On to the new year

We had a  wonderful Christmas in Ripley and Port Stanley. Brendan loved the train set Santa brought, and everyone was spoiled (no surprise there!) with piles of wonderful presents. I somehow missed taking cell phone pictures so I'll have to post up regular camera photos later. We are now finishing up a wonderful week and a half away by celebrating new years with our wonderful high school friends; a 15 year tradition! We're heading out now to toboggan in this wonderful winter wonderland. Yay for a white Christmas!

Anderson Christmas

Christmas time again, a time for so many wonderful traditions! We've arrived here in Ripley and celebrated Christmas tonight with the Anderson cousins. Our annual picture follows. That's a lot of cousins!

 

 

Just for comparison, here we all are 5 years ago!

 

A day in the life

Brendan is finally feeling better and was back to school today. We're off to his Christmas concert tonight. He says he's singing The Polar Express Train Got Lost. I have my doubts.

The babies are playing happily at my feet here, it's never a dull moment!

Sick Brendan, Helpful Babies

Poor Brendan has come down ill this weekend (acute sinusitis as far as I can tell - headache, fever and gross goopy eyes), and the babies are trying to console him any way they can - here he is trying to watch the Grinch on the couch while Heidi keeps him company. 

Meeting Santa

Our Christmas preparations are in full swing and I worry that Brendan may be totally burnt out by the time we get to the big dat if we're not careful!

So far the babies haven't reached the tree, so far...

We went to have the kids photo taken with Santa this afternoon. Deseronto has a neat place where you colour and drink hot cocoa while you wait for Santa. (It was very Christmassy, except the elf delivering cookies who reeked of cheap cigarette smoke). After talking to Santa, Brendan even got an early Christmas present out of Santas sack! It was a very cute place. The elf working the laptop connected to the camera had a picture of a Lotus on his desktop wallpaper. My favourite moment of the day was actually not Brendan sitting on Santas lap, it was when Brendan went up to the elf and asked him if he did ice racing at the North Pole! What a product of his raising!

We came home and are snuggled together on the couch watching a marathon of Christmas specials; Curious George Christmas, Prep and Landing and Robbie the Reindeer. Here's to the next generation of traditions! Hope you're all finding new and old traditions to celebrate at your place :)

O Christmas Tree

We had a wonderful festive time going to the Santa Claus parade, watching Christmas specials and putting up the tree this weekend. In a fit of extraordinary cheapness, I mean olden day nostalgia, I made the whole family trek out to the wilderness to pick out a wild tree this year. Unanticipated problems with this plan - #1 - it was raining. It's hard to sing Christmas carols convincingly in the fog and drizzle. But we tried.  #2 - Rob is very law abiding. This limited us to going to crown land, which we discovered is actually fairly limited in southern Ontario, so it was quite a drive to get there and all of the kids lost interest and fell asleep or began playing games on my cell phone. #3 - it turns out that we live in a scrubby area with only cedars and  maples. Even though the forests look like they are full of trees, they are not always. Pine trees at least. This was a rather substantial problem. I tried to convince Rob that the junipers were the right shape and colour for a Christmas tree, but he was adamant he was nor erecting a Christmas juniper in our house. Hmmm. At last, in a Christmas miracle sort if moment, we saw a lone scraggly pine tree at the edge of the road. We've decorated it up and I think it looks lovely. It's very possible that Heidi and Harrison are going to pull it clean over on top of themselves or each other so it's awfully convenient that it isn't heavy or full. I love it and it makes me smile.

Hair

Happy December 1 st! It's shave day! Rob had been growing a mustache for Movember, a prostate cancer and other men's health fundraiser along with the rest of his fire department. I am very glad it's over. He just didn't look like him...

It was a big hair week in our household. Harrison also got his first haircut, and he barely looks like himself now either. Rob and I had wanted to keep his sweet curls as long as we could, but between robs thick mustache and harrisons mullet we were looking a tad more trailer park-esque than we were comfortable with. We kept Heidis hair long, but may have invest in barrettes soon...

Darn, the haircut photo won't upload but here are current shots of everyone