December fun and Christmas craziness

A few things I forgot to mention in my last post about December events:

- On Dec. 15, Austin had a 'graduation'/concert at his preschool. It's a graduation, because it's only a 9-week program, except he's signed up to go back in January, so he wasn't really graduating. But the concert was cute. Here's what happens when you ask a bunch of 3 year olds to sing for their parents (at least Austin was singing!)


- On Dec. 17, Austin, Alex, my mom and I saw the Olympic torch run almost right by our house as it headed towards downtown. It was pretty cool to see.

On to the holidays:


This is the first year where we did not travel outside the GTA, yet the holidays were any less busy than normal. Christmas saw Ryan's two sisters, dad and partner come for dinner -- the very first time we've cooked Christmas dinner at our house. It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun. And honestly, even though it was a lot of work -- it makes me want to always stay home for Christmas.


Ryan's sisters actually arrived early, one arriving on the 22nd and the other on the 24th so they were both with us during the present frenzy of Christmas morning. Once again this year, Austin was the last person out of bed, just after 8 a.m. Even Ryan's sisters were up before him! Both kids were super excited about Christmas morning, although Alex was far more intersted in unwrapping the paper from all the presents than she was in what was under the paper.

And the frenzy started all over again when Grandpa arrived at noon to spoil them with presents. After Christmas dinner, everyone stayed the night and into the next afternoon.

After half a day's downtime, we headed to Brampton on the 27th for Christmas with my family, where yet another present frenzy insued. We stayed all day -- from before lunch until after dinner. Not 48 hours later, on Dec. 29, we were back at my family's house for another gathering, this time with my cousins, aunt and uncle from the U.S. In total, there were 21 people at my parents house. It was fun, especially since there were two new babies since the last time we got together, and some of them had yet to meet Austin and Alex. With Christmas now done (well, we'll be doing it one more time in late January with Ryan's mom), we had one day of downtime before New Year's Eve. This year, we took the kids to the Zoo with some friends and their daughter for their annual New Year's Eve party. Only a small part of the zoo is open -- three pavillions and any animals between those pavillions have their cages lit up -- but we all had a lot of fun. There was also a stage in the main entrance with performances and, a countdown to midnight at 9 p.m. The kids loved being at the zoo (even though it was raining lightly the whole time were were there -- which I guess is better than freezing cold or snow), and had a lot of fun dancing at the main entrance and counting down to 'midnight'. And 9 p.m., was perfect, because they were both pretty exhausted when we got home! Once home, our friends also put their daughter to bed at our house, and the four of us sat up drinking wine and playing cards until midnight. Low key, yet a lot of fun.

And here we are in January, back to the old routine. There are more pictures in the slideshow, at right. Happy New Year everyone!