Reindeer festival and Christmas concert

Look what we found on main street.  These critters were hanging out with a guy in red with a sleigh.

The Reindeer festival is held at the high school.  All three of my kids decided the reindeer races were their favorite station.

Ah ha!  no wonder- look who's running in the halls! Personally, I liked the suped up hot chocolate and ice cream bar!

Entertaining ourselves at the full house- packed Christmas concert.

Little miss Big Eyes herself.

We were far back, so everything I've got is pretty blurry.  Can you spot her?

You shouldn't be able to miss our big guy between his friends- the twins.  He was so "put out" because he had to hug one of them- yeah, we all know he was secretly pleased.  This is the same girl that gave him a smooch last year-- I am SO in trouble if he reads this!

Time to deliver some of these presents to Saskatoon.  Looks like a fire hazard to me!

And my Christmas cactus is putting on a show.

I don't really remember owning this, but when we moved back up here, mom said it was my plant that I'd left with her.  It sounds like something I would have done, since you really can't move plants between countries.

It is pretty fun to have something blooming for our anniversary, Christmas and the New Year.

Hope you get to enjoy lots of wonderful family time.  We're about to hit the road- so nice to only have to go 3 hours!  We don't even need the dvd player for that amount of time ;)  There's a santa in the mall there we have to see, oh yeah and family- or is he family too??  hee hee

I haven't asked a question in ages!!  So what is your favorite Christmas memory so far this year?

School's out!!!

ACKK!  I'm out of uploaded pictures and the videos aren't uploading, so this is what you get.  Emora was trying out the banjo that Brian got to play with GH Summit recently for a Christmas gig.  The girls had quite the blast trying out their improv. songs while the other one danced.

On another note- it's our anniversary!  We are celebrating in a couple of weekends with a get away to Yorkton- to the open ridicule of the cousins who say Yorkton is a place people here make fun of.  It's technically the size of a city and Brian- being a geography nut- has really been wanting to go.  We're going to check out their pool which is supposed to be pretty amazing, I'm sure we'll visit a music store (one of Brian's fascinations- another is cemetaries, but I'm pretty sure that one's not on the agenda) and we'll go see the Hobbit in a real movie theater and eat out without cutting anyone's meat.  Yep, we'll have a couple of days without kids ;)  Nana and Papa are on their way and agreed to sugar them, I mean feed them and play with them while we are gone.

So happy anniversary to you Brian!  14 years later and I'm still glad I said "yes".  Wow- I don't even have a picture of him on here!  I'm such a romantic.

More pics from the walk

Here are some more pics from the warm day walk to the beach.

Emora liked jumping into the snow on the beach.

and prancing on the ice.

We managed to convince the dog to go up the play structure and down the slide.

Oops- gotta get the snow and ice off first!

Had to try the swings too.  There wasn't much clearance under my swing, but laying there was a fun place to watch the clouds.

Push me momma- can you tell it was a warm enough day for me to have my camera out this much.

Saba decided to have a snow feast at this time, then come slobber on my face.

The clouds were moving and it gave me that surreal impression the swings were carrying us off.

I love a blue sky.

A beautiful day for a walk

The weather this year is very bizarre.  It'll be "warm", just below freezing or a little warmer, sometimes it's rained even, then the next day will be minus -20 and windy.  It's a bit crazy, so I am figuring out that each day, I have to poke my nose out and see how it is, because some days are gorgeous and the perfect temps to go out for a winter adventure.  These pics were taken one of those warm days.

At the end of our street, someone made a great snowman, looks like he wanted to roll in the snow and make a snow angel.  Emora and I took the dog with us and she was so happy to get out of the yard.  We headed to the lake park because I love to visit the water- even when it's frozen.  This is by far, one of my favorite places.  I need to go visit some of the other favorites while winter is here.  I'd like to see if the deer are still sleeping up on the hill where I found little deer nests one time.

The frozen lake is past the wall, under a bunch of snow.  There are ice fishing shacks out there, but I'm still too much of a scaredy cat to walk out on the ice.

With the rains we've had, it left a thin sheet of ice on the snow.  The ground was crunchy and slippery to walk on and so very pretty with it's designs and the way the sun would shimmer off the surface.

Emora was doing her best dog imitation here.  She was pretty effective!  She liked to run and slide on the ice.


I'm working on some Christmas presents and wrapping, trying to work down some of my list of "to dos".  We went to the reindeer festival today too, which was fun- now we are all sugared up.  We got to see real reindeer, make crafts, get lots of sugary treats, including an ice cream sandwich and hot chocolate. Ivan's favorite part was the reindeer race- they put on antlers and a red nose and raced down the hall, then got candy canes- he did that about a half dozen times until I pulled him away.  Dominique liked the races too and went to the most craft tables of all of them.  Emora is saying the liked the races too.  She also enjoyed petting the reindeer.  I'll post some pics some day!

When we first moved here, I didn't think there was much going on, but so far this weekend, we've taken in 2 events and missed 3 others, because we are a slow paced kinda family.  Poor Emora has been a bit grouchy each night by supper time and I think she's a bit short on sleep.  Wouldn't you know she slept until nearly 10am this morning!  I hope there is lots of sleeping in over the holidays!

jobs gettin done

This was Ivan serving us for the pancake breakfast fundraiser.  With the proceeds, each class drives into the city to watch the Globe theater's play.  This year they saw The Wizard of Oz- a show I've always hated, but they quite enjoyed it.

We were able to convince Tyler and Victoria to join us for our fine dining experience.  They kind of had to come, they had our kids ;)

Emora was being a goof- as usual!  She does like to make us laugh!

Welcome to our winter wonderland.  This is taken from our front window.

Our trees out the same window.

Past the tree is the field- that I hoped would get a good hill for sledding, but my cousin said the guys got in trouble for dumping it there the year we had the best sledding hill!

Emora was showing me she had finished all her eggnog. We are trying to get all sorts of things done for Christmas and end of year and lalalalala. Hope you are not overly stressed, take time to breathe and remember that this is all for love and loving.

Emora's "2" year old picture

Someone is being my big helper.  We've been recruited a few times for some jobs and she is earning her keep!  She helped me with some cleaning, then we got to prep some craft materials for the Reindeer festival and we helped as monitors for the perfect attendance movie.  That was really tough.  We gave out popcorn, helped ourselves to a bag and watched a Christmas movie.  I did give one kid permission to go fill her water bottle while the teacher was out of the room!  Hard work, I tell you!  My favorite part was hearing one child guffawing with loud bursts of laughter throughout the movie... it was Emora.  About 10 kids in the room and I think the smallest liked it the most (It was the movie Santa Clause).

Anyways, Mike has been guiding me through a different process for Emora's painting.  It's taken me way too long (nearly 2 years so far), but I can tell it will be way better than the others.  He told me how to "underpaint", by doing a detailed drawing first, then spraying it with a fixatif, then using burnt Sienna watercolor to give it depth and finally to paint it with acrylics.  It's like doing the picture 3 times, but it should solve my skin tone problem and make this last step with the acrylics go a lot faster.  It's amazing how the smallest tips can make a huge difference.  Like I was saying that the drawing was smearing so much, he picked up a paper, put it under his drawing hand to protect the page and pretended to draw!! DUH!

I actually got the watercolor on it since these pictures.  I may add a touch more of watercolor, but probably not.  Mike keeps warning me to simplify.  Sometimes (ie rarely- I listen!)

Maybe over Christmas holidays, or when the grandparents arrive, I'll find some time to work on this.  Maybe I could have it done by her 4th birthday!  That would be nice.

We got our tree up last weekend and the kids were so very excited to decorate it.  It was actually quite nice- I barely touched it at all, just relocated a couple dozen ornaments that were all clumped on the same few branches.

Dominique the ballerina

These pics were from many weeks ago, when we were invited to go watch Dominique's ballet class.  Classes here have been a bit crazy.  The teachers all commute from the city, and this winter has been crazy so far with lots of freezing rain, making highway driving extremely dangerous, so they've had to postpone many a class.

Dominique loves the dancing.

And the girls and giggles.  They get to pretend they are princesses a lot and that fits her fancy too.

Soar girl, soar!

The same night of the ballet watch was a windup night for after school yoga class- which Dominique also did.  Ivan could have been in it, but it was not his cup of tea.  I told the coordinator that if there was lego building, Ivan would be all over that, so that may be one of the options in the new year.  Since our school is a community school, they have funds to offer programs.  Ivan is excited for next year.  He wants to do roping and curling... his Texan and Saskatchewan roots will really shine then!

Unfortunately, I had to miss this part, but Brian faithfully took pics and video for me... which this program is now giving me probs loading videos, so we'll see if I can bully it into posting more at some point!

funny funny

Of course all the kids (namely girls) in school are into Justin Beaver (sic) and of course mentioning the Beaver in our home always elicits a strong reaction from the musician of the house, so Dominique was especially excited to come home one day with Bieber stickers so that she could make a note for her dad, which she hung on our bedroom door.

We love our puppets- really we do.  Not sure why Kermit was punished so cruelly.

10:30 at night, I see Ivan's light still on and decide to investigate.  He had just gotten a new lego set with his birthday money.

The girls weren't any better.  Here they are at 10:30pm.  Their bedtime is 9 by the 1way.

Apparently everyone is a joker in our house- even the cat.  This is where he decided to take a nap one day.

Hope you have a great day with some giggles in there for good measure.