Go? Christmas!

What a wonderful day and a delicious one! Thank you to everyone who sent gifts to make the day so abundant and to George and Lorraine for getting up very very early in the cold, dark New Brunswick morning to come and share your special day with us.

PLEASE start at the bottom of the post to get the flow of events.


While mum stays up to put away the haul (check out the clothes again!!!) and dad works on finishing up those annual movies...


Off to bed in his new robe.


Grandmother and granddaughter play dolls.


Sophie - with post-3 hour nap!!! hair - opens her spiral craft toy from the Geneva cousins.


Sophie (swathed in her new dressing gown) has some dollies for her dollhouse.


Child Power!!! Capes and wristbands made by Nana (inspired from a booth at the One of a Kind Show) from Value Village curtains.


Is it a royal robe, a child power cape, a magician's cloak?


Cool science and nature combine in one kit.


Une tire-lire (piggy bank) and un pot (a pouring pot) de Marite. And nothing broke/rien a casse!!! Merci, Michel, Marite et Mamie Suzanne.


Mirror, mirror...


I love that they are so pleased with being all dressed up, with being siblings, with being themselves!


Yes, she is brushing her hair with a BRAND-NEW dish brush.

Say it ain't so.

Cheeky monkey and her Nana (who looks so alert despite having awoken at 3 a.m.; she was excited about Santa, even though she pretends that she was just worried about missing the crack of dawn flight to her grandkiddies)

George's traditional bubble bread (the gooey treacle is bubbling away in the pot on the stove)

M nipped off very early to get a shower and get dressed. He was tired of looking scruffy in the Xmas photos! I come off looking pretty fine in my pjs and sororal dressing gown from Vietnam.

The sleds! But we have no snow......... No prizes for guessing whose is whose.


Some stocking stuffers. The past two years Santa hasn't been able to haul everything up the stairs (old age, you know). There is a small stocking waiting at the foot of each bed, but then there is "overflow" (wink, wink) and Santa's big gift (sleds this year) downstairs which we just happen to open when G&L arrive. The kids aren't allowed to come downstairs until 10 mins after G&L's arrival (picture us madly opening boxes and and stuffing stockings in the sitting room with eager munchkins bouncing around their bedroom)

Ready? Set?

The preparations for Christmas...

Auntie Roberta telling stories

Carrie doing crafts. (Oh, I just realised that that this was when they were doing "slime" experiments. I promise that no one got slime in their stocking!)

None of M baking but some of him doing what he does best (and seemingly endlessly) in the days leading up to the 25th - making the annual kids' movie!

Order yours here... Just send $99.99 to moi and then only $19.99 for the next 11 monthly installments. You will be all paid up by the time the 2010 edition is ready. Funny how I organised that.

Who is afraid of big, bad Grandma?

Grandmothers come in all shapes, sizes and roles in children's literature. We have finally got around to explaining little red riding hood to the kids (well, Sophie does have the cloak); there is a magnificently awful grandmother in George's Marvellous Medicine which we know on cd but have started reading today.

But we are also getting to know a wonderful Quebecoise writer and illustrator - Marie-Louise Gay. Grandmothers don't really appear in her work, except....

Back in the autumn, during someone's "quiet time", I read Gay's bestseller "Stella".




Here's some of the exchange:



Sophie: Grandma?



Me: Their Grandma



Sophie: I have a Grandma too.



Me: Yes, you do. Do you love your Grandma?



Sophie: Yes.



Me: Why do you love Grandma?



Sophie: Because she laughs.

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).

Red Wedge

I had a theory that we had enough red garments that I could fill a washing machine. And I was right.

For some reason that makes me proud. Nothing like red for projecting confidence and giving energy to life.

Once in a blue moon

my love and I hit the town. And we brush up pretty nicely too, if I do say so myself.

The yoga craze - it's for everyone!

If you send me a snap of yourself in a yoga pose, you too can know fame and glory on the wedgley blog. I am challenging you Auntie Jeet, Babush, cousin Addie, Nannie...

Happy Birthday dear Nana/Mom/Lorraine....

Sung at high volume 5+ times throughout the actual day.

This weekend was devoted to fete-ing the lovely Lorraine. Our present to her was a weekend packed with activities; they ranged from a solo massage and manicure, to a loud family dinner at an Italian restaurant with her longest and dearest friend Diana, from the 12 Trees of Christmas exhibit with Sophie and Jo to the AGO's King Tut exhibit with son and grandson, from lunch at the AGO to a pancake breakfast, from spending 5 hours - FIVE! - at the One of a Kind Craft Show with Jo to doing her own crafts with the grandchildren. And we topped it all off with a gorgeous cake (and bubbly) from you know where...

Fashion statements

When one's clothes are small, one can squeeze a lot of items into a closet or chest of drawers...


Check out the velvet tam that Sophie got for her birthday.


and the fairy wings and wand...


a handknit from Nannie


some 'hierloom' fashion jewelry


All decked out in mama's new hat


Seb donned new pyjamas to clamber up his bunkbed ladder for the first time (he can now do it in his sleep - upwards only fortunately).


Showing off some new duds too.


While their dad just desperately wanted to don this jersey and skate out onto the ice.