Maira's first figure skating competition

Maira was invited to participate in a Skate Canada competition in Stettler in January called FunSkate. It's not actually a competition, more like a chance to present your skills in front of judges in a competition-like setting and get feedback. It's a good introduction to what it's like to be in a competition so you know what it's like. A practice competition, I guess.

Anyway, the morning after her birthday party, we got up bright and early and drove to Stettler. She was going to participate in two events, an individual skills event and a group skills event. She was extremely nervous. Here is a picture of her in the dressing room right before it was time to go on the ice for her first event, feeling pretty scared:

She went out and performed her three skills for the judge (a quick stop, a jump and skating backwards) and achieved gold level marks for all them so she received a gold medal.

Later, in the group event, she and some friends from her skating club each performed some skills for the panel of judges and again, they achieved gold level marks so she received another gold medal.

She had a great experience that day and felt really good that she was able to do something hard and scary and find out it wasn't really scary after all.

Maira's Birthday

A few short weeks after we moved into our new house, Maira turned 9 years old. She asked for a dance themed birthday party.

There were only six girls but they had enough energy that it seemed like twice as many. They made their own microphones, gave themselves rockstar makeovers and then played Just Dance and sang lots of Taylor Swift karaoke at the top of their lungs. 

We also invited family over for a birthday dinner.

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.