They boys never did fully decide on what to ask from Santa, so they were happy with the Stickbots, and the ski poles, ski goggles and bike helmet he got them.
I had been joking with the boys for several weeks that all Jeff and I were getting them was socks and underwear for Christmas. I had a sneaky plan underfoot, however, and revealed their true Christmas gift. After they each opened their gifts (of underwear and socks, of course!), they found inside a coded message and then the cipher to reveal the http address of a Youtube video I put together for them. I admit, they didn't enjoy the anticipation and the fun as much as I'd hoped, and their reaction was more subdued than we expected, but it may have been all the hard work we made them go through before finding out that...
... We're taking them to Disneyland and Universal Studios and Legoland!!!
For the 2 weeks off of school, we did a whole lot of this:
We did a little of this:
A bunch of this:
Callum had a small birthday party with his 2 best buddies - Teddy from White Rock and Liam from North Van. He really wanted them to meet, so we went to the trampoline place Extreme Air park, Browns restaurant for dinner then they had a sleepover at our place.
His actual birthday was on a Wednesday, so after school we took a few of his friends (Charlie, Cypress and Liam) swimming and over for hamburgers and cake.
His gift from Jeff and I was snowboarding lessons, so every Saturday in January was a lot of this (while Simon took ski lessons and got over his fear of breaking his leg again - phewph!!):
The snow in North Van stayed for a while, enough that soccer was pretty much cancelled for a few weeks, which meant the boys didn't miss any games while skiing/snowboarding. I have to admit that I think this will be our last season at Seymour, as we are rather bored of the terrain and relatively long lift lines.
Jeff's Christmas gift from the boys was the AST-1 course (avalanche safety training), so he did that one weekend. I (finally) got a decent running/GPS watch (Suunto Ambit 3), to motivate me back onto the trails (well, it's been mostly onto frosty pavement, until the rain came last week to wash away the ice on the trails).
As for the house, the drawings are still being reviewed by the DNV and they have asked for additional things that I provided. I think I've been forced to get a little smarter during this process, as I had to learn how to calculate RSI tables for them and as I studied up to take the Owner-Builder exam (which I still don't know whether I passed or not). We managed to find a rental house, though! It serves our purposes quite well, as it has an in-law suite below for Mom and Dad, and it has relatively cheap rent ($3,350/mo), it's just not in Lynn Valley, so no more riding our bikes to school for a while. Oh well, it's not too far.
Now, we are getting pretty excited because this Sunday we are leaving for DISNEYLAND!!!
