The holidays kick off

Auntie Roberta has arrived; the school & daycare have closed; the baking has commenced; visitors are coming to/through the Big Smoke; the Christmas books have been hauled out of storage; the Nutcracker/Madeleine/Grinch dvds rediscovered; some lights have been strung; winter's arrival feted at the festival of lights and the annual Wintersong dance performance; and some carols even occasionally swell out of the ghetto blaster.

Just
• presents to buy/make/ wrap...;
• food shop to do;
• cards to write (Christmas cards are over-rated);
• New Year's Open House to plan;
• house to clean;
• Christmas lunch clothes to wash/iron/repair;

special food to make (and consume)
• first draft of contract materials to finish;
• build-in door handles to order (don't ask);
• Bell Canada to throttle (I said, don't ask)...


Seb & Sophie get re-acquainted with their Christmas books


Sophie waits for Wintersong to start. Her first big show and she did pretty well. Only getting into one heated, whispered argument with Sebastian about why they couldn't understand any of the lyrics to one song (it was in Cree).

Roberta and nephew made a paper lantern house for the Festival of Lights

And Roberta - just like her sis the year before - was up late finishing the boy's project...

No better shot of Sophie at her daycare Winter show - the first time she treaded the boards! She did it with aplomp - no shyness, no tears. She sung some of the words, and did some of the gestures and wiggled back and forth to some internal rythmn.

M re-enacting a scene from Olivia helps with Christmas - one of my two fave children's Christmas books (the other is Christmas on Exeter Street - oh and I like the story of the couple that secretly sells their most precious items to get something for the other one; only to find that the spouse did the same thing and thus the present is less "useful" - i.e. a hair band for hair that has been cut & sold to get a watchband for a watch that has been pawned).