So much to share… so here are the remaining images. The original blog post is HERE. First the gingerbread houses we made with the Schwartz family:

Gavin

Zander

Ken’s

Novak’s party… so much fun!

I made these first 3 stockings. The 4th (Aidan’s is permanently on display in his room!)

Sunday School pageant.

Lovely moments of snow.

Themed fun in school.

Not sure what happened here!

Santa!

So much cooking.

A final peek at Christmas fun.

Woo! New year, new start, keeping up… not bad not bad. I don’t do resolutions, just gradually change my patterns. So here’s hoping.

Anyway… December, last month… well… Christmas, of course. Winter, some snow (sort of), busy busy. But now for the actual details of the month…

We had our traditional paper chain countdown, perler bead Advent chart AND of course, went to Activity Village for their Advent fun. Just a warning – they have gone to membership now, it is a reasonable cost and I have already signed up.

Early on in the month Shandai and I gave it a go at a Vendor sale and set up a table of my crochet and her knitting pieces. It wasn’t a huge success but it was fun! And hopefully something we can do again!

A pretty view out the back of the building

We did all sorts of fun crafts at home and at Daycare.

You really can make any picture Christmas-y

Practiced our recorders.

Christmas with the Schwartz family is a yearly much looked forward to tradition. Of course we decorated our small gingerbread houses.

This is mine, you can see the rest on the overflow post HERE.

Opened presents and had so much fun.

Look what the boys got!

Ken and I took the girls to Jeffrey’s Christmas concert. We had Christmas with the Novaks on Christmas Eve. It was so much fun and we were there way past bedtime.

We found Anthony a stuffed appendix and made him up the certificate! He loved it!

Of course we had our Sunday School Christmas pageant. The Schwartz family came to watch.

We had a whole family of angels.

We also had dinner out at McDonald’s to celebrate.

We saw Santa a SECOND time (the first was at Macy’s with Nana and Baba HERE) at the YMCA. There was all sorts of fun to be had there. 

We had our monthly Bookit reading program pizza.

And made cookies. This year we tried out a new gingerbread recipe from the Activity Village site HERE.

Monster Cookies

We had some lovely mail come. 

Seriously WHO SENT THESE?

And spent plenty of time at the YMCA.

Gavin

Little Lotus Yoga pose

It was a jolly Christmas. Full of fun and friends and gifts and giving.

From Ken to me

I got these lovely puzzle pieces for Ken.

We took full advantage of our new fryer and made FRESH poutine!

We even made it to one of Anthony’s indoor soccer games.

Skyping family!

For New Years we spent the night at home with a lovely drop by last minute by the Schwartz family for an hour or two.

Yup quite the month!!! I hope you enjoyed the wander through images!

And at a fairly brisk pace for once! I am determined to hit current BEFORE 2017 begins. Let’s see – March – creeping up on spring weather, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, my brother and my dad’s birthday month. Wow, thinking back that is quite the list of special days for our family.

Easter is always a bit of a deal. The girls get new dresses and hats if we can manage it. We go to church as a family, take photos, have a nice dinner… OH and the Easter baskets. This year we did our own egg hunt as well. The weather was far from perfect so we did it indoors. You just have to make it work, right?

At church

Baskets

Egg hunt

We had a fun and rather special craft… dragon eggs. Styrofoam and thumb tacks. All thanks to Nana. Even Echo got in on the fun, though then you had to glue down a few extra tacks to make sure nothing comes loose. 

We decorated traditional/conventional eggs as well.

Of course we did our monthly free Home Depot project.

Emanuel and I had to miss the scout’s mom and son dance so instead we went out to Mom and Son ONLY lunch at Dairy Queen! Talk about fun! 

Emanuel did make it to his Scout field trip to a police station. 

We actually had a few good crafts this March. Marshmallow and toothpick structures.

And making more relaxation bottles using glitter and glitter glue. Sparkle Sparkle!

We even managed to get in a visit with the Novaks. 

And spent plenty of time at the YMCA.

Post swim curls

Celebrated Dr. Seuss’ birthday with a themed lunch.

All in all a good month. This has really been a pretty good year as we look back!