Today...a new baby....

My wonderful school friend 'Natty' Nathalie Crewes, was due to be induced today if her baby had not made an appearance! So by now, back in England, my old friend has become a Mom..either today or in the last few days!!!

I'm not sure when I will hear as I am sure she has far more important things on her mind than emailing people lol! But I just want to say that I am thinking of you Nathalie! It's still so hard to think of my old school friends as Moms...it doesn't seem possible! I still picture Nathalie walking around with her really long Dr Who style stripey scarf on!!! I still picture her as 16......not nearly 36!

I hope everything has gone well and both Mom and new baby are doing well.....I can't wait to hear :)

On a high....

After weeks of planning, the Christmas party is over...I was worried about how it would go, but it went REALLY well....I think it was actually the best one we have been to since moving here and NOT having sleigh rides really made things better (sorry but they used to ruin the whole party and stress most parents out)!!!! So YAY for the windchill!!!

Lloyds friend Jeff came along and brought his little girl too which was nice :)

Anyway, I am too tired to post much more tonight so will update tomorrow....

Rhonda - it was so great to see you all there today and to finally meet Trevor! And your children are just so gorgeous - they seemed to have a LOT of fun :) I hope so!

At the end they were all saying how great Chris did (he and his team of student volunteers ran the games downstairs, sang on stage before Santa arrived and entertained the children while they waited in line for their visit with Santa). They all were saying how one day they think he will be running the country and that next year he could probably organize the whole party (lol).

The teen volunteers really did do a a great job so I'm sending a thank you note to their teacher tomorrow for him to read to them all....

It's been such a wonderful day and then I come home and check my Email and find the nicest Email from Colleen (thank you SO much!!!) - it was lovely to read :)

I am high as a kite but exhausted!

Oh and after the party the man that runs the hall showed me around and showed me how to switch the water on, where all the lights are etc and said I can just go in any time and go through the preschool cupboards and find what needs to be ordered...

So I kind of feel ready for preschool to start...just need to get all the forms ready for the parents to sign on the first day and need to book into a first aid course at the fire station....

I hope you have all had a wonderful weekend...a Christmasy first weekend of December :) The snow here certainly makes you feel Christmasy :)

My favourite gingerbread house...

I have a ton of pictures to add of the gingerbread house and cake competition but I am off for a bath now and will do them tomorrow! But here is a taster for you....this is my favourite house...a Western themed house with Santa in a bathtub of bubbles, Mrs Claus singing karaoke in the bar with the cancan dancers, and all kinds of things happening! FABULOUS!!!

Goodnight everyone - have a great evening! I'm off to soak in the tub for an hour!!!

Candle dipping and Tree decorating....

The tree decorating was great! Although they limited the children to 10 beads each and they weren't great beads either! (Although the lady said she spent $315. on them!!) Anyway, we brought the trees home and the children will finish decorating them from our beads here at home :) They are cute little trees complete with stands!!!

Cookie decorating.....

Almost every big event here in Canada has cookie decorating for the children to do :) It's always a big hit!

Entertainment....

The Entertainment on the stage didn't stop - little children from dance schools across the city danced and sang for us.....Sam loved watching them....

We sat for a while and listened to some singers while chatting to a friends I know from Parentlink.....Sarah and her family were at the Festival for the very first time, so we sat and chatted about how lucky Canadians are to have so many events and activities offered for families with small children throughout the year.....and at such low cost.....everything back home was always so crowded or so expensive and very few cities back home put on many events for families.....

I asked where Sarah was from and she mentioned she had grown up near London and had lived in Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Guildford...I mentioned I lived in Epsom for a few years and she said she grew up in West Ewell! I said my Aunt had lived there and then moved to Guildford...I did my nurse training in Epsom and we all used to go over to Ewell to TGI Fridays for dinner :) My Aunt used to live just off the Kingston Bypass (I think the road was called anyway......long time ago!!!

Spiral painting....

The children enjoyed this craft last year and again this year.....they drop dots of coloured ink on spinning papaer and it throws out pretty patterns :) Even Sam had a go at this :)

Working in the hospital.....

The children had fun listening to heartbeats, operating on Rudolph, setting up IV's and having plaster casts put on their fingers :)

Pretty City.......

Wintry skies over Edmonton.....sundogs around the sun.....the pyramids and ski hills......

The Festival of trees was in the building shaped like a ski hill in front of the pink building.......The pink building is Canada Place - passport office etc etc and Federal offices.....and the ski hill shaped building is the Shaw Conference Centre (Shaw being a cable tv/ phone company.......)

The boat in the river is the Edmonton Queen - you can take rides down the river in the summer months and have dinner I think.......as you can see, it doesn't go very far during the Winter months ;)

Christmas Elves.......

Super bubbles!!!!

The children loved standing inside a monster bubble and then blowing to pop it! Although Sam just stood inside looking cute and waited for it to pop in on him ;)

The Festival of Trees...

Wonderful :) Really puts you in the Festive mood.....we had a lovely morning wandering the hall today....I think we spent 3 hours there. LOTS of pictures to bore you with but not many are very good.....I charged my flash but I think I need new rechargables as these don't seem to charge much any more....so the pictures are either really dark or too bright and I was enjoying myself far too much to stand around faffing with the camera :)