As yet unnamed!

Gingerbread House Decorating

 

We had one of Noemie's little friends over (Hannah) to do gingerbread house decorating this year on Wed the 22nd. We had hoped to do it earlier in the week but wanted Nana to be there too so things got a tiny bit delayed. We originally invited a few other kids but luckily they couldn't make it. I say luckily because I forgot how time consuming it is to make these houses and the two we made was about all that was happening. Nana and I were going nuts and finally went to bed around 11:30pm and decided to glue the things together the next day. We used pure melted sugar so there was none of that drying time associated with white icing as glue. Noemie and Charlie shared one house and Hannah did one with her Mom and baby brother Laurence who is 2 months old. He played more of a supervisor role. 

We didn't have any windows or doors this year as we didn't want to risk anything cracking. The kids had an awesome time decorating. I bought a few things like clay snowmen, santa on a sled and some reindeer and trees to add to the decor. My favourite thing about our house is the candy compost heap to the right side of the house. That was Noemie's personal touch. Charlie was more careful and was adding one marshmallow for every 5 or so he ate. 

Our house didn't last long though. Noemie took a bite out of one lower corner of the roof that night. And the next day we all wanted a bit of a nibble and before long the roof caved in due to 3 walls relocating to various tummies. It tasted pretty darn good too. 

Christmas Eve = New PJs!

We started the tradition of new PJs on Christmas Eve with Noemie's first year. I know it's a really common thing that many people do and I love the idea. The last 2 years we got matching PJs for the kids but this year we went with coordination rather than matching. Of course these were purchased in the US during our visit in October. Noemie loved them so much she wore them last night as well. (the kids usually wear a fresh set of PJs each night). Charlie wasn't as interested in posing for a photo by the tree as he had been busy playing with his Thomas trains in his bedroom until we dragged him down into the living room so he cried a bit. Noemie on the other hand really got into things and helped Nana hang the stockings on the fire place and put milk, a cookie and a carrot out for Santa and his reindeer. She was thrilled the next morning to find the carrot almost all eaten, the milk was gone and there were crumbs left over from the cookie. I picked up the cute milk bottle and the matching plate, which say "Milk for Santa" and "Cookies for Santa". I am sure Santa wishes I had found a bottle that said "Sherry for Santa". Or whatever it is he likes to drink! 

Week in Review (in no particular order!)

Here is our tree at around 11pm Christmas Eve. I think we had all the gifts "under" the tree by this point. We either need less presents or a much bigger tree next year. Well, bigger tree it is, as there is no chance we'll buy less. Afterall, that's what Christmas is all about to me: the gifts, the hysteria that surrounds Santa's visit (not to mention being able to threaten the kids that if they're not good, he won't come!) and of course, time together with the family. Being utterly non religious, I have to admit I love the commercial aspect of Christmas and without it, I'm not entirely sure I'd want to celebrate.

I do know one thing for sure: next year we are getting a nice non prickly non pine dropping tree. And I think it will be around 5-6ft (this year was just shy of 5ft) and I will find a good solid base for it to rest on so it sits up off the floor a bit so next year the gifts can actually go UNDER our tree. And I just might start on my tree skirt kit in January so that there is a chance for it to be ready by Christmas! 

This explains it

No wonder it's taking them so long to clear Heathrow. They should've planned on at least one other worker to lend a hand. (photo taken from The Guardian Newspaper).  The scary thing is, it's probably not far from what is actually happening. 

Spoken to Nana a few times now. She is getting fed up as well. They've been told earlier today that they are all gathering at 11am tomorrow (yes, 11am, not first thing in the morning or anything, God forbid anyone gets their act together before their morning bacon sarnie) to be told what's happening. They've been told they won't need to have their luggage with them at that time. 

The worst part is we're due more snow tomorrow night (Monday). Probably another "blizzard". 

Stay tuned. 

(waving hello to Mrs DeLone! And anyone else reading to get updates on where Nana is on her scenic tour en route to London). 

 

A Rant

Nana is stuck for night 2 in Shannon, Ireland due to the London Brit's inability to handle a few inches of snow. In fact, they have called it a "blizzard". So while they bang on about health and safety, "working around the clock" (so does this just mean a few less tea breaks?) and fail completely at opening Heathrow despite no further snow since yesterday's little flurry, Charlie has been hard at work and his airport is in fact open. I bet Nana flies Charlie Air in the future!

Nativity Play

 

 

A few days late with these photos but it's been a bit of a weekend with a sickly Charlie again. The poor little fella has been coughing non stop and really hard so he had another pukey incident in the middle of the night leading into Saturday morning so it was a 4:30am bedtime for me and not much earlier for Kirk. It sort of threw the entire weekend off as I was in a bit of a sleepy fog. He's a lot better today but I think I might take him to the GP tomorrow morning just in case it's something that can be made totally better. Can't be having him sick over Christmas and Kirk and I probably could do with some non puke nights for a while. 

Noemie's nativity was really sweet. It was in a church on Sydney Street in Chelsea and I'm pleased to say I wasn't hit by lightening as I entered. (Being an atheist and all, it's always a risk). We had to sit through just about the entire play until it was her turn to come on stage but it was worth it. She was a bit dazed through most of it though she did join in with some jumping around and singing. I have to admit that I had no idea that there were no Queens in the story, just kings, but they made it up for the school version. It was only when someone looked at me all funny when I said that Noemie was a Queen in the nativity play that I was informed about this. I need to order the DVD of the play so that we can watch it at Christmas. 

This is our last week before Christmas break starts. Noemie has 3 afternoons of nursery left, it's Kirk's last week at work and Susanna's last week before she heads home to see her family for a few weeks. I'm done with the Christmas shopping but have some baking for early gifts and card writing left to do. And all the gift wrapping. Have already missed the US last posting date but I figure better late than never as our cards this year are super cool! 

Christmas Tree Part Deux

I realize I didn't blog about part one but suffice to say that our fake tree didn't last into this Christmas and we ordered a real one instead and it arrived today. The fake one was having issues with staying upright and the last straw was when Charlie went to hang his first ornament on the tree after much encouragement and it fell over. Much crying ensued and I was a bit worried he might be scarred for life. I totally forgot to take a photo of the tree when it tipped over though I was taking photos of the kids decorating. I could blame it on being a concerned Mom whose first thoughts were about her child's well being when the thing tipped over. The truth is, I just am so out of practice with taking photos that tell the entire story. 

The real tree arrived this afternoon while Noemie was at nursery so when she came home the first thing out of her mouth was "is the tree here?" and then "can I decorate it?" She even managed to get Charlie to participate. The upside to a real tree is that it smells gorgeous. The downside? The needles are a tad prickly. We ordered a 5ft tree and the one that came was around 4-1/2ft. I was going to whine about it until I realized that a 5ft tree or even the 6-7ft one that Kirk talked me out of wouldn't have fit in the living room. Height isn't an issue as e have 12ft high ceilings. It's how full the tree is. This thing is massive. We need to get more lights for it so hopefully I can do that on Friday when I'm out shopping with a friend. Maybe a tree skirt too. 

Noemie was very focused on decorating as you can see. She is much like her Daddy in that she sticks her tongue out when she is concentrating. Something I never do (concentrate or stick my tongue out). Charlie didn't quite understand that you need to hang the ornaments and was just placing them on a branch and then uh-ohing when they fell. It reminds me of how Noemie decorated the tree last year! 

Tomorrow afternoon is Noemie's nursery nativity play. Must remember to take my camera and perhaps the zoom lens in case we are far away from the stage. She is SO excited! So are we :)

Christmas on The Green

Noemie's nursery puts together this one day event in Parson's Green so we decided to head out for a few hours to see what it was all about. Much to Noemie's excitement they had a carousel and it was the first thing she headed toward. She went on it on her own, held on tight and thought it was just about the coolest thing ever. Then the kids went on the swings that go around and Charlie giggled quite a lot. The market stalls were okay, nothing special really and Santa was nowhere to be seen (though we did see him walking in the opposite direction down the New Kings Road on our way to Parson's Green). We saw some reindeer but none of my photos of them turned out unfortunately. The last thing was for the kids to go on the carousel again so Kirk rode to make sure Charlie didn't fall off. 

We headed home after that and Kirk went to the Chelsea match and the kids and I did jigsaw puzzles and tidied up a little bit. I think we may put up our tree tomorrow as Noemie keeps asking about it and then she wants to bake chocolate chip cookies and make waffles. As she would say "we are very busy busy". 

Snow!

We finally got some snow overnight much to the kids' delight this morning when they woke up. Well, more Noemie than Charlie. She's been anxious to build a snowman pretty much since we did one earlier this year. So she had her breakfast and rushed to get dressed so they could go out in the garden and play. Charlie was still a bit under the weather this morning though thankfully the last time he threw up was after his morning milk so he seems a bit better now. 

He's so cheerful despite not sleeping well at night with the coughing and then not eating well due to not keeping anything down for 24 hours. He made up for it at lunch and dinner though!

 

 

Charlie had a little conversation with the snowman and it turns out he wanted some hair and a hat. So we put a wet leaf on his head and it looked more like a toupee at first but once we added his watering can hat he looked pretty spiffy. Celery arms, a carrot nose and button eyes and on his front and he's all set. He's happily sitting in our garden and chances are he'll still be there tomorrow morning unless he gets into a fight with a neighborhood cat. I only hope he is not yellow in the morning for any reason.  

I took Noemie with me to the post office today and taught her what I think will be a very valuable lesson: don't eat yellow snow. 

December already? How did that happen!?!

I know I've been bad about this blog again. Life is just so busy these days that at night when I would usually blog, I've been knitting and just kicking back instead. But I have some cute photos to share today so here goes!

This year I decided at the last minute to make advent buckets and fill them with a little toy for each day from Dec 1 until the 24th. I figure the 25th is stocking day and all the other presents day so I didn't bother with the 25th item. I originally had hoped to hang the buckets on a rope or something on the mantle piece but realized that the toys were too large so they buckets might tip over and also the kids would be able to reach them too easily! Buying the stuff was great fun but wrapping them all up was tedious. Still, it was worth it this morning when I saw how excited the kids were! I used Disney Princess paper for Noemie and Thomas paper for Charlie. 

I didn't think to put the buckets in random order so it was easy for them to find the first one. I might have to reorder them tonight and make Noemie look for the bucket of the day each morning. Noemie was pretty excited with her Tinker Bell doll as she is into fairies this week. Charlie was unsure as to what he was supposed to do with his so he started playing with Noemie's wrapping paper instead. She took care of the situation of course and opened his toy for him. He got a small Woody figure and was pretty excited. We then had to talk them out of opening more of them and Charlie got pretty upset but then was easily distracted. 

Noemie asked me to take a photo of her this afternoon which is unusual these days. Usually she gives me a funny face or smirks when the camera comes out so this made a nice change. I can't believe how grown up she looks. She's been unwell this week with a bad cough and she threw up in the middle of the night on Monday night. Charlie had his turn at throwing up after lunch and dinner today and is so congested but doesn't know how to blow his nose yet so is struggling quite a bit. Noemie was really upset that her brother was unwell today and she started crying saying she wanted her baby brother to get better soon. He was laying on the rug in the kitchen after dinner and she sat down on the floor next to him and stroked his hair and told him "it's okay Charlie". I swear they are so sweet together. Hopefully Charlie realizes one day how lucky he is to have such a loving big sister. 

Earlier in the week Charlie had his try out session at nursery and he had a blast. He had Noemie's old teacher Miss Anna as his teacher which was great. He played with the other kids in his class, had a little girl follow him around and stare at him and did some gluing. I have photos on my phone so will share them another day along with a photo of his first piece of nursery art. 

For now it's bedtime. Fingers crossed everyone sleeps well tonight and is on the mend soon. Lots of fun stuff to do this month and can't have everyone coughing up a lung!