Happy New Year

After the Christmas festivities here at home, we piled into the car and headed to PoPo and GungGung's house for a few days. While we were there, my brother and his family also came for a visit. So my parents had their two grandbabies in the house for about 5 days.

The girls had a hoot playing with each other and checking out each others' Christmas loot. They had great fun playing with their trains, tea set, doll house, puppet show, Madeline doll, etc. Santa knew just what to bring this year!

We spent New Year's Eve with friends, but since we all have young kids that wrapped up around 9:30pm. So we got to see the ball drop in Time Square with my family while the girls slept upstairs.

I spoke with my mom the day after we all left and she commented on how quiet the house was with all of us gone. The holidays are never long enough are they?

All in all, a wonderful holiday season spent with family and friends. We are truly blessed!

The girls exchanging presents.
Thank you hugs all around.
Let's put all our trains together!
Relaxing the next morning.
Getting some exercise ball work in.
Like her mommy, Maeve runs away from exercise.
Enjoying a puppet show.
OK, my turn.
Is this how it works? Am I on TV now?
Cousin Robyn with her Grandma.
The girls relax with a bit of colouring.

Merry Christmas!

Just sending a quick message to say


Merry Christmas Everyone!

'Tis the Season to be busy

As usual at this time of year things are busy busy busy. Here are some shots of what we've been up to.

We tried the Santa thing again at my company Christmas party. She was still pretty scared.
But she LOVED the present he gave her.
Here she is with one of her teachers at the daycare's Christmas social. Apparently Santa visited there too, so Maeve asked her teacher to hold her.
Here's one of her teachers from when Maeve was in the toddler class.
Pat has been putting our snow blower to good use clearing the 3 foot walls of snow and ice that the snow plows have been leaving at the end of our driveway every time it snows. The driveway and walk are easy enough to handle with a shovel, but the end always gets a giant wall of heavy, slushy, icy snow. He actually had to chop a 2 foot by 4 foot block of ice apart with our axe to get it out of our driveway.
Maeve was super excited to decorate the tree.
We had to do a little bit of redistribution afterwards as most of the decorations ended up around the very bottom of the tree on one or two branches.
Maeve wanted her hair in pony tails on Sunday. I told her she looked just like her reindeer.
We had Pat's family over for a preChristmas games night on Sunday. Here we all are crammed into the kitchen for a family photo.
Maeve wanted to have her hair up with her pretty dress on. She looked like a brunette Cindi Lou Who.
Here she is hamming it up for the crowd. Our little centre-of-attention.

Thank goodness we're on vacation from Christmas Eve until January 5!

Maeve's First Gingerbread House

Back in November, my parents came for a visit. We had Pat's parents over for dinner that weekend too and Maeve got to make her first Gingerbread house with help from Grandma and PoPo.

Here she is concentrating very intensely on getting the decorations correct.



And Voila! the finished product.




Here she is cleaning up all the sprinkles the next morning.



And resting in her tent with Daddy after all that cleaning.

Breakfast with Santa

This weekend the Bamboo Bunch (a local group of families with children adopted from China) had their annual Breakfast with Santa. Maeve was excited to go and see Ho Ho himself, but emphasized that she did not want to sit on Santa's knee.

She picked out a pretty dress (all she ever wants to wear these days is a pretty dress--even better if it is pink, what a girly girl!) and had a grand old time running around and visiting with her friends from Mandarin class. But when it came time for Santa to come, she would only tentatively wave at him from across the room and quickly launched into "want to go home!"

Although she loves the cartoonish idea of Santa, the reality of the big guy in a red suit and crazy white beard is absolutely terrifying to her. Alas, no photos with Santa again this year I'm afraid.

We will try again at the kids' Christmas party at work, but I'm not too hopeful.

Here's Maeve tentatively waving as Santa enters the room. It is a bit dark, but you can see the dread on her face.


This was as close as she would let me take her to the big guy. I had to accept the book. She did whisper "Tank you" to him, but I'm probably the only one who could hear it.


She did like the book though!


And she is still a fiend for bananas.




By the way she loved swinging the skirt of that dress around.
And please excuse the way that I look. I've been sick ever since I came back from a business trip to Chicago. Blech!

3 Fordes walk into a photo booth

Happy Halloween

Some photos of Queen Mabs and her cousins on Halloween. She had fun at Grandma and Grandpa's in the afternoon. And she enjoyed trick or treating in the morning at school to the other businesses around the daycare. But after going to a few neighbours that night she just wanted to go home. All the other kids running around in scary costumes in the dark was just too much for her.

We don't give Maeve candy, so G&G got her a lovely baby doll with accoutrements such as powder and wipes. She was in heaven!

The Queen with her favourite Jedi knight and favourite Count.

They really got in to character!

Showing off her skirt swirling abilities.

The Queen and her royal throne/high chair.

Trick or treat!