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Sunday, January 30, 2011

My Little Princess Turns 4

Maira has always loved all things pink and girly so when I told her she could have her very first "friend" birthday party, AND that it could be a princess party, she was absolutely thrilled. I have to say I probably had as much fun as she did because of all the fun I had with the invitations, the decorations and the cake. Her friends each received an invitation that looked like this:

For decorations, I enlisted Shae's help to use paint to transform our front entry way into a castle. She and Connor also agreed to dress up in costumes and help greet the guests as they arrived.

Maira's friends all wore princess dresses and I had paper crowns for them to decorate and wear. I think the highlights of the party were when the girls went to the ball (aka played statues - they were adorable spinning around and dancing in their ballgowns) and when Jess put part of the cake on his head and pranced around the dining room (OK, maybe he didn't prance but he really did put the cake on his head).

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The next day, Hudson helped me finish off the cake!

We also had a low key family celebration for Maira's birthday. Since it was a different day from her friend party, I baked another cake. Her request for this one: purple flowers.

This is a really cute sequence of Hudson playing peekaboo with Jess:

As you can probably tell, he was roaring instead of saying peekaboo!

We all had a fun time but I have to say, I'm sure glad this annual run of kid birthdays is over for now (3 birthdays plus Christmas within 7 weeks of each other), no more birthdays until June!

And, one last thing from January of 2011: this was the month of the giant blizzards. Almost every day, I woke up and looked outside and thought "More snow? Seriously?!?!" This is a view of our front driveway. That arrow is showing the top of the snowpile beside the driveway - it's hard to tell but I promise you, that pile is taller than me. Makes shovelling pretty tough.

And here's my backyard, the snow is SO deep back there!

The city crews FINALLY came and plowed our street today so there is now a 2-story tall pile of snow in the middle of our cul-de-sac and the kids are SO excited to go out and play on it (there's only enough snow for the city to pile it up in the middle of cul-de-sacs every 5 or 6 years so this is a big deal for them) Shae was fondly reminiscing about the last time this happened, telling Maira and Connor all about it since they don't remember this happening before. At least the snow is good for something!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Family Home Evening with a 2-year old...

Hudson was on talent for Family Home Evening the other night and his talent that he shared with us was running around in circles while we all clapped. He had a fabulous time and didn't want us to stop cheering. Ever.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Monday, January 10, 2011

Winter Wonderland

Edmonton was bombarded by a huge snowstorm last week and while Jess and I were out shoveling the piles and piles of snow off of our driveway, the kids came outside too to play in our little winter wonderland.

We bought bunk beds for Connor and Maira this week and these are the boxes their beds came in - they made a perfect fort for Connor to play in.

Here's a view of my lovely garden I blogged about this past summer, to show how much snow we've got. Those are my peas, almost completely buried now. Hard to believe I'll be planting new veggies in this garden in 4 months!

Shae loves to ski, she learned how by going to her school's ski club every winter since Grade 2. We try and go skiing at our little river valley ski hill here in Edmonton at least once a year and we've been taking Connor along with us since he was 3 1/2 but this is the first year that he really got the hang of it and therefore really enjoyed himself. He looks like he's about to fall down in this picture of me and him skiing down the baby hill but he's doing fine.

Here is a short movie of him skiing, first down the baby hill and then on a much steeper hill which we've never allowed him on before for fear that he would just try going straight down and end up breaking his neck - so this was a big accomplishment for him to go down this hill, even if he did have Jess' help the whole way! (That's Shae in the pink coat partway up the hill, beside the stranded snowboarder).

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My Baby Turns Two

My sweet little baby Hudson has turned 2 so I guess he's technically not a baby anymore. But he doesn't really talk yet and he's still in diapers so I can keep deluding myself for a little while longer...

My little guy loves dinosaurs. And lions and tigers and bears and anything else that says "ROAR", but especially dinosaurs. So, of course, he got a dinosaur cake (thougth more of a friendly dinosaur than a ferocious dinosaur).

OK, I'm done now, get me out of here!

We had a fun family party for him and we even had extra company: Grammy Rose, Uncle Spencer and Uncle Paul drove up to join in our celebrations so that was fun.

Hudson got a plush T-Rex puppet as one of his presents and he really, really liked it. Check out this movie of him showing off his very ferocious roar:

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A couple of weeks after his birthday, I took him to the Royal Alberta Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit and here he is looking at a model ankylosaurus and riding on the tail of an apatasaurus.

Love you, dinosaur boy!

Christmas 2010

We had a really nice Christmas this year. Fairly quiet, good times with family, yummy food and treats and lots of wonderful family traditions.

On Christmas Eve, we held our first annual McMullin/Hughes Christmas pageant. We dressed up our two little toddlers, Hudson and Seth, as sheep (although Hudson's costume is a little more basic than Seth's - I wrapped quilt batting around him and pinned it to his shirt). Maira played the part of Mary, Shae was the angel, Connor played three roles: Joseph, a shepherd, and a wise man, and Isaiah helped Connor as a shepherd and then a wise man.

The shepherds being astonished at the angel as the sheep wander around:

The sheep decided to climb up on the angel's spot to check out the view:

We tried to get a group shot at the end but one of the sheep was pretty sad about something and the other one wanted to play with the wise man's gold:

But, Seth calmed down after a few minutes and we brought our little Santa Howie in for another group picture:

Connor hated his wise man costume, he insisted that it made him look like a girl!

Once the pageant was over, we tried to take a picture of the kids in their new Christmas pajamas - but Hudson was having none of that, we couldn't convince him to sit nicely on Shae's lap for even one second:

So, we gave up and took pictures without him:

And then when we were done, we discovered what his problem was: he wanted to sit on the chair, not on Shae's lap.

The look of a toddler who has finally communicated what he wants and has gotten his way:

So then, we called the others back and got this cute shot:

On Christmas morning, the kids all got sugar cereals in their stockings so this is them enjoying their rare treat:

But Hudson couldn't be convinced to eat cereal for breakfast even if it was coated in sugar, not when there were jellybeans to be eaten:

We had a lovely morning opening gifts from each other:

I spent the last couple weeks before Christmas frantically knitting because I decided I wanted to make "Oma Slippers" for my kids. I got the last one done on the 23rd after many late nights. They're really very quick to knit but to knit 4 pairs in 2 weeks, is really pushing it! When I was little, my Oma (my dad's German grandmother) used to knit up these same type of slippers for all her kids, grandkids and great-grandkids and I remember receiving several pairs of slippers from Oma during my childhood. She lived far away from me and so I really didn't know her at all but these slippers were something tangible she had made with her hands for me so they were something that connected us together. I hope that these slippers can be a connection between my kids and a great-great grandmother they never knew.

Over Christmas holidays, Jess and Connor had a special day out. They went to the Deep Sea Caverns at the Mall where Connor got to take pictures of the sharks with one of Jess's old cameras:

And then they went to the Telus Science Centre to see the cool new Lego exhibit. This is Connor at the space exhibit pretending to be an astronaut on Mars.