My Jill

Caelan is very possessive...

 

Especially when it comes to friends and family close to his heart.

 

We were lucky enough to spend time with his new cousin Jill on December 22nd and December 26th.  Since then he asks regularly, almost constantly, about "his Jill".

 

One morning he asked for his ipad. 

 

He promptly found the picture he had taken on Boxing Day of "his Jill" and simply sat there all googly eyed with her.  He hugged her and kissed her and loved her all up, all through the ipad. 

 

You would hear him saying "my Jill" over and over again for quite a while.

 

It's still the first thing he looks for on his ipad.

"Look Mom it's my Jill!"

We're so lucky to have an original!

Another Pinterest inspiration

We have a lot of Nurses that work with Caelan...

Every year I struggle with something to get them for Christmas.

This year I found an idea on Pinterest that I thought was great and so easy.

 

All you need are some mugs and Sharpie markers.

 

 

You write your message on the mugs and then bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes to set the ink.

 

I'm happy with how they turned out... Hopefully our many nurses like them too!

Another Winter Wonderland

I think we already have more snow than we got in all of last year!! 

We've really only had two snowfalls, but they were huge dumps of snow!!

Damian pointed out that he only started the snow blower a few times last year... Well, in the past week he's already broken that record two fold!

Caelan wanted to go make a snowman with the kit the kids got for Christmas.  Didn't matter how many times we told him it wasn't snowman snow.  Apparently, that's a difficult concept for a four year old.  However, we still had a standing snowman from the last snow fall and he'd lost all his pieces so it was decided they'd go out and use the kit to rejuvenate our old snowman...

 

 

To say the snow was deep was a bit of an understatement...  Damian has a path shovelled out to the chicken coup and as long as him and Caelan stuck to that all was good.  But two steps into the deep stuff and they were in trouble.  Well, Caelan was in trouble. Trouble in the form that his boot came off and he was delivered back inside to me twice for that very reason!!

 

 

 

It was perfect snow for making snow angels though...

 

 

 

 

Darcy began digging out the foundation for what has the potential to be an awesome fort.

 



 

 

To put it in perspective... If you're familiar with those tall tomato cages used to hold the tomato plants up in a summer garden... Well, here's what you can see of ours!

 

 

 

Hope everyone stayed safe... I know I was pretty happy to be off work and snuggled up inside!



Boxing Day

On Boxing Day we always head out to celebrate Christmas with Poppa and Lolo.  It's always a fun afternoon and great to see everyone. 

We do presents a little differently at Poppa and Lolo's.  They started mixing things up a couple of years ago.  We have to guess which gifts are ours before we can open them!  It makes for lots of laughs as we all try to remember what we asked for and decipher the packaging!!

Here's a pic of the whole gang, less my sister who is taking the picture.

I really am disappointed in my pictures from Boxing Day... However, I did get some great ones of Jill that I thought I'd share.  Nobody wants to see pics of the adults anyway!  At least that's what I'm telling myself... Christmas is all about the kids, right?

 

 

 

And who helped get all these smiles out of wee Jill??

 

Why Darcy of course!

 

From the smiles on everyone's face, you can bet we all had a great time!

Our Christmas Day

  

For the first time in the three years that Caelan has been home for Christmas, we had a nurse on Christmas Eve!!  We still had to get up at six when her shift ended, but so much better than splitting the night between the two of us!  The girls crawled into bed with me around seven and we went out to join Daddy not long after that...

 

Merry Christmas!

 

Caelan was still sleeping... We partied a little later than he's used to at Gramma and Grampa's on Christmas Eve so it would have been nice to let him get a bit more sleep. The girls were really good about checking out what Santa brought while we let Caelan catch a few more zzzz's. However, at his first cough Darcy was leaning over him asking him if he was awake and did he see what Santa brought him! The poor boy was crawling out of bed with his eyes still shut. He was excited about his KITCHEN (finally!) and checking everything out while still blinking the sleep from his heavy eyes.



MY KITCHEN!!

 

Then we headed back to Mom and Dad's room to open our stockings.  Here's our traditional photo and the beginning of our day in pictures... starting around eight in the morning.



Eight-ish

Time for a short break... As you can see Darcy has found her zebra hat that she got from Gramma and Grampa and is sporting that again, or still!?!? Both girls have on new hoodies and slippers. I'm busy getting cinnamon rolls in the oven for breakfast. Daddy is busy getting toys out of the packaging for Caelan.



Nine-ish

 

This year I decided to get my cinnamon rolls all ready the day before, giving them oodles of time to rise.  It was nice to have it all done so that on Christmas morning all I had to do was pop them in the oven! They were apparently just as good because we each polished off two of them! This picture is basically what was left!

 

Ten-ish

 

 

My Mom and Bill spent about a month on a tour through China and Hong Kong in November.  I was thrilled to open these beautiful pearls that they bought during their travels.  I also received a gorgeous silk scarf and jade necklace with my tiger sign in it.  The girls got pearl bracelets, fans, a jade stamp with their names carved into it in both English and Chinese, and panda key chains. Caelan got a panda shirt and key chain and Damian got a panda silk tie, kite and funky hacky sack like toy that everyone plays in the parks there...  I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but it was definitely a year full of Chinese gifts!

 

Eleven-ish

 

 

By noon the presents were all open and we were trying to bring some order back to our house.  Wrapping paper was being collected, dishwasher was being emptied, and some gifts were finding new homes... 

 

Noon-ish

 

By one o'clock Caelan and I were back playing with this cool dinosaur playmat/box that he got from Gramma and Grampa.  Definitely one of the big hit toys unwrapped this year!

 

One-ish

Caelan and Darcy spent quite a while playing with Caelan's new play d'oh ice cream shop.  Ryland was busy in her room finding the perfect spot for all her new treasures.

 

Two-ish

 

Caelan was definitely an excited and tired little boy most of the day.  He stuck close to Mom, who was happy to sit with him and let Daddy do most of the clean up/organizing.  We read every single one of his new books... I think it was a total of about 18 stories!!  Needless to say we sat on this couch for quite a long time! Actually by now Grandparents had arrived and the girls were showing off all their new stuff.

 

Three-ish

 

The whole crowd enjoying some togetherness...

This is what Christmas is about: Spending time with family.

 

As you can see I've barely moved from the picture above to the one below!  I know that it wasn't long after the below picture was taken that things started getting underway in the kitchen.  Damian had the turkey out on the barbecue and it cooked a little faster than we expected so things were kicked into high gear to get all the extras ready as soon as possible!  I guess in all the kitchen chaos I forgot to snap a pic!

 

Four-thirty-ish

 

Sitting down to our feast... Turkey with stuffing, homemade cranberries, gravy, mashed potatoes, turnip puff, carrots, parsnips, broccoli, cauliflower and cheese sauce.  Can you say stuffed?

 

Six-ish

 

 

Not too stuffed to enjoy some of this absolutely delicious Triple Chocolate Peppermint Trifle. It was soooo good, if I do say so myself. However, I would never say it was an easy recipe to make! Lots of steps; making a white chocolate peppermint moose, the chocolate cake layer, the milk chocolate pudding layer and waiting for all those layers to set before being able to assemble. Was it worth it? Yes, I think it was... But if I were to make it again, I might cheat on a few of those steps!

 

Seven-ish

By the time dinner was done and clean up was underway, Caelan and I were done! It was a long day for both of us and we were ready to snuggle up on the couch and leave all that cleaning up to everyone else!



 

Eight-ish

 

 

 

It was a very Merry Day!  Hope everyone had a very happy Christmas with family close by. xo

 

 

p.s.  Guess what I noticed about this year's Christmas Day in photos? There are a lot more pictures of me... Apparently, there were lots of times where I simply asked someone else to take the photo for me! Probably something I should do more of in 2013... 

 

 

Christmas Eve at Gramma and Grampa's

I'm usually the one taking the pictures so it's rare to see one of me!

I thought this one of Caelan and I was pretty good.

 

Gramma and the grandkids checking out the picture with Santa here on the blog.

 

Damian, Caelan and Grampa...

Caelan was arguing with Grampa - trying to tell Grampa he was five not four years old.

Grampa would sign four and Caelan would pull his thumb out to make five!

 

 

Caelan laughing because he stole Grampa's seat.

 

 

Ryland and Gramma sharing a moment in the kitchen.

 

 

The girls loving their new crazy hats!

 

 

 

Caelan giving Darcy a big squeeze.  Totally unprompted. Love it.

 

 

Auntie Vicky is getting a new Great Dane puppy in two weeks.

Here her and Caelan are checking out pictures of the new puppy.

 

 

 

 

 

Another great time with family, xo

 

We wish you a Merry Christmas!!

2012 Santa Picture

Some Family Pics

Baby Jill

 

My Sister and I

 

Daddy and his crazy girls

My guys

The Piché 5.6

Another tradition of sorts

Last year when we had our Christmas celebration at my Mom's we made gingerbread houses, this year we decorated gingerbread men...  the competition was fierce!

 

Here they are all done!

Can you guess who made which one?