Christmas party at the daycare

Here we are at a Christmas party thrown by Rachel and Elliot's daycare. We sang songs, at potluck and had a visit from you-know-who.
Rachel is learning Christmas carols (okay, jingle bells) in both English and French. Which will make her the perfect bilingual elf for the public service some day. Ah, something to aspire too. Her mom seems to have. And look how happy she is!
Rachel was a bit shy at first and was not real keen on shaking Santa's hand. However, she did deign to sit on his knee for a bit, and spoke highly of the experience afterward. (Wow, Santa was here!) Mind you, she received a gift (which means she can be bribed. Also a very useful skill if one wants to join the public service one day).
Elliot, on the other hand wanted nothing to do with this freaky man in the red suit. And well, can you blame him? You teach your kids to be wary of strangers and then all of a sudden we expect them to get cozy with a man who has shaving challenges and questionable fashion sense. Right mom and dad, I was born last year, not yesterday.

Family Portrait

Here we are with our Christmas tree fully decorated. Merry Christmas to all!

O Tannenbaum Part the second

Here we are decorating this year's Christmas tree. Only one ornament was broken in the process. Many were dropped, but Mommy saw the wisdom of replacing all the glass ones with plastic ones last year. They bounce pretty well for the most part. We won't even talk about putting out the ceramic Nativity set until the kids are, oh, about 40 I figure.
Note the look of COMPLETE concentration on Rachel's face. I think she takes her job pretty seriously. There were a few scuffles over artistic differences this year between Rachel and her Dad. Apparently they do not share the same vision. Dad wanted the tartan table cloth, Rachel thought the pointsetta one was more festive. And she was kind of miffed when she discovered her Dad was moving some of the ornaments around on her (otherwise they would have all wound up on the bottom half of the tree).

Note the look of manic happiness on Elliot's face. Luckily he is running AWAY from the tree (and towards the camera as dad was trying to set it up for a family picture). Elliot was very good and sat in his chair watching us decorate the tree. He was actually quite delighted by the process - sitting there and making ohhing noises with his mouth wide open. He especially seemed enthralled with the lights.

Spiderman and Dora the Explorer

The kidlets received new jammies for Advent from their Nana and Papa. Elliot's are Spiderman and Rachel's are Dora the Explorer. One of Rachel's favourite songs is Spiderman - she can actually sing some of the words - and she has a Spiderman doll, lovelingly given to her when she was born by her Uncle Sean, Aunt Cindy and cousin Sorcha.


Dora is still quite the perrenial favourite. And she especially loves these jammies because they are fuzzy and warm. With snowflakes on them, as she likes to point out.
Elliot does not necessarily need his Spiderman jammies to attempt to crawl up the wall - when mommie's head is turned.

Christmas sing-a-long

Our friends Molly, Dave and Allistair came over for a pre-Christmas dinner and sing-a-long. Molly cooked up an awesome curry for us - because nothing says Merry Christmas like curry and pappadums. After Christmas we pulled out the instruments and had a little impromtu carolling. Because nothing also says Merry Christmas like a little ukulele playing.

O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum

Here are Rachel and Dennis picking out this year's Christmas Tree at the Parkdale Market (Elliot passed out in the car). It was really hard to pick - there were so many (and to be honest, they are all kind of the same). At any rate, we managed to pick a good one and it is now waiting to be decorated.

Sinter Klaus

This year we decided to put out some wooden shoes to see if Sinter Klaus might come by for a visit. And boy, did he ever! He dropped by a number of treats, including some strop waffles, ginger bread and arrowroot biscuits. He also dropped off some musical instruments, which will really come in handy for the various Christmas sing-a-longs we will be participating in this season. Here is a picture of Dennis and the kids practicing their best rendition of Jingle Bells (also known as "Dashing through the snow" which is what Rachel calls it).

A nana visit

Nana came by for a visit one evening to help Mom put the kids to bed (Dennis was at a meeting). Special treat!

Elliot walking

Elliot is now officially walking. He started to take his first tentative steps on his birthday. A week later, he was pretty much on the go. As you can see, he is pretty pleased with his new found skill. While he does take the odd tumble, he is surprisingly solid on his feet. And fast. Look out world!

Rachel dancing

Rachel has always enjoyed dancing, but they have been really encouraging it at pre-school. Apparently her favourite song to dance to is the Lollipop song. However, as we don't have this at home, we thought we would try out Elton John instead (especially as she seems to have a penchant for dressing up like him on occasion). Here is is doing her best free-flow dance interpretation of "Croc0dile Rock." As you can see, she can "hop and bop" with the best of them.

Elliot's birthday - part the third

Here we are celebrating Elliot's birthday with Nana and Papa and Uncle James and Auntie Liz. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures of any of these folks. However, here is Elliot wearing the cute hat Nana and Papa gave him.

Elliot's birthday Part the second

Here we are celebrating Elliot's actual birthday on November 20. We demolished a few more cupcakes for the occasion (like we need an excuse).

Going to work

I was getting ready to go to work, and Rachel was playing in her room. I turned around and this is how she was dressed. I asked her where she was going, dressed as she was. She said "the office." I tried to imagine what would happen if I turned up at the office dressed like this. I figured I would probably be arrested.
It was also a crazy hair day for Elliot.

Opening the gifts

Here are Daddy, Rachel, Elliot and Grandpa all opening Elliot's gifts. As you can see Rachel is being particularly "helpful."

Happy Birthday Elliot

Nothing says Happy Birthday like eating cupcakes. Here are the two kids demolishing theirs. This is Elliot's first time eating cake - can you see the sugar rushing through his veins? He has that tell-tale eyes popped out look about him...

Elliot's first birthday Part 1

Here we are celebrating Elliot's birthday with Grandma and Grandpa Van Staalduinen. We feel very blessed that they travelled all the way from Hamilton for the occasion. We had a lot of fun celebrating!

Winter

Winter is here, which means we now need to bundle up. The sun glasses are the finishing touch, non?

The grocery fairy

In our house we have house cleaning fairies that come and clean the dust bunnies up every two weeks. We also recently discovered a new species of pixie living in our house - the grocery fairy. We managed to catch a couple of photos in her natural habitat. The grocery fairy helps to bring the groceries into the house, unload them and put them away (which is why you sometimes can't find the tea or jam you thought you had purchased. It is there in your cupboard somewhere...)
As you can see the grocery fairy eventually grows up to be the product placement fairy.