We've had some birthdays around here...

First, right after Christmas, my little baby Hudson turned one. Here is a series of pictures Jess took of Hudson enjoying his birthday cake:

Hudson was surrounded by a crowd of siblings and cousins while he unwrapped his presents but he really wasn't interested in his presents, he just wanted to play with the balloons.

And here are a couple of non-birthday pictures of Shae, Connor and Maira pretending that Maira is a queen, Connor a king and Shae is their very hardworking servant:

And now, here are some pictures from Maira's birthday. She turned 3 on January 19th. She loves princesses and Barbies right now so I decided to surprise her with a Barbie princess cake.

I think she liked the cake but her immediate response was "what's my Barbie doll doing inside that cake???" And then, "hey, you got my Barbie doll all messy and sticky!" She was much happier with the cake once I gave her back her Barbie!

Here she is wearing one of her presents from her Grandma, a Ukrainian shumka dancer headpiece.

She had a good birthday and she's absolutely thrilled to be 3 because I've been telling her for months that she can't go to school like Connor and Shae until she's 3. Luckily, the local playschool has an opening in their 3-year old class starting next week so now she only has 7 more sleeps until she gets to go to school too, she's so excited.

Finally, here's Maira's new quilt that I sewed for her. My aunt Karen did the quilting and she even quilted Maira's name on one of the blocks, if you look closely you can see that it says "Maira Rose". Now I just have to finish Connor and Hudson's quilts...there just aren't enough hours in the day, I tell you!

Christmas

So, our computer broke down after my last post and my iPod broke the same week so I was going through a bit of internet withdrawal for a while there but happily, we our now back online (with 3 new computers to replace the one that broke - long story). And so I can finally update my blog!

We had a really really nice Christmas at home and here are a few of my favourite pictures.

First, trimming the tree:

Hudson helping with the lights

The younger three each took turns putting the star on at the end:

I think Jess left the lens open on this shot to make the light streak like this:

And this one just because it was taken during the month of December and it's cute: it's Hudson playing in a couch fort that Jess built for him.

Now these pictures are from Shae and Connor's school Christmas concert. Connor's kindergarten class went up on stage first and sang a couple of cute songs:

Then after all the songs were done, the grade 6 classes performed a musical called "The Christmas Chronicles". Shae tried out for the role of the fashion/food reporter at the newspaper and she was thrilled to get the part. The play told the story of a newspaper called "The Bethlehem Chronicle" that is threatened with closure unless they get a big story and of course, one of the reporters moonlights as a shepherd to make extra money and he sees the angels and goes to Bethlehem so this big "scoop" saves the paper. It was a very Christ-oriented play which surprised me in our politically correct times. The whole play was great, the kids all did a great job (especially Shae, of course!). Here are a few pictures but when I have time, I'm going to put up the video of the play, Jess recorded the whole thing.

And finally, here are some pictures of the kiddos on Christmas Eve (telling the story of the nativity with some of our nativity scenes) and on Christmas morning.