It's beginning to look a little like Christmas around here...

First off was this little guy making his first appearance on December 1st. He apparently decided the fireplace mantel was a good place to start his observations :)

On Sunday we went out and found our Christmas tree. Behind our backyard is all crown land, a whole mountain of it, so we just hiked up there and found our trees. Yes, I said trees :) this year we decided to have a few, one big family tree and a few mini trees for the bedrooms. Should be interesting....

The kids found a nice little sledding hill to slide down on our way :) We have so little snow right now, I sure hope we have a few good dumps of it before Christmas.

Pat, Cady and Gabe cutting down one of the mini trees :)

Gabe helped daddy cut down the family tree...

And here it is in it's new home. Isn't it nice and straight and pretty? I picked it out :) Trees are so deceiving in the outdoors, they look way smaller outside and then we usually get them inside and they are huge! But after four years here we've got our system down pretty good and this years is a good one (in my humble opinion).

Monday when the girls got home from school we decided to decorate it. Pat has been working tues-saturday so he gets monday off instead and we all had a good time rediscovering all the ornaments. There were lots of exclamations of, " I remember this one! I made this one in grade ....." or " So and so gave us this one!" Our tree doesn't have a theme or colour scheme really, but if I buy ornaments I try and keep it to red or silver. The tree is full of decorations made by the kids, myself, ornaments given to us as kids (some of them are 30 yrs old!) a real mish mash of everything, but I love it. It has such a personal feeling to it. Don't get me wrong, I love the themed and colour coordinated trees I see, but for us, this works.
 

Sorry this one's so blurry, but I just love the look of concentration on Gabe's face as he tries to hang one of the ornaments.

And here it is in all its decorated glory! Well, actually it looks a lot more sparse in pictures than in real life. hmmm have to try and remedy that.

The stuff under the tree is actually our playmobil nativity set. I was looking around for a good surface to put it on and must have got distracted cause next time I looked, this is where I found it. And you know what? I think it's perfect there :) I love hearing the kids play with it, I hear things like, "hey let's have a birthday party for Jesus and invite some friends over for him!"  Looks like there's an outdoor party going on cause no one's home at the stable :)

And of course Dora's watching all the comings and goings from her "hangout" in the tree :)

How about you? Are things looking a little Christmassy around your place? Do you buy a tree or go out and find your own? Check back later this week and I'll be sharing lots more Christmas fun! On December 15th at the Nesting Place I'm planning to link up for her Christmas home tour 2011 so if you want to see more home decor from around here, that's the time to check it out.

Header troubles

Hi Everyone,
Just wanted to let you know I'm working on my new header and seem to keep having technical difficulties. Will have the new header up asap!

The end of Movember

This is the face of my husband I've been looking at for the last month;

And tonight the mustache is going bu bye :) Proud of my hubby for supporting the cause, but I'll be happy to see that clean shaven face again!

Boring Tuesday

Sigh....instead of using some ideas from this..

or doing more of this (Christmas decorating)....

or playing around with ideas from this...

or even laying on the couch reading this...

I have to work on this...

 and this (blech)....

 and a big pile of this....

Sigh... two more weeks and I'm done my math and chem upgrading courses. I can't wait cause these are definitely not my favorite subjects and I would much rather be doing fun Christmas stuff instead!

Here's hoping that you are having a way more fun Tuesday than I! (and less laundry!)

Our New Christmas Friend

I cannot wait for December 1st to break this guy out of his box!

This is such a cute Christmas tradition to start for your kids! You can find out all about The Elf on the Shelf here. I really wanted to start this year as my kids are growing so fast and every year Nyla asks about Santa Claus. Maybe this will help her believe? She is such an inquisitive kid (always has been) and questions everything! I think she was four the first time she asked me if Santa was real, not because anyone said he was not, she would have these in depth thoughts like, how in the world could one guy go around the world in one night? And how would he get into houses without chimneys? Really good questions especially for a four year old! Now that she's nine, sigh, she asks the same things and then says, "and don't lie to me mom." What am I supposed to say to that! My standard answer now is, " well do believe in things you can't see and things that seem impossible?" that really gets her thinking :) So I'm looking forward to our usual in depth conversations around this time of year.

Whew, I didn't mean to ramble on! Anyways, I first saw this cute tradition on the Sunny Side Up blog here I just love this blog btw, (Erin and I have so much in common and she is so cute and funny!) and thought it would be such a fun thing for us to incorporate into our own traditions.

Well I am off, I have to finish a little project I'm working on to display our past Christmas family photos. I'll be back later this week to share it with you.

 Have a good day!

P.S. Have you heard about the Elf on the Shelf before? What kind of new traditions are you starting this year? 

Disappointment

    Well the great announcement that I alluded to last did not come about :(  As you may or may not know, we have been trying to sell our house for the last few months, and we finally had an offer. Everything was going along swimmingly (or so we thought) until Friday which was the day the buyers had to have their conditions removed. Well I guess they had some problems fulfilling the conditions and had to back out of the sale.
    Sigh, well on the positive side, at least we don't have to be moved out by beginning of December! And another thing is we will be able to stay in our place over Christmas, which is a big plus because I LOVE our house at Christmas. Picture it, log house surrounded by gently falling snow, real wood fire crackling in the fireplace, stockings hung on the mantle, Christmas tree twinkling in the window, ahhh love it. It's definitely one thing I will miss about this place when we do actually move! Speaking of Christmas, check back tomorrow where I plan to share a little certain someone who will be joining us in celebrating the season!
 Have a good Monday!

P.S Have you ever been so close to selling your house and then it falls through at the last minute? How did you feel, frustrated, sad, happy, relieved?

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

Well, winter is here I guess :)  This is the sight out the window beside me, although it has calmed down a bit. I love the first snowfall, it always feels Christmasy and I love the Christmas season.

Someone was really excited to see the white stuff and couldn't wait to get his "winter pants" on and get out there and play :)

He's still having a blast out there in the 1/4 inch that has fallen today :) He was excited to make tracks with his bike.

I'm staying inside where it's nice and warm, battling my bad cold with tea and rest. It's kind of nice to have an excuse to not do much as we have been so incredibly busy lately. I can't believe it is the middle of November already! I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but I've been going to school since September to do upgrading (Math and Chemistry, yuck!) so that, as well as keeping up with the regular day to day stuff, has kept me hopping. There has been some other stuff going on as well which I would love to share, but I can't yet, but hopefully by early next week I will have a big announcement to make :)

Hope your day is warm and toasty!

Fun, Fantastic Fall!

Are you amazed that I'm actually back again this week? I am! So far no more computer problems, yay! So today I'm going to do a little wrap up of our fall, pretty appropriate since today we had our first snowfall! And apparently I like exclamation marks today.

Moving on....

The girls had the last few of their soccer games and received a medal for their efforts (all the kids got one). They were pretty excited, especially Cady :)

Of course little brother had to get in on the picture taking action too...

They are all so cute :)

Fall also brings lots of gardening chores, so the kids helped by collecting snails. Snails kind of give me the heeby jeebys, but for some reason, my kids love them!

I love Gabe's expression in the next one :)

My kids have been getting their hands on my camera a lot lately and sometimes it's quite interesting to see what they come up with. I nearly peed myself laughing so hard at the next picture, so I knew I had to share it with you! Poor Stella...

We have the best dog, she has so much patience with the kids :)

Nyla and Cadence did some cross country running with their school and both enjoyed it ( unfortunately, it was usually on a day that Cady had both school and 2hrs of gymnastics so she tried it once but was too tired) Here's Nyla at the regional meet, she did fairly well, 15th (I think) out of 25.

What would fall be without a visit to a pumpkin patch? We were generously invited to some family friends' house to pick some pumpkins out of their patch, and the kids had a grand time. Gabe, of course, picked the biggest, Nyla the smallest and Cady, almost as big as Gabe's )

Nyla named hers Seedy :)

The kids also helped Laura pick some monster carrots. These things were huge! I've never seen carrots so big and fat (and tasty too!)

As you can see it was a gorgeous day, weather wise, and we all had a lovely time. Oh, what were Pat and I doing? Why sitting around the bonfire of course! Thank you so much Laura for the wonderful day!

And last but not least, what would fall be without a pumpkin pie? Cady and I had a great time making one together for Thanksgiving. It was delicious!

Oh and no pumpkin patch pumpkins were harmed in the making of the pie , I used canned for that, but we did use them for something more fun, our Jack O'Lanterns! You can check them out in the last post I wrote :) Hope you had a wonderful fall,

now on to winter....

Halloween Goodness

So, are you all candied out yet? Well we had a great time last night and on the weekend. I'll warn you this post has a lot of pictures because I finally got a computer that would let me upload my pictures, Yay! For the last month or so, I haven't been able to get any pictures uploaded so that really cramped my blogging style, so sorry if you've been wondering where I am and thanks to those who stuck by here.

Now, on to the fun stuff!

On Saturday, the kids got to turn their pumpkins in to Jack o'lanterns ( with a bit of help from mom and dad) They drew their designs on the pumpkins and we helped them cut :) They had a great time pulling all the gooey guts out!

Nyla helping Cady with her massive pumpkin!

Daddy, Gabe and Cady working on Gabe's big monster.

Sometimes it worked better to dump the seeds out, it's helpful to have a strong daddy around to lift those big pumpkins! :)

Ewy Gooey!!

They looked really great in the dark with their candles lit :)

Look at that spooky grin eh? The top one is Gabe's and the big one in the bottom pic is Cady's, and the little one is Nyla's of course.

Here's the  front of our house last night,

And then we were off trick or treating! We went to the local bakery cause we heard they were giving fun stuff out, and when we arrived, we found out that they had made some really cool spooky cakes, which they were giving away a piece of (chocolate, yum!!) They were soooo cool!

There was a haunted mansion,

and a spooky graveyard. Cool eh?

Some people went all out with their decorations, there was one house in particular that the whole entrance of the place was a spooky scene complete with this guy,

and this guy!

My little kitty cat, Nyla :)

We met up with some good friends for a bit and the kids got to hang out and have some fun together. But, they were nearly finished and we had just begun, so we parted ways and continued on.

How cute are they?

And Gabe our little logger :)

I realized this morning, that I didn't get any pictures of Cady's costume (she barely stood still for two seconds all of yesterday!) so I will have to remedy that somehow, she was a fairy :)
I'll be back lots this week with lots of fall pictures to catch up on!

Well, how was your Halloween? Did you see any really cool decorations? Get lots of candy? Visit any local businesses and get something special?