He Came!

We got up this morning just in time to see someone dashing through our entry .... he certainly was jolly!  

It's Christmas!

Tonight (Christmas Eve) we opened our first batch of presents. These were all the ones that Grandma Reid brought with her from Saskatchewan. The kids had a great time, and we were all kept busy trying to take pictures of everything, release the toys from their plastic encasings, and making sure Malcolm didn't eat any wrapping paper or metal twist ties (could they put any more of those things on toys...it's a little ridiculous!). Thank-you, Auntie Shelley and Uncle Richard, for the beautiful bathrobes! Malcolm looks like he's wearing a smoking jacket... very cute!
Thank-you Dayna for the awesome hoodies!
And thank-you Auntie Kim and Uncle Lance for the great toys. Olivia is very psyched about her pony, Sabrina loves Dora, and Malcolm has no idea what's going on! But he'll have fun playing with his boat in the bathtub!
Now we go to sleep and get ready to do it again in the morning! MERRY CHRISTMAS!! 

Christmas stuff

Baby Santa says Merry Christmas, and he hopes you all are enjoying the season. Olivia graduated from her gymnastics program on Saturday - she really enjoyed it, but she has decided to go back to dancing after Christmas (Dayna, I can hear you cheering!). The main reason? ...she wants to be in the year-end show....she loves to be on stage. And speaking of being on stage...
...the girls had their Sunday School Christmas Concert on Sunday. This is an action shot of Olivia and her class (that's her best friend Elsa beside her) belting out "We Three Kings." Those kids produced a lot of sound - they have a great teacher, and I'm very glad that my kids are the same ages as "Mrs. Tanya's" kids, so they can benefit from having her as their teacher.
There aren't so many action shots of Sabrina, since there wasn't a lot of action going on. The boy beside her was into it, but this is her first experience on stage, and she was a little tentative. To her credit, when the song started (the picture is of the poem recitation), she sang every word...not loudly, but she sang!
 

Tough Guy

Neither of the girls have ever had a black eye that I can remember....this happened a couple of days ago, and today he fell again and got a bloody nose....such a boy. 

DISCOVERY!!!

Someone left a half-eaten apple on the arm of the couch....used to be a safe spot, but Malcolm reach is rapidly increasing. He was pretty excited to have such a great treat - until Sabrina discovered it wasn't where she left it...

 

No Fear

I seem to remember that, as babies and toddlers, my other kids were somewhat afraid of the vacuum, being that it made such a loud noise and was known for sucking things up, never to be seen again (a reasonable fear, I think). However, such is obviously not the case with Malcolm... The snow finally got wet enough for Olivia and Daddy to build the snowman she's been waiting for for a week (Sabrina, to no one's surprise, got cold and wanted to come in before the snowman was complete.)
Last week's sugar cookie event was postponed due to inclement weather, so it happened yesterday. The girls enjoyed icing all the cookies with Mommy, Grandma, Auntie Viv, and Ben (and yes Shelley, these cookies are to be divided among 3 families, like the gingerbread - we like cookies, but even we can only eat so many!)
And now that Malcolm is 8 months old, he's finally big enough to sit with the "big kids" and have a snack. The girls have instituted a "picnic blanket snack time" whenever we have Noah and Jared to take care of (you can see Noah in the pictures, but only Jared's feet - that's the best collage I could get), and today was the first time Malcolm was invited to eat his Cheerios with the rest of the gang!