A nice picture of my Dad with Ms. K We also went to visit Great Grandpa... but unfortunately no one remembered to bring a camera! Next time!

Merry Christmas Again!
On the 27th we celebrated with my family!
Here is the tree "before" the attack: P eyeing the tree:

Princess Kathryn in her new jammies from Auntie Sara and Uncle Derek with Mommy:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!


Shaun gave me a new camera which we were in need of. The old one was starting to give pixilated picture by times, and had difficulty communicating with the computer. Likely due to the fact that we'd dropped it once too many times... it had a rough life, but it did last us 4 years so that is pretty darn good.

The new camera is a Cannon, and is basically an updated and more powerful version of what we had. It also takes quick pictures - I am not used to that! The old one was lingering 5-10 seconds before actually taking the picture, this one is so fast that I got a lot of blurry pics from ME not holding still fast enough. Here is the very first picture though.... we're having Christmas breakfast after attacking the stockings and the tree. K was VERY pleased that she got the only gift she had been asking Santa for. She wanted a baby with a nuk. Thats it. Plain and simple. Santa had a hard time finding what she was asking for but this was a hit - and came with a potty, bib, undies and diapers too! Yay Santa!!

P loved the magnetic letters that Santa brought. He had been asking for 'little letters' since all our other sets (magnetic, puzzle, cards and otherwise) only have capital letters. He even let his sister help him put them on the fridge!

After we had our little Christmas here with our little family, we packed up and headed 4 blocks over to Shaun's parents house where there was another tree to attack. The kids really got in the spirit of unwrapping this year. Unfortunately, they weren't limited to their own gifts. Fortunately, everyone understood and was willing to let them help unwrap their gifts too.

Here P&K are opening K's gift from Shaun's parents. Its a "Pat Pat Rocket" and comes with figurines of Leo, Annie, Quincy and June. K was THRILLED as she is a huge Little Einsteins fan. The figurines "talk" when you put them in the right seat in rocket, and rocket talks too when you press a button on his back.

K loves getting clothes as gifts and typically insists on changing immediately. These lovely soft and cosy jammies were from Shaun's parents and fit Kathryn perfectly. She wore them the entire day, and again the next day when we went to my parent's.

After presents, Shaun put on WALL-E for the kids and Auntie Boo and Uncle James and, after Patrick had a rest on the couch, he got out his new Lotto game and had fun matching numbers.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours! Hope you enjoyed a happy day with family and friends.

Santa also brought Patrick an Xbox game, Star Wars Lego. It is very cute and Patrick is enjoying learning to play with Daddy on the big screen. They look so cute playing together. Of course, Patrick eventually gets frustrated (usually after about 10-15 minutes) and Daddy takes over entirely, but the game is geared so they can play together.

Christmas Eve:

This is the stuff you bring out when your child gets married.

Personally, I'm THRILLED that P wants to pretend play and dress up. Shaun, however, is not so thrilled at his choices.... I must point out, that we have absolutely no gender-neutral or boy dress up stuff. We will have to fix that soon, because I don't want him to think he's limited to high-healed sparkley shoes and butterfly wings.

It is very cute though, to hear him clip-clopping around in the kitchen :)

Shaun's extended family Christmas was yesterday and we had a great time. The kids were excellent! P had a bit of downtime in the afternoon in the spare room, but no one napped until the car ride home.

Kathryn also re-visited her desire to potty train after announcing a few weeks ago she was no longer a big girl but a baby and wanted diapers. She got 3 pair of dora undies from Shaun's Aunt and that seemed to put her back on track. She has been dry ever since and is back in princess pullups. I am tempted to go straight to undies but with all the travelling and chaos that will be happening, I think we'll wait until the new year.

Patrick is as anti-toilet as ever. No surprise there. BUT he did have a GREAT time handing out presents to everyone!

Anyway, back to the festivities, we had a GREAT time!! Everyone was there and the food was great and the kids were terrific.

Shaun's Gramma keeps a supply of stuffed toys and a dolly in her living room and Kathryn had a blast playing with them.
She also used her cuteness to get lots of different people to read her books! Here she is with Shaun's cousin:

And with more family:

Patrick has taken to drawing cakes with candles, he learned this last week because it was Gramma's birthday!

All tuckered out: Patrick was first to crash and here he is trying to relax with Daddy.

Gramma got LOTS more pictures and I hope she will share them so I can upload them to share with you... especially the ones of Kathryn wearing all 3 new pair of her undies at the same time with no pants. Those were very cute.

Shaun's mom sent me more pics for the blog from Shaun's extended family Christmas and I just had to share these ones!
This is a really nice picture of Ms. K with her Auntie Boo:
And the aforementioned princess with her 3 pair of Dora undies on:

And again, posing, with her butterfly wings (and 3 pr. of Dora undies):

Patrick got a hockey stick and ball from Shaun's Aunt! He's going to have a blast with it!

Haven't had a picture of Ramses lately. Kathryn thinks everyone and everything should have a blanket and she gave Ramses some 'toys' too.

Could someone please tell me why Blogger is uploading pictures in reverse order? Oh well.

Kathryn is very into the potato heads lately. This is our most recent 'family'. She does build some on her own, but mostly she tells me which parts to use. I think they look fantastic. We also got another Mr. Potato head for Christmas from Shaun's Uncle! So now we will have even more parts to play with.

Reading with mommy. This is a very very common sight. Kathryn LOVES books. This one is a puzzle book she got from Gramma And Grandpa H last year for Christmas and it was a great choice since both kids have played with it all year.

Kathryn playing with the kitties. You can see Isis squeezed in that little space under the TV with all the puzzles in it.

Isis is a very affectionate cat - on her own terms. Usually, she doesn't want to snuggle until after suppertime - she's very predictable that way.

Patrick playing nintendo. He's getting to be such a grown up little boy!

And Patrick playing on the laptop. We have a game called "zuma" that he just loves.

With my usborne books order, I got a few boxes that the kids have really enjoyed (they don't know about the books yet, they're all for Christmas and I suspect they will enjoy them too). Kathryn likes to make a dolly bed out of one, and the cats have also slept in it. But Kathryn decided tonight that she should have a nap in the 'dolly bed'. She's a tad big, but she sat in it for a while and watched The Wiggles Christmas Special DVD.

As you can see, the poor dollies got evicted - not so nicely either.

We took the kids to see santa at the grocery store today. Kathryn was so excited!!! She kept giving Santa hugs and blowing kisses and she did not want to get down off his lap!
And Kathryn knows exactly what she wants for Christmas - a dolly with a Nuk. Patrick is more general in his wishes. He just wants presents.

Anubis and Isis both have had their surgeries now. They ended up going different weeks, which lead to a lot of 'crying' for the one who was away. Now that they're back together they love to snuggle and play together.

It was our last swimming lesson of the term, so Shaun took some photos. Patrick has his lesson at the same time that Kathryn does, so that made life good and bad. Good because we only had to go to the pool once a week, and bad because P was often distracted because I was in the water too.

You can see K and I on the left hand side and P has his back to the camera, playing with a toy on the tot-dock:
The camera was not happy taking pictures. Actually, our camera is dying! We will have to get a new one shortly.

Patrick liked his instructors!

It was a fun term. Kathryn 'passed' out of Duck and can go into Sea Turtle next term - which will be in the spring for us. Patrick was the youngest in his class so its no surprise that he needs another round of Salamander. For us it isn't about passing - its about learning and having fun!

Port Elgin had its Parade and, along with Shaun's parents, we took the kids to see Santa!!

Waiting for the parade to start: Kathryn loved the parade. She was really 'into' it. And she loved the free goodies that were handed out. We got quite the haul of candy canes and lollypops. Even McDonalds was handing out little packs of cookies:

Patrick really enjoyed the lights and music too. There were lots of bands.

Eagerly waiting for Santa to come by:

Taking it all in with Daddy by his side:

We built our first snowman ever today!!

Yesterday we attempted a build, but I got the 'head' on and the whole thing collapsed! The snow was too wet.

But today, it was better! A bit colder and packed better.

And here he is! He has Autmn Seedum eyes, a pine branch nose, and a dogwood smile.
The kids really enjoyed building him!

It started to really pelt down snow right after we finished up. It looks pretty in the picture but it bounced when it hit!

Patrick decided he needed a hat. For some reason he thinks this mini-putt cup and flag is really neat and he's been playing with it in the snow. It makes a great 'feather-in-his-cap' hat for our snowman.

This is the first time in ages the kids actually wanted to use colouring books. I snapped this for posterity. Usually they just want to draw on blank paper.

This is such a sweet picture of Isis snoozin'. She looks so content!

This is just such a cute picture of Ms. K
I took this one for my Grandpa's calendar since Shaun and Kathryn are both January babies.

And Shaun's Mom took this one for Grandpa's calendar for November.

Here's Patrick using the leapfrog letters to spell "hexagon"

AND I got a snap of this gorgeous snowman that Patrick drew before he could erase it! We love the magna doodle because we're saving so much paper, but its hard to 'preserve' the good stuff!!