Our newest baby (??)

Well, we've done it, we decided to adopt a dog. After years and years of persistent begging, Shae finally has gotten her wish. Our new dog is a schnoodle (I'd never heard of the breed before, it's a schnauzer/poodle cross) and he's 4 1/2 and his name is Howie. His current owner's fiance is allergic to Howie and so even though she loves him (the dog) to pieces, she love her fiance more and is giving Howie away. Her wedding isn't until May so we're just going have Howie over for a few sleepovers here and there until the end of April when he'll come live with us for good. Here are some pictures of our cute little dog:

And, here is some spring cleaning from my camera - when I was uploading the pictures of the dog, I found these pictures that are a little old but still worth posting:

And finally, this is a video of Maira singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". She sang it constantly all through the Christmas season and she does a pretty cute rendition of it so I thought I'd videotape it so I could put it on my blog...but then I forgot and it never made it up here at Christmas time so here it is, better late than never!

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.

Shae Turns 11 and Other Stuff...

Shae's 11th birthday fell in the middle of a giant blizzard. But despite the storm, all 7 of the friends she invited turned up for a party at our house.
This is the "purse" cake Shae requested, along with some rather droopy divinity for her friend with celiac disease.


I can't believe how grown up she is getting. She's becoming a very mature young girl who is responsible and friendly. She cracks me up with her funny mannerisms and jokes and she's starting to develop strong interests in art and drama. She is busy rehearsing for her school Christmas play in which she has a lead role and that's been a lot of fun for her. She gets to play a Martha Stewart type character, I think it'll be pretty funny.


Shae has also decided she LOVES sock monkeys so for her birthday, I got her a sock monkey kit and I also knit her this hat:


Aside from celebrating Shae's birthday, we've also been busy around here with general Christmas busy-ness.

Here's Shae helping with the gingerbread cookies:


And the kids playing with their Grandpa on one of his work visits (Connor is on there too, behind Hudson!):

Hudson has started walking now and he's getting into all sorts of mischief/learning experiences. He loves to pull out the pot drawer, toss all the pots out onto the floor and then climb in himself. It's even funnier for me because Maira used to do the exact same thing at that age.

I've been busy over the past month or two with all kinds of sewing projects. Here are a few of the things I have made:

A pencil roll - I made one for Maira and one for my niece, Lilia.


I specifically chose the matrushka fabric for the roll because Lilia's dad, my brother, served his mission in Russia.

And this is a quilt kit I put together for my Mom (don't look Mom!) Not that she'll be surprised since she bought the kit a few years ago at the quilt store in Canmore (Sugar Pine Company), but hadn't got around to making it so she asked me if I would make it for her for a Christmas present:

Here's a hat I knit (I love cables!):And here are some pajamas I made for the kids:

This first pair is from a Michael Miller fabric called Bot Camp - it's such fun fabric because it's full of all kind of scenes of robots going camping, I love it.


And here is the first of 4 pairs of jammies I made for the kids to wear on Christmas Eve:
(Of course, the boys will be in blue, not pink!)

And speaking of jammies, Connor has decided lately that he wants to be a train robber when he goes to bed so this is the outfit he has decided he needs to wear to bed each night (the pajama bottoms even have trains on them):


And finally, a typical day with Hudson around:
Sadly, when I first found him here, he was actually inside the cupboard happily dumping cereal all over the place but when I laughed and ran for the camera, he crawled out. He gets into one mess after another - my time is spent leaving him be so I can get things done and then going to see what mischief he's been up to and cleaning up after it. And then repeat the process again. And again....