Heather's Home

Hudson's 3rd Birthday

We were in Raymond for Hudson's third birthday. We went swimming in Lethbridge all together during the day and then we had pizza for supper (one of his favourite foods), and I (along with Shae and Mary-Rose's help) made a train cake for him. He had lots of fun driving a toy car in and out of the cake where I had placed a decorative tunnel. I think he got more cake on his hands than in his mouth but at least he liked it!

It's bittersweet to watch your youngest grow up. He's really not a baby anymore and while it's sad to let go of that phase in our family, I sure do love my kids at any age and I'm so glad I get to be Hudson's mom. Birthdays are a good reminder to me to enjoy every day I have with my kids more fully and to take nothing for granted because time passes far too quickly.

Christmas 2011

Christmas Eve, we invited my mom, her boyfriend Sandy, my sister and her husband and kids over. We put the kids in costumes and tried to get them to act out the nativity while I narrated the scriptural account. Hudson was a less than cooperative shepherd who quickly shed his headdress and insisted on taking turns holding the baby. Maira was an angel who absolutely had to wear a crown as part of her costume and insisted on visiting the baby along with the shepherds. Kind of chaotic but hopefully they felt the spirit of the story.

After the company was gone, of course they all unwrapped their annual Christmas jammies. This year I decided to just do the same thing for all 4. And of course we had to dig out Howie's Santa costume from last year so he could match too.

Here's our tree on Christmas Eve, once all the kids were tucked into bed.

And here are all the little noisemakers in our bed on Christmas morning, waiting for the OK from Dad that they can go downstairs (he has to get the lighting and tripods set up first, of course).

Connor lost his front tooth on Christmas Eve (and lost the other one on Boxing Day).

After opening gifts from each other, we got dressed and went to church. After church, Grandma and Sandy came over and we exchanged gifts with them.

This is Maira working on a make-your-own book kit she received for Christmas.

Two days after Christmas, we packed up the van and headed down to Raymond to spend a few days with Jess' parents, grandmother, and some of his siblings.

We celebrated Hudson's 3rd birthday while we were there, but that's a story for another post...

A Few More Christmas Traditions

Another thing we like to do as a family every December is visit Candy Cane Lane. This is a street in Edmonton where the residents are known throughout the city for going all out in decorating their homes with Christmas lights.

You can even ride a horse drawn wagon up and down the streets and of course, the horses are wearing "jingle bells".

We also always make sure we attend the Spruce Grove ward's live Nativity Pageant. First we watch the enactment of Christ's birth outside, and then we go inside and have cookies and hot chocolate. My mom was there, singing carols to people while they ate and my sister and her husband and kids were there as well.

Bethlehem Walk

This year, we decided to check out a neighbourhood church's annual Christmas production called the Bethlehem Walk. It's a gigantic church and it gets transformed to look like Bethlehem. After waiting in an unfortunately long (between 1-2 hours) lineup, we were finally able to enter and it was really interesting. Awfully crowded so I'm not sure we'd go again but we're still glad we went.

In the first room, there's a sheep pen with some shepherds and some angels appear in the sky and sing to everyone:

Then, they open the city gates and you are able to wander the streets of Bethlehem. We met several Roman centurions (one even locked Connor up in jail).