A party for Callum

After New Year's I made a last minute decision to have Callum's 7th birthday party at home before the holiday break was over - the idea was that I wouldn't need to invite so many kids if we did it before school was back in session, but we still managed to have 11 little boys over to cause chaos and noise.  We borrowed my sister Kami's and my brother Scott's PS3's so they could play video games, I had wood boards for them to paint and put their names on and I also spent every night during the week before the party creating 10 different Lego spaceships that the kids could put together and take home as party favours (that I'm quite proud of, I might say!).  Callum requested a Canucks cake, so I found someone in Langley that would print an edible image to put on top of a home made cake.

The next couple weeks was in great anticipation of our Hawaii trip, while still enjoying a few moments of significant cuteness:

Blogging for 5 years!

It's my blogging anniversary!  Huh. I just happen to look up my first blog post, (as I'm standing outside in front of our house while Simon plays with his scooter/skateboard/bike because it is so sunny and 9 degrees on this 25th of January!)  and it's been 5 years. I'm so glad I did it, as I have such a terrible memory! Besides,Motherhood has a rather unpleasant side effect of a consistent sense of unproductivity and disappointment in my skills or abilities to feel valued. Usually I am torn between feeling guilty or too complacent: guilty about not doing enough fun things with my kids or yelling at them too much  and  complacent about providing opportunities that challenge my kids or teach them the value of work and gratitude. 

Blogging, I have found, (much like journal writing I suppose, but with pictures), tends to put things in perspective.  Although I have certainly blogged a complaint once or twice (or so!), I think things are pretty awesome. My little family is awesome and being a wife and a mom is, well, awesome. 



:-D

December 2013

When the weather got cold, Callum was really desperate for it to snow, but this day, he just had to work with what he had.

When it finally did snow, it stayed long enough for a little play time.

For our anniversary, Jeff and I escaped parenthood for a couple nights in Seattle.  There was a Santa race the Sunday morning in front of our hotel, but most of the weekend we just ate really yummy food and picked up Christmas gifts for each other.

Jeff requested that our theme for Christmas this year should be "Simplify".  I think we succeeded. 

 Callum's school concert (he's kind of in the middle, front), and pancake breakfast:

  
We went over to Scott and Samantha's for Christmas Eve.  No acting out the nativity this year, but we watched a cute video of it, Callum read some of it and Max played with a toy nativity with his cousins.

 

And Christmas morning was, of course, fun.

We had Christmas dinner at my parents house.

After Christmas, we were hoping to spend a lot of time on the Mountains, skiing with our family season passes to Mt.Seymour.  Well, a serious lack of snow made us try some other activities.

Unfortunately, after bowling that day, I went for a drive to help Simon fall asleep for a nap... He didn't go to sleep:

Jeff found this fun restaurant to take the boys for lunch one day and Simon was in train heaven.

Simon is definitely trying very hard to do whatever his brothers do.  Including playing with my phone:

And, a rare moment of contentment between 3 brothers (maybe I should censor this?):