Some Christmas cheer

For your enjoyment...a couple of seasonal haikus that tickled my fancy. :)

Icy temps make me
Wish the baby's cold hands were
Reaching for bottles

"Mommy! We made you!"
I see their snowman's bottom.
The likeness astounds.


(from the Snow Day Haiku Contest over at Rocks in My Dryer)

Let the Christmas feasting begin!

It's December 1st and I've already got two kinds of Christmas baking made! There's a long way to go still to complete my list, but I think I'm ahead of where I am most years.

The kids love to 'help' (the quotation marks referring to Abby's intended assistance) me bake, and I usually let them in the hopes that someday they will be able to do the baking for me! ;)

In other Christmas-readiness news...we have all the kids' presents bought, and a few for other people, although we're not done. Christmas letter? Not so much. I'm not sure how December crept up on me without having started my annual epistle. I think this whole working thing is cutting into my time! ;)

My family is coming up here for Christmas this year and we are very excited! This will be the first year that we've done Christmas here, and I'm sure everyone will appreciate not having the five-hour drive on Christmas morning. Actually, this will be the first Christmas of all my 29 previous Christmases that I haven't been at home in Edmonton...I think. Mom? True? Not that I remember, anyway!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Welcome to the winter version of our blog! ;) Here in Beaverlodge we have a few inches of snow, although it's stayed right around the freezing mark for the last week or so, and the forecast holds more of the same. Gavin's class sang at the Beaverlodge Christmas festival yesterday, so I guess the festive season is already in full swing and I need to catch up!

We're looking forward to a visit with friends from Edmonton this week, and hopefully we'll start to get organized for Christmas before December hits!

And happy 2nd birthday to our niece/cousin Mischa! (I hear she got a kitten for her birthday!)

Joseph pictures!

We finally convinced Gavin to put his Joseph costume back on so we could get pictures!

Song cows, dead batteries, and little Joseph

Today was Gavin's Christmas program at school - Greg went to the afternoon version and I got a babysitter and went tonight. It was fun to go to our first school Christmas concert!

The play was about a Christmas talent show taking place in a barn along with a bunch of animals, including 'song cows,' who apparently sing wonderful songs that only other cows and Santa can understand. Whatever. ;) Gavin's class did a great job acting out the Christmas story as his teacher read, and then sang a version of 'Happy Birthday' to baby Jesus.

Greg videotaped the performance this afternoon - but it's not a digital camcorder, so I can't post any of it here. I brought our digital camera that does movies tonight, and even remembered to put new batteries in before I left, but I think I need a refund on those batteries because they were dead almost as soon as I turned it on! I was pretty disappointed, and now you are too because it means we have no video or pictures to show you! I'll try to convince Gavin to put his Joseph costume on again tomorrow so I can at least have a picture of it for the scrapbook, though.

Gavin did an excellent job and he was so cute looking for me in the crowd tonight to wave to me. When he got in line to sing their song, you could hear him ask 'where's my mom?' :) Now, if he's still doing that five or ten years from now...

Christmas programs all around

Last night was the Sunday School Christmas program at church - Gavin's class did a great job reciting a Bible verse and singing 'Happy Birthday' to Jesus. He's also doing a version of Happy Birthday for his school program tomorrow night, and he told me after that he wanted to sing the other words to the song and that's why he had his grumpy face on while he was singing. :)

Tomorrow Gavin has two performances (what is this, Broadway? did we ever have two performances?) of his school program. Greg will go to the one in the afternoon and I'll attend the evening one while Greg's at a board meeting. Gavin's class is acting out the nativity story, and he will be Joseph. I made his costume for him (really, it was cheaper to buy material and make it than it would have been to buy him a bathrobe just to use for a Christmas play!). I'll try to get some good pictures tomorrow.

Here's our little munchkins at the church program last night:

My organized little firstborn

As an advent calendar this year, Gavin and I made a big Christmas tree to hang on the wall, and each day he colors, cuts out, and puts up a different ornament. If it were me (and I'm even a firstborn!) I would place the ornaments in a random - but attractive - order all over the tree. Not our Gavin.

Perfectly spaced rows of three ornaments each. :) Now if only he carried this over to keeping his room clean...

Not the brightest light in the string

This is our fifth Christmas in our house. Our fifth year of putting the Christmas tree up in the same corner of our living room. Our fifth year of incurring all manner of scrapes, scratches and bumps while crawling under the tree to plug or unplug the lights.

And our first year realizing that the light switch on the wall that we thought was so stupid because all it did was shut off the power to the corner outlet in the living room...would be perfect for turning on and off the Christmas tree lights.

Apparently I haven't been posting enough...

I've been getting 'hints' from several people that they haven't seen anything new up here for a while, and after I finished arguing that it really hadn't been that long, I checked and um, yeah, it has been a while. So I present you with some getting ready for Christmas pictures from the Clark house (not that we're ready yet, not by a longshot!).

A rather unsuccessful attempt to get pictures of Abby and our niece Mischa in matching jammies. A lady at church offered us hand-me-downs from her daughter's twins, and there were so many wonderful high-quality clothes, we were very thankful! So Abby and Mischa have lots of matching outfits now. :)

Gavin cutting out Christmas cookies - he's getting to be quite the helper in the kitchen! We have unfortunately eaten all of this particular batch of sugar cookies, so we made some more yesterday and will try to get them decorated this week!

Gavin making snow angels in our front yard. We've had probably close to three feet of snow already this year, which is very unusual compared to the last ten years or so, but much closer to what I remember from my childhood!

Gavin and mommy drinking hot chocolate on the night he got to stay up 'late' and help mommy and daddy put up the Christmas decorations.