Happy New Year (and some wacky teeth)

Brendan's class at school touched on Chinese New Year last week.He came home with many more questions than answers though so we spent some time reading about it, doing a couple of Zodiac related crafts and some writing. We found out that there is an annual dragon parade in Chinatown just a few km from our house but that it clashed with skiing time. Given the choice, Brendan chose the parade and Tadhg chose skiing so we split up and spent the day in pairs.

 The parade was a little disappointing in size (for me only, Brendan loved it as he had no expectations). We went with some friends and watched the various parts of the parade pass, then ran to overtake and watch it all again, repeated three or four times. Each child was given some lucky money in an envelope and we were treated to a firecracker show on the road just feet from the kids.We then went into a lovely little cafe called Raw Sugar for hot chocolate (a place I've been meaning to go to for ages and will likely blog about separately).

And check out these teeth! About two hours after this, while playing on the floor under a table in a pub, the right tooth fell out, unnoticed by it's owner. He popped his head up from under the table and smiled at me and I thought "something's not quite right here" and looked down to find the tooth right beside my foot on the pub floor.

Happy Birthday Brendan, by Brendan and Mummy

In his own words...
I woke up in the morning and played playmobil with Tadhg. Then I opened some presents upstairs on Tadhg's bed. I got a lego x-wing fighter, a pirate island playmobil and some books from Uncle Phil.

 My mum took a picture of me and Charlie. He wrote 'me and Brendan' on his T-shirt. I got some lego ninjago and more lego star wars with snow troopers on Hoth, and a game called Rummycub and some drawings and some science stuff.

Mum made a smurf birthday cake for me. I invited Jeremiah, Charlie, Theo, Liam and Abigail, Hannah, Esme and Ira and Evan.

 I blew the candles out. Then we went out to play.

 I had a good day.

This is me building my lego.

 And that's it for words from Brendan, he's gone back to play with one of his presents. It was a lovely day, with minimal fuss, lots of adult company for us too. I'm loving this phase of being able to huddle with adults in the relatively peaceful kitchen while letting the kids take over the rest of the house. All the play was peaceful (at least peaceful enough to not need any parental intervention!) Tadhg decided to have a bath at one point and so didn't have any clothes on for a while, after some extended quiet time a bunch of kids came downstairs all dressed up, some had a go at decorating a T-shirt, one child and a group of parents played a game of rummikub, the cake was a hit, the sun was shining and it was a balmy -12C when we went out to play.
Happy Birthday to our lovely Brendan, who has proudly told anyone and everyone that he is now 6 at least 20 times today. What an awesome 6 years we've all had so far!

Christmas 2012

This year's Christmas was celebrated in two places for the Skehan-Riff clan. The first location was in our new home in Ottawa. Finally settled with about 95% of the boxes unpacked, it was important for us to start our family traditions in the house. After Siobhan and I had the chance to sneak out and see the Hobbit, Siobhan put together this awesome Christmas dinner with the full works, roasted chicken, potatoes, carrots in white sauce, gravy, brussel sprouts and broccoli.

Being really energized with Christmas cheer, the boys were singing a lot of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman at the dinner table.

After our lovely dinner, the boys had a bath, opened new pajamas from Nana and Papa and made up a nice plate of cookies, milk and vegetable scraps for Santa and his hard working reindeer.

Here are Siobhan and the boys in their new pajamas reading a Christmas story before heading to bed.

A picture of the living room after Santa dropped off his bounty of gifts.

Christmas morning was really nice, the boys actually stayed in bed for a while and we didn't come downstairs until after 7am. The boys enjoyed opening their presents and took time to play with each one. It didn't feel overwhelming and we managed to keep the number of presents down. Thank you to everyone for the wonderful pressies. Once we had a chance to eat some breakfast and tidy up, we packed up the car and headed to Montreal to celebrate Christmas with my parents and brother's family.

Not too sure what my Mom thought about the turkey at first but in a nutshell, I bought enough groceries two weeks previous to get a free turkey. Not thinking, I picked up one of the biggest ones at 22lbs (big enough that it didn't fit in our freezer). My Mom took it an did a great job turning it into a fab dinner, (plus a week's worth of leftovers inlcuding turkey sandwiches, turkey rissoles, turkey soups and turkey pot pie.) Here's a picture of the old bird (Ha!) (The turkey brand name was "Granny's" too)

This was a nice trip down memory lane when we walked into their house. My Mom & Dad set up the old card table just like it was when my cousins came over for Christmas dinner when I was young. And it didn't fall down.

Boxing day adventures didn't involve any shopping. The only queueing was on the toboggan run at Centennial Hill. We raced down the hill several times in various combinations. Here's Scott with the two young-uns.

Walking up for another run.

Brendan being skillfully driven down the hill by Dustin.

Brendan and Duncan trying to avoid hitting anyone (e.g. Siobhan)

I almost missed the train on this one. The sled was a bit too small. It'll be even smaller next year when we add two more kids to the toboggan bus.

And finally, my little Tiger, all smiles and thumbs up.

gearing up for christmas

I think it has gone like this so far...
-boys started talking about christmas (waaayyyy to early- school's fault)
-brought up the basket of winter/christmas books
-first snowfall  (no control over but it certainly had a power over us! "It's winter!")
-posted letters (and presents!) to santa
-found a couple of christmas boxes
-put up lights outside
-bought some more lights
-made an advent calendar (finished very late on Dec 1st)
-moved furniture to make way for tree
-set up the christmas village
-found another christmas box
-chose, chopped down and decorated our tree
-found yet another christmas box
-made some more decorations
 
And that brings us to today.

 First snowfall and a spot of tree climbing.

 Brendan has been very prolific in the drawing department of late. We went through almost a whole roll of paper in a week. Good time for a lesson in thriftiness but he's not keen on using the other side. Can't blame him. More paper is on the christmas list.

 The tree expedition.

 Found a beautifully shaped tree which was spared the axe when we found a bird nest in it's branches.

 Taken by Tadhg.

 Also by Tadhg

 And taken by Brendan

 Time to warm up with hot chocolate, a fire and melty marshmallows.