Hudson's 7th Birthday

Hudson turned 7 four days before we moved. We still piled balloons on his bed after he fell asleep the night before his birthday and I shed a few tears at the inevitability of my baby growing one year older, just like I do every year.

He loves the Star Wars movies (his father has made sure of that) so he decided he'd love to go see the Force Awakens with the family for his birthday. It had come out a couple weeks before his birthday so it was actually hard for him and Connor to wait that long (and Jess actually didn't make it and went and watched it on his own the week before and then watched it again on Hudson's birthday). 

I took Hudson to Build-A-Bear right after he saw the movie and this is the bear he picked out:

It has been christened "Darth Hudson" and its light saber makes the appropriate light saber sounds and lights up and everything. Hudson was very pleased.

That evening, we picked up an apple pie at Costco since Hudson doesn't care for cake and had a family birthday dinner in Spruce Grove.

A couple weeks later, once we were moved into our new house, we had a birthday party with his friends. He asked for a Minecraft themed party. I bought a few decorations and made some Creeper cupcakes and planned a couple of Minecraft type games but I think the biggest hit of the night was when Jess gave them each a flashlight, bundled them all up in their winter coats and sent them out to the backyard in the dark to explore the treehouse. They armed themselves with branches and brooms and were very brave even after they found certain proof that the treehouse was inhabited by vampires.

Christmas 2015

On Christmas Eve, my kids and Jill's dressed up in costumes and performed their annual nativity play. Shae continues to be amenable to being the angel while Maira chafed a bit at being typecast as Mary (she wishes she could have more selection of roles like her brothers do) but all in all it went quite well and they performed adorably.

Christmas morning before chaos descended. Even though we had possession of our new house by this time, we decided to spend one last Christmas in this house before moving.

The kids waiting patiently on our bed for the OK to go downstairs (Jess has to get the lighting and cameras set up before they're allowed to go down).

December 2015

Because we were so busy packing, December was a very busy month so we tried to keep Christmas and birthdays simpler than usual.

We still baked gingerbread cookies, especially since we knew this would be Shae's last Christmas eating regular cookies as we found out in November that she has celiac disease. We weren't able to get a GI scope scheduled for her until March, which will be the 100% diagnosis and so she's allowed to eat gluten until then which means she is making sure to fully enjoy all her favourite gluteny treats like gingerbread cookies and Lindor chocolate balls this Christmas.

We all went to Maira and Hudson's Christmas concert but Jess forgot his camera at home (it was a crazy night because it was the night before we got possession of our new house) so we just managed to snap a few photos on our phone. Here's Shae and Hudson at the outdoor photo booth that night.

Connor's school concert was the following week and they performed a play called the X-mas Files, a spoof on the X-Files. Connor had several roles, including a caroler and a reporter, and he was also in the choir.  Here's a link to a video compilation I made of the footage Jess took that night.

American Thanksgiving

With our dear American sister-in-law Hannah living in Edmonton, we enjoy celebrating two thanksgiving dinners every year. We were even joined by Jess's sister Jayna and her family this year too. Her husband Travis is half-American so we made the dinner in his honor too (see how I spelled honour without a U there just this once?)

I also have to mention that Brinsley has decided that Connor will make the perfect husband for her when she grows up and has proposed marriage to him. I know when they're older they'll be pretty embarrassed to be reminded of this so I had to be sure to record this so no one forgets. (It's so adorable!)

School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - October 2015

The U of A's Faculty of Science puts on an annual event for kids who love Harry Potter and science that I took my younger three to this year. It was really fun. The kids got try lots of fun science experiments and learned lots of new things in a really fun setting. I think we'll go next year for sure.

Halloween 2015

I present to you:

Maira as Robin

Hudson as a robot

Connor as a volcano.

Oh no, he's going to explode!

Shae as Little Red Riding Hood.

After an encounter with the wolf. 

She did two costumes this year. For school, she made herself this costume as Harley Quinn, a comic book villain.

I was able to watch Maira and Hudson's school parade and take some pictures and videos.

This is Maira's class:

And this is Hudson's:

There were a lot of superheroes so when I saw that one of Maira's friends had dressed up as Batman, I made her pose for a picture with him even though neither of them was too excited ("Mom, you're SO embarrassing!")

This isn't a great photo but poor Hudson had to sit at his desk for about half an hour in his robot costume before the parade started and he was so uncomfortable and awkward but he loved his costume so he was very patient while he waited for the parade to begin.

You may recognize Hudson's robot costume from the past two years when Connor wore it. I just took off the stickers on the front that said "Con-nor" and changed it to "Hud-son". He was so excited to be able to shine the laser pointers at stuff. If you look at the smoke in the photo above, the red lines are his laser pointers.

Our neighbours two doors down go all out with their lawn decorations. We live on a nice cul-de-sac and their enthusiasm for Halloween will be one thing we will miss when we move. We have put our house up for sale because we are buying a house in a different neighbourhood. Still on the west end of Edmonton but just closer to the kids' schools and to the river valley. So some big changes ahead!

Update: We were so lucky to get an offer a week after we put our house up for sale and it was really close to our asking price so this is really happening - we get possession of our new house on December 11th and we have to be out of our old house by January 14th. So yes, we are moving over Christmas. CRAZY. I love so many things about our new house but I will miss our beautiful new quartz countertops and maple floors that we just put in 6 months ago but I will especially miss the memories of raising a family in this house over the past ten years. Maira and Hudson were born in this house and Connor and Shae were one and six when we moved here so they've all grown up so much here. It's really hard to say good-bye.

Back to School September 2015

Today all four of my kids headed back to school. Hudson's at his first day of Grade One, with the same teacher Maira had in Grade one. Maira is in Grade Three with a teacher who's brand new at the school. Connor is starting Grade Six, his last year of elementary teacher. He has the same teacher Shae had in Grade Six and Shae and I are both a big fan of hers so I'm really happy for him. Shae (sniff, sniff) is starting Grade Twelve. Here is an adorable picture of her when she was four years old, thrilled to be heading off to her first day of kindergarten. Look at those cheeks, I want to eat her up! Her backpack was half as tall as she was!

And here she is, heading off to her last year of high school:

She decided she wanted to dye her hair purple for the first day but she didn't want to bleach it first and her hair is so dark that it didn't show up much (darn...) 

And here are my other three cuties, all set for their first days: