It seems as though nothing much has happened this month. Especially when it comes to progress on the Blackburn house. Sigh. But we can't forget about Callum's 4th birthday! He and his cousin Lorelei shared a family Party (since her birthday is the day before Callum's).
On his actual birthday, we had an Ice Cream cake.
Callum's Preschool had a field trip to the Library, and Max joined the class (I took these pictures with my new iPhone - wohoo!!)
Most people use the phrase "the terrible 2's", but Jeff and I agree that this is about our favorite age - Max is just so darn cute! Although he has an English vocabulary of only about 4 words, which mainly consists of just vowel sounds ("Eee" for 'please', "Uh" for 'up', but he can also say "Burr" for 'bird' and "Mooaa" for 'more', though his only complete word seems to be 'Pop'), he communicates quite well in other ways. Jeff found him like this one rare night when he was watching the boys: 
Yesterday, after getting annoyed and frustrated while dealing with a screwed-up plumbing order for the house, I decided to take the boys sledding at Mt.Seymour. Their cousin Jackson came too and they had a lot of fun. We needed some frolicking in the snow.
A couple Saturday's ago we made it up to Mt. Baker for a day of skiing with our friends who live in Bellingham. The snow was awesome and the idea was that the adults would take turns playing with the kids and going skiing. I'm super glad Jeff and Abram sent Shannon and I out skiing first since we ended up going out for 4 hours and the guys got less than an hour - I can't really felt sorry for them as those Dad's sometimes need some time with their kids forced on them!
:-)
I guess our plan for a simple holiday season kind of turned out - December wasn't too crazy, but I think it's because we were satisfied to not accomplish all we planned. A few things did happen, though.We got our building permit!! Wohoo. So, we managed to get some concrete poured for our front entry before the holidays. My sister Krista came to see the progress.
Callum completed his first session of Skating lessons, and I find that he actually skates better with a hockey stick in his hand.
We started out the Christmas-y stuff by heading down to the Stanley Park Christmas Train, which Callum loved and Max did not - turns out he has some strange aversion to Christmas lights.
Callum's Preschool had a cute little version of the Nativity they put on. He was the Star of David.
We went to a U-Pick place to cut down our own tree, something small enough to fit into our cramped living quarters. Hopefully we soaked in the whole experience: the walk in the woods, selecting the tree, sawing the trunk, carrying the tree to the car, drinking hot chocolate and sitting by a fire, etc... I didn't bring my camera, but I really should have since I don't know if we will do it again - our tree was $45 and we learned after wards that you could go to Art Knapp and get a bigger/better one for $10!! We felt slightly ripped off. At least the tree was cute.
A little while after we set up the tree, we found we brought home a resident of the tree - at least it wasn't chipmunks:
Jeff's office had a Gingerbread house contest that he and his team took a little too seriously, but it inspired us to do one with the boys.
We were trying to avoid a smorgasborg of presents, but somehow, come Christmas morning, it was pretty crowded under the tree.Here's a picture BEFORE the boys woke up:
And here's a picture AFTER the boys finished the rampage:
I think 4 years old is about the best age for Christmas - Callum was SO CUTE when he woke up, "Mom, I saw that Santa ate the cookies!! And he drank the eggnog we left him!" He was so excited. He woke up at 6:22am and he managed to wait until 6:45 before waking up Max.
While Krista was in town, she and I made it up to Cypress for a gorgeous day of skiing. Jeff was too sick with a bad cold to join us.
For those of you interested, here are some more pictures of our little project in Gibsons. We went up with Kim and Sven again to see the progess and to help them arrange their cool Rug tiles in the media room.
The Skinners celebrated New Year's Eve by falling asleep before 9:15pm. Welcome 2011!!
On his actual birthday, we had an Ice Cream cake.
Callum's Preschool had a field trip to the Library, and Max joined the class (I took these pictures with my new iPhone - wohoo!!)
Most people use the phrase "the terrible 2's", but Jeff and I agree that this is about our favorite age - Max is just so darn cute! Although he has an English vocabulary of only about 4 words, which mainly consists of just vowel sounds ("Eee" for 'please', "Uh" for 'up', but he can also say "Burr" for 'bird' and "Mooaa" for 'more', though his only complete word seems to be 'Pop'), he communicates quite well in other ways. Jeff found him like this one rare night when he was watching the boys: 
Yesterday, after getting annoyed and frustrated while dealing with a screwed-up plumbing order for the house, I decided to take the boys sledding at Mt.Seymour. Their cousin Jackson came too and they had a lot of fun. We needed some frolicking in the snow.
A couple Saturday's ago we made it up to Mt. Baker for a day of skiing with our friends who live in Bellingham. The snow was awesome and the idea was that the adults would take turns playing with the kids and going skiing. I'm super glad Jeff and Abram sent Shannon and I out skiing first since we ended up going out for 4 hours and the guys got less than an hour - I can't really felt sorry for them as those Dad's sometimes need some time with their kids forced on them!
