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!!

Kitty Pictures!!

The Twins are getting so big!!! Anubis has a good 3 lbs on Isis now, you can really see the size difference.

Here they are lounging on the living room carpet:

And this is Anubis' new favourite napspot! Fortunately, Patrick doesn't mind.

Shaun took some pics of me getting K ready to go play outside.

Unfortunately, although this snowsuit still fits her really well, it fits better in the torso then the legs and when she bends over or sits down, it pulls up away from her boots and exposes her little bear legs. Fortunately my friend was able to loan us her daughter's snowsuit for the rest of the season!! And in exchange we are loaning this snowsuit to her son! Friends rock!

The kids got into some mischiff the other night climbing up on top of the bookcase and being all cheeky about it. At least they were together (happily) for a picture!
Ms. K's cheesy grin. I just love it!

All dressed up an no where to go!

K loves the kitties. Her love boarders on smothering sometimes. Ramses is the most patient of the 3.

Story Time with mommy. I was actually singing. Aren't you glad this isn't a movie?

More pictures of the elusive Anubis. Its hard to get pictures of a black cat....
Here he is in 'tick-tock-clock" position in the window:
And an eyes open picture!

Typical weekend scene in the kitchen:
I think Shaun was making Chili: