!!!  It's like you think about it every day and do something EVERY DAY...and feel festive every day :)

Have a great day everyone!!!

Come and visit our other blog!!

Please feel free to hop on over to our family blog Escaping The City to see everything we've been up to lately!!

I've been posting over there mainly because all of our activities have been overlapping into family life and so closely tied into our holiday celebrations.

Thank you!!

Painting playmats for toy soldiers.....

and the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem....

A game of 'Spin the Dreidel'......

I'm not sure we played it right, but we had a lot of fun anyway...

Sam lost - mainly because he ate all his chocolate chips so he was out first ;)  lol!

I looked everywhere for a REAL dreidel, but I could only find places online to buy them in bulk and couldn't find anywhere at WEM to buy one....I guess I just left it too late for this year - so I printed one off from online and laminated it before gluing it together!!!  It worked pretty good anyway :)

Nativity time.....

Hhhmmmm well, when you homeschool you sometimes have to be creative with costumes ;)

Abigail wrote the script and in it, Mary actually proposes to Joseph :)  Joseph replies "Uh Ok"   Hahahaha!!!  I asked her why she proposed and Abby says it's because the Angel told Mary that God wanted her to marry Joseph, so she figured she should go ahead and ask him!!!  lol!  :)

Good point :)

Happy Hanukkah!!

We've had quite the day here at our house!  We spent the morning learning all about the Nativity - finding out what houses were like at the time of Jesus' birth and following Mary and Joseph's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  We read the story and made costumes for Abigail and Sam.  Abby's was a halo and wings for an angel, and Sams was a mask for a sheep.  Abby worked on Word Searches and colouring pages as well as drawing a HUGE poster of the scene.

This afternoon we looked at another celebration happening at this time - the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah!! I made a dreidel and this evening we are going to play several games of this!!!  I wish I had picked up a  tub of the gold coins for 'gelt'.  We also looked at the reason behind the Hanukkah holiday and the different ways of celebrating the 8 day holiday - including the special candles involved.

In between this, Sam made a HUGE poster world 'thing' (not sure of the term lol) for his little soldiers...which Abigail helped him paint.  I made dinner and got that in the crockpot, did laundry, cleaned, and pottered about.....

Thats our day.  How was yours???

Music Monday....

Cool! (icy lol)

They just gave out on the weather that last night we were almost the coldest place on the PLANET!!!!!  Edmonton International Airport reported a temperature of -46c and a city in Siberia reported -48c!!!!  But tonight we COULD be THE coldest!!!!  OMG!!!!  hahahahaha thats so awful it's kind of funny!!

Ice sculptures and Christmas trees...

and a blurry iphone shot of me by the tree ;)

Alberta Legislature

You can read more about the Alberta Legislature HERE

The Police and Peace Officers Memorial

The Alberta Police and Peace Officers' Memorial honours

officers who have died in the line of duty.

Built in 2006

Winter pathway...

It's been bitterly cold here this weekend.  Yesterday was something like -27c and this morning got to

-43c!!!!  Thats BEFORE any windchill!!  In fact at one point this morning Edmonton was the coldest city in Canada!!  Fabulous!!!  :(  STill, it IS beautiful and sunny outside!!!!