Aquarium and Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve.  The last day of the advent calendar.  Also, the day of the largest chocolate!

 Henry tries to tidy up.  I miss this whole routine.  Every day we would ask "who wants their advent calendar?" and Henry would say "me!!" and then start freaking out.  "Yay!...yay!!"

After the last calendar ritual we got ready quick and headed downtown for our yearly activity.  The kids wanted to go to the aquarium again.  It's really great, and was less busy than last year when it had just opened.  We had more time to look at things closely.

 Santa made a stop!

Paige in a fish tank:

After the aquarium we went to our typical pub lunch.  We were with Grandma and Grandpa at the aquarium and Uncle Greg met us for the lunch portion.

Activities on Christmas eve are great and I highly recommend them.  For one they force you to be ready for Christmas and just enjoy Christmas Eve without craziness.  Speaking of craziness, there is less of that at home--driving to Toronto is very time consuming and we get home late afternoon with tired kids.  They then watch a Christmas movie, have dinner, check out the Norad Santa Tracker, and then go to bed nice and tired.  Nice and controlled fun!

 Matching Jammies! Henry's were size 6 months so I had to get hime new ones this year that basically match.  The girls still fit.

I had bought cookie dough in a gymnastics fundraiser so the girls scooped out one clump of batter each and we made just 2 cookies for santa right before bed.

 Also before bed the girls went out front to sprinkle "reindeer food" around on the driveway.  What a nice memory of them.  So small and right into the magic of it all.

Christmas Concerts

 During the last week of school we attended both Paige and Rose's Christmas concerts.  They both wore the same dress that Rose is wearing above.  I don' t have a picture of Paige as I only took a short video.  Paige's concert was they same as last year where the parents only attended a session of 1 grade level before being shuffled out the side doors making way for the next grade level and set of parents to come in. She sang one french and one english song.  Rose's concert was the next day, and due to the timing of it, I had to go to Paige's school and pick her up early.  So the whole family got to watch Rose! Mike was fortunate enough to be able to come to both concerts.  Rose's class was really cute and recited some poems and songs in the classroom, followed by some crafts and treats.  It was really nice to see her classroom as I had only seen it one time before the school year had even started.  She was able to show us where she spends most of her time.  Sniff sniff.  I still can't believe the amount of time that she is in school at only 4 years old.

Playdate with Claire

A Christmas break play date with Rose's BFF from preschool.  I so wish these 2 were in the same Kindergarten. 

Gingerbread time

 This year we made a Frozen Castle. There was also a sled, and the various cardboard cutouts from Frozen.

Everyone wanted to eat the gingerbread after Christmas (which I wasn't planning on letting them do...), but Scout solved the problem one day by sneaking into the kitchen and grabbing it off the counter.

Suzy Homemaker

I felt so proud of myself learning how to use the sewing machine again.  I haven't sewed with a machine since Grade 7 home ec.  

This is my old sled before (old pink cover):

Here it is after with completely new foam and blue fabric:

(I'm happy with the way it turned out, except for the extremely painful finger injury I sustained using my rotary fabric cutting tool.  I thought I needed to get stitches for a few minutes until I calmed down and got the bleeding to stop and patched it up with a steri-strip.) 

We gave it a slide on the street:

And then again on a blizzard day when the stroller was impossible.  I loaded it up in the car and sledded Henry up to Rose's school.  Paige pulled him on the way back.

Annual cookie decorating fun!

A haircut for Henry

His second professional haircut.  I wondered if he would be as good at a regular hairdresser, without sitting in the car chair and watching TV.  He was totally fine, and it was way cheaper.

Extracurricular Activities

Parent viewing day at dance.  Rose was shy that I (and a bunch of other parents) were in the room watching. 

 Brownie enrollment ceremony.

Paige's jump.  Paige has been riding Annabella, a privately owned horse, and doing great on the jumps! A little too cold for Paige's liking though...looking forward to spring!

Visit to Uncle Greg's new condo

Uncle Greg's condo is right in the Distillery District in Toronto, so we went to have a look at his new place and check out the Christmas Market.  A nice sunny day of fun. 

Christmas Town!

Back in September I entered a lottery to be able to buy tickets to Christmas Town. I won and we were able to go.  It is a sleigh ride to Santa's vacation cabin in the woods.  Everyone gets one on one time with Santa without standing in a huge line.  We went once when Paige was 3 and Rose was a baby; at that time we went in the afternoon, but this time I tried to get night time tickets, which we ended up getting.  It was really cold outside, but so fun to take the horse drawn carriage through the woods in the dark.  

Before the carriage ride we had some free time in the building at Mountsberg. 

Then we waited to see Santa in a building where we did crafts and decorated cookies.

Santa and Mrs. Claus were both there and spent a lot of time with the kids.  They had a warm fire and lots of lights.  So magical, and so much better than waiting for Santa in the mall with hundreds of people.