Heather's Home

Christmas 2013

Our Christmas season began with putting up the tree and decorating it.

We decorated gingerbread houses.

We toured the lights at the Legislature Building grounds.

We watched the live nativity pageant in Spruce Grove.

On Christmas Eve, my sister's kids and my kids joined efforts to perform their own live nativity pageant in our home.

On Christmas morning, when they walked into the living room, they saw an 8-foot long vintage wooden toboggan leaning up against the wall:

On Christmas day, we went to Spruce Grove for dinner and Jess took a bunch of pictures of our newest cutie-pie niece, Shiloh.

Jess' grandmother, Jane Walker McMullin, passed away at the age of 93 at the end of November. Her husband Nolan had died very early in their marriage, leaving her widowed with five young children to raise by herself. The youngest was Jess's father.

Jane was born and raised in Raymond and moved back after her husband died, and raised her family there. According to her, Raymond was the centre of the universe.

While we are all sad to have her example of unconditional love and constant service taken from us, we're so happy for her that she gets to finally be with Nolan again. Her funeral was a wonderful tribute to her and a great chance to visit with family.

Barbara Walker, Grandma Jane's sister-in-law, and Mary-Rose:

June Fawns, a close friend of Grandma Jane's, with Nola Baker, Grandma Jane's daughter

Grandma Jane's grandchildren:

Grandma Jane's siblings, children, and nieces and nephews:

Jaron with Aunt Mary, Grandma Jane's sister:

One of the many advantages of having tall uncles:

Grandma Jane's kids:

Ron, Nola, Faris, Spencer, and Brad

Grandma Jane:

Grandma Jane with Nolan and their 3 oldest boys:

School Christmas Concerts

All four of our kids are at four different schools this year. Which means the week of school Christmas concerts was pretty hectic! But we were fortunate that none of their concerts were on the same night as each other. And of course, high schools don't do Christmas concerts so it was just the younger three.

Hudson's playschool concert was adorable, of course.

Connor's school put on a Christmas play about a blizzard that snows in the kids and threatens to keep them at school for the entire Christmas holiday (oh no!). Connor's grade was too young to be in the play but they did a great job of providing the live music for the play with their cute singing.

Maira's school also performed a play and the grade one classes were in the front row of the singers. Their songs and their actions were very cute. I'll post movies from all the concerts on Youtube.

Shae's 15th Birthday

Shae just keeps getting older and older, darn it! Fifteen already, it's hard to believe but what a wonderful fifteen-year old she is. We are blessed beyond words to have her in our family. She's a great example for her younger siblings to follow.

Her birthday was pretty different this year as it happened on the same weekend as Jess' grandmother's funeral. So, after school on Friday, she went to the waterpark at the Mall with some friends to celebrate her birthday and then we picked her up at the Mall and we headed out on the highway towards Raymond as the funeral was the next morning. We sang happy birthday to her in the car and she opened her presents from us in the back seat as we drove through the dark frigid winter night. Not ideal but it was the best we could do considering the circumstances. She also got to pick her very favourite treat at our pit stop: poutine and hot chocolate.

With it being such a busy weekend, we didn't get a lot of pictures of her birthday. These are her gifts from me and Jess:

And here she is with the Harry Potter cake I made for her for her birthday dinner we had with family a couple of days after her birthday, once we got home from the funeral. It's a copy of the cake Hagrid brought to Harry for his birthday when he got invited to attend Hogwarts.