Christmas Pictures

Wow, it's already New Year's Eve! I uploaded these pictures onto a post and saved it as a draft this past week, thinking I would compose and post something at work because I assumed this past week would be pretty slow. But...it looks like things at work will be a little busier either for awhile or from now on since I think I'll be taking on some more responsibilities. I'm not totally sure how everything is going to be yet because Al has talked about doing something like this a couple times and then nothing comes of it, so I guess we'll just wait and see.

Anyways, here are some pictures from our Christmas - or rather Christmas Eve. Michael and I are not in any of the pictures because I was still in my pajamas and Michael had just gotten up. Maybe soon I'll take some more pictures of Aidan and me together. Actually - I was just moving some pictures around and saw a picture of myself and Aidan. Lucky you!

When we were downstairs earlier in the day Aidan noticed his Bob the Builder that I had brought down and insisted on bringing it back upstairs to play with. So here they both are with the presents they picked to open first, waiting for Daddy to come.

And here are those 2 presents. His Diego outfit was in the striped present - of course he had to put it on right away - and he got a Bob the Builder lego set in the little square box.

Auntie Bev brought over a very large present, which turned out to be a box that was taped up and gave Aidan quite a bit of difficulty....

But inside was this big warm fuzzy blanket! He's been using it on his bed or wrapping it around his shoulders and saying 'Mommy, I King!' or hiding underneath it.

I bought Aidan a set of hand puppets at Costco quite awhile ago and they turned out to be quite a hit, especially 'Kangaloo' who is attacking me right here. He also got a buffalo, antelope and gopher. Gopher turned out to be quite a scared gopher. I pretended that he was scared of Aidan's robot that he got and then he was scared of everything.

This is our living room once we were done. Of course I hadn't done my weekend cleaning yet so it was messy to start with and then it just got disaster area messy. I was kind of glad that I hadn't done my regular cleaning, only to turn around and have to clean this up.

Aidan got Star Wars Potato Heads from Auntie Amber and Uncle Jordan and they made the perfect bad guys for his robot to fight! Now if only he could find a way to prevent their feet from falling off all the time...

This is Aidan's first successful attempt at writing his name all by himself. I don't know if he's attempted it before - I told him where to put sticks and circles and I think I may have helped him with the stick on the 'd', but I was pretty impressed by his skill with a piece of chalk!

Well, it sure doesn't feel like it was just a week since Christmas! We don't really have any plans for tonight, I don't even know if I'll make it up til midnight. I think we're just going to watch a movie together. Yesterday I took Aidan out for dinner after shopping and it was slightly disastrous. He never actually had a sleep in the afternoon so he was quite grumpy all through grocery shopping and then also at the restaurant. He actually fell out of the booth twice and flopped down and smacked his forehead on the edge of the table. I thought it was kind of funny because that's what he does when he's upset - just flops around - and I keep telling him that he's going to hurt himself but he never listens to me. The other thing was that our food took about 35 minutes to come out and then when it finally did, mine was totally disgusting. I guess I need to brush up on my italian sauce terms because I ordered the chicken primavera thinking I would get a cream sauce, not a stinky tomato sauce. It also didn't help that I was super starving when we got to the restaurant, then had to wait for a stinky dish that I couldn't eat. I suppose I could have eaten it if I was hungry enough - I mooched some of Aidan's grilled cheese and fries and then stopped at McDonalds to get a sandwich on the way home. The whole car stunk by the time I got home, that sauce was so gross!

Anyways. I don't really have much more to say. I've got tomorrow off from work. It's going to be bad once we get into January and I actually have to work full weeks back to back! What am I going to do? Actually, maybe the end of January, but one of my Christmas presents from Michael is a 2 day getaway to Calgary (complete with babysitting courtesy of Pat and Michaela including an extra day!!) staying in a nice hotel room with jacuzzi and tickets to a concert by Evanescence. I'm pretty excited about it, but I've still got about 2 weeks to wait because we're going away January 14 and 15th I think the dates are. Nevermind Aidan, I got pretty spoiled myself over Christmas!

Video Link

Well, things did not go as I would have preferred them as far as Michael's schedule and work. He got called yesterday afternoon and notified that his truck was up for a job that morning at 1am (technically Dec 25), but fortunately the call came around 3 so he had plenty of time to prepare. We decided to open the presents all together right then instead of waiting until Boxing Day or later, so Aidan got to get up from his nap and we all sat around in the living room and opened the presents. I think Aidan honestly thought every single present under the tree was for him because if there was one for me or Michael, he got a little upset! With our new webcam we took some videos of Aidan opening his presents, and you can see them here. I'm not sure if you can just view them right there or if you have to download them to your computer. I was going to upload them to my blog, but Michael said it would probably be too big because they total 16mb, and I agreed.

Well, Aidan's in the bath playing with his new bath toys and I am supposed to be taking this opportunity to clear out some of his old toys and clean up the house so I better go do that!

Merry Christmas!!

Pictures

I was looking at my blog the other day and realized that I haven't posted pictures in quite some time. So here are a whole bunch.

These two pictures were taken after our first big dump of snow. Aidan went outside to play a little bit and had fun marching around in the snow.

Here is Aidan in his frog towel. He also has a purple dinosaur one, but this one is his favourite.

These two were taken the night that we got a package from my parents. I wasn't sure if I should have opened this bag right away, but it was see through and I did. Aidan was very excited about his new jammies and had to try them on right away. You'd never know from the top picture that he was really excited about them, but he was. He did not, however, enjoy me flipping over the bottom 'feeties' to cover his toes. I think he looks pretty cute running around in it -but everytime he wears it, he pees himself, I'm not sure why.

I snuck in and took a picture of him sleeping - I know that's bad, but he didn't wake up. You can see that big gash on the side of his forehead - it's from a little girl at his daycare who scratched him with her fingernails and left quite a mark. He was quite upset about it.

This is Aidan's advent calendar. I buy a chocolate one and then we put the chocolates in the little pockets, and every morning he takes out a chocolate and moves the teddy to a new pocket to go back to sleep.

This is our Christmas tree with the massive pile of presents underneath it. Why was I ever worried that there wouldn't be enough presents??? It's kind of squished in the corner because there's really no other place to put it. Maybe next year we'll have a bigger house, that would be soooo exciting!

I was going to post a couple pictures from last Christmas and the Christmas before, but it looks like I didn't take pictures last Christmas. Kind of weird. The one before, 2004, Aidan was a year and a little bit and was so extremely excited that he wouldn't stop moving and all our pictures are blurry! Actually this is the only one left. Something weird has been going on with my picture files and some of them won't open, I think because they are corrupted which is really really annoying. If anyone knows anything about how to recover the pictures that would be really great. Anyways, this picture is pretty cute. We borrowed the tree from Pat and Michaela and it was such a tiny cute tree.

Well, all I'm really doing here is majorly procrastinating. I'm not really sure what's wrong with me this weekend, but I am really feeling 0 motivation to do anything at all! I better find some motivation soon though, tomorrow is Christmas and I'm making french toast for breakfast and a big dinner for dinner. Depending on whether Michael's out or not he's bringing his engineer, his fellow operator and another operator to have Christmas dinner here. I kind of hope they all come because it would be nice to have more people here to appreciate my fine cooking *smiles*

Ooohh...major announcement: Aidan pooped! I put him in underwear overnight and he peed himself twice, but then managed to poop this morning so maybe it was worth it. Sorry about grossing anyone out.

Okay, I think it's finally time to put Aidan down for a nap and get going on this cleaning up the house. Nothing like company to produce a clean house, is there?

That Snowman Banner is Freaking me out!

Only 3 days til Christmas!!! Man, Boxing Day is going to be such a letdown. There is such an incredible build up to Christmas, and then....nothing. Maybe that's why there are so many sales on Boxing Day. People can get out of the house, have something to do. Hmmm...there might be something to that theory.

That's what I'm doing, and I'm actually looking forward to it. We'll go grab McDonalds breakfast and maybe play a little in the playplace (gotta keep the kid happy) and then hit Zellers, maybe Superstore...okay, that's only as far as I've thought it out. I'm definitely not going to Walmart, I know that much.

Anyways, Christmas first. Michael is on shift over Christmas so I'm not sure if he'll be home and if he is, then when he'll be home. If I could, I would make sure he was home Christmas Eve for the church service until Christmas Day afternoon so that Aidan could open his presents - maybe I'll be lucky and it will work out that way. Michael told me that if he's not home for Christmas, Aidan has to wait until we're all home before he opens his presents. I guess if I was the one that might be gone I would want to see Aidan open his presents, but still! Poor little guy if Michael's not home! I said Aidan has to be allowed to at least open his stocking and Michael agreed.

Yesterday Tammy handed out gift bags to everyone. I knew they were ordering hoodies for everyone and I was excited about it, and then I looked in my (special pink) gift bag and there wasn't a hoodie. I was a little sad, but there was a Mary Kay gift bag which was probably a better gift anyways. It was a set of lotion, body wash, body spray and sugar scrub in a really nice scent called Dreams. Or Embrace Dreams, I'm not sure. Either way it smelled really good. I'm not sure, but when I went to Tammy's open house she had all the different scents out on the table and I may have sniffed this one and said I liked it. Very sneaky if that's what happened. This morning I used them all and then on the way to work when I could still smell it, hoped I hadn't overdone it. The sugar scrub was very cool. I used it on my face and I could totally feel a difference in the texture of my skin afterwards! I'll have to try it on my knees and feet and elbows. There was also a gift certificate for the Keg which I was really excited about as well. I'm always disappointed that the Keg doesn't do pasta, but I'm more into steaks than I used to be, so that will definitely be something to look forward to in January once Michael has his week off.

Wednesday evening I realized that Tammy was leaving on Friday, meaning Thursday would be her last day, meaning that if I wanted to bring any baking I had to make it that day! I just didn't want to make a bunch of stuff and put it upstairs for the guys because they'll eat pretty much anything. So I made Raspberry Nut Pinwheels, Coconut Macaroon Bars, Raisin Rugalachs and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. (If anyone wants the recipes I can post them) Nothing turned out the way I would have preferred, but at least everything tasted good. I didn't take any short cuts or make any substitutions which is probably why. Those of you who know me well know that I'm constantly making substitutions and then complaining that my stuff didn't turn out properly. There is a reason! Next year I'll have to work on my presentation a little bit. And now that I know that everything tastes okay I can maybe take a teeny bit of the margarine out of the recipes. I don't even want to know the fat and calorie content in some of those things! If I had been more prepared I would have had more Splenda around and would have used that instead of the sugar.

My Pinwheels didn't really work out very well. You mix up the dough, roll it out, spread jam and walnuts on it, roll it up like a jelly roll and then cut slices for cookies. Well, my dough wasn't really sticking together very well, so when I went to roll it up, it just crumbled. I was very disappointed because this was my first effort of the night. In the end I managed to get it all rolled up and then I stuck it in the freezer so that I would be able to cut it without it crumbling too much. In the end they weren't so much pinwheels as sort of like deformed little rectangles. Also, I don't have a rolling pin which doesn't really help. Usually I use a soup can, but we had a big Sour Puss bottle in the fridge so I used that and it worked pretty good. I think I'll keep it when we're done and continue to use it. Sure beats a soup can. Yes, yes, I am aware that there are stores that sell rolling pins. In fact, last time I was in Save-On I actually located the rolling pins and looked at them! Somehow though, I have resisted the urge to buy one. I'm not sure why, but I've lasted this long without one so why give in now?

The Macaroon Bars were coming along well until it came time to push the shortbread part into a square pan (this was the second instruction) and I realized that last Christmas I had made cinnamon buns and brought them in my square pan to Pat and Michaela's house. I really dislike it when people forget to give stuff back. I guess I could stop giving them stuff in my pans or containers - that might work. So I used a round pie plate and it worked okay.

The Raisin Rugalachs were the only thing I didn't have something go wrong with. They looked kind of weird and gross in the picture, but Michael said he was interested in them so I made them. The dough had cream cheese in it and you rolled it out into a circle, spread jam and a raisin-cinnamon-sugar-cocoa mixture on it, cut it into wedges and rolled the wedges up. Surprisingly not that difficult and very tasty. Also a high yield recipe.

I was planning on making ginger snaps but before my shopping expedition on the weekend, I neglected to look at a recipe which would have told me to buy molasses and ginger, neither of which I had. I then decided to make oatmeal raisin cookies - but without checking first to see if I had the 3 cups of oats the recipe called for. Unfortunately I did not. I put in what oats I did have, a little oat bran and then some more flour. I guess when I said I didn't do any substitutions I forgot about this part. Oops. I think they turned out okay, I haven't actually had any but I haven't heard anything bad about them.

I also re-baked those mincemeat tarts I had 'made' the other day and when I put it all together, I had a nice plate of baking to bring. Aidan brought cookies to Darlene's house on Thursday and then a little box of baking as well as her present today. She said that he is such a good boy there and she hardly has any problems with him. That is such a relief to hear and I am so glad that I found a place where he could settle down and actually enjoy his days. I believe I am still on a couple waiting lists, including the daycare at the hospital, which I have heard is one of the best. I think it might be a little bit more than what I pay now, but when my name comes up, I think I'm going to switch him. I am a little concerned with how much TV he watches and how much actual adult interaction he gets at Darlene's house and I'd like him in a little more of a structured environment to get him ready for school. If I was home with him I'd send him to pre-school, but that's hard to do with working full time. I think a daycare facility like that would provide a pre/play-school type environment and he would probably be a little more prepared for school as a result of going there.

One of his favourite things right now is to sing the alphabet song or to identify letters, which he calls 'ABC's'. We have a big Superman banner in our living room and in the bottom left hand corner it says 'SUPERMAN RETURNS wednesday 06.28.06' and he was able to identify all the letters and numbers, he just had a little trouble with the R's. After he spelled out superman, I told him what it spelled, so now every time he spells it out, he says 'That spells Supa-man!'. He's also been singing Jingle Bells all the time. He sings 'jingle bells, jingle bells, all way' or 'jingle bells jingle bells jingle bells hey!' or just jingle bells over and over. I'm going to try to take him out to Evergreen Park tomorrow for a - I'm not actually sure what they're using, just that horses will be pulling them - ride and maybe there will be jingle bells there!

Well I think this is probably long enough. I'm just really impatient for this day to end! Thank you so much to everyone that sent us Christmas cards, Christmas pictures and also Christmas packages!

I think I'm done...

I'm not sure why, but I keep second guessing myself that everything is ready for Christmas. True, I still haven't done any Christmas baking (scooping pre-made mincemeat into pre-made tart shells and then putting them in the oven doesn't really count), but everything else is done. I'm such a sucker - actually, Michael and I are both big suckers. On Sunday I wrapped all of Aidan's presents and filled up his stocking so it was all ready to go and then when I was grocery shopping, I found something else and bought it for him! And then on Monday Michael bought him something else as well! I found this little golf thing, it's a putter and you attach it to the TV and it's like a virtual mini golf course, maybe 2 or three courses. It doesn't go with any system (Xbox or PlayStation) and it looked cool especially because Aidan likes golf, but let's be honest...it was on sale and that's what clinched it. Michael got him Diego Dominoes in a little tin which I'm sure Aidan will have fun with. I'm really going to have to go through his toys after Christmas. Maybe he'll be more inclined to get rid of some of the stuff he's got after he opens up all this new stuff.

I've got this problem lately - I think it's a fairly common Christmas-time problem, but still, it's bothering me. I can't stop eating!!! And there are so many little snacky things around at work, it's really not helping. For example, yesterday I came down from taking notes at the safety meeting and found a meat and cheese tray on my desk that had been delivered by Weatherford BMW. I think by myself I ate at least 1/3 of the tray. It was a small tray, but still! Where is my will power? Then later on that day my stomach was hurting and I felt sick. It's not the first time that's happened, so you'd think I would learn to stop eating, but no. When I got home last night my stomach was still hurting so I lay on the couch and then I started to get flu symptoms like that hot cold thing with shivers. This morning I still felt yucky, but not that bad. It's like my body is faking being sick so I don't make it work out. I honestly thought I was sick last night and I felt so gross that there was no way I was working out and then this morning I'm almost all better. Very suspicious. Fortunately there are no trays hanging around today, just a massive tin of shortbread upstairs. Shortbread scares me. I'll bet you could see yourself getting fatter as you ate shortbread if that's all you ate for one day. It's like eating sugar flavoured butter! So I was doing pretty good today, and then Al walked in with a big white chocolate mocha coffee and said he took a drink and didn't like it. Obviously I can't say no to that. The thing is huge though, like a venti at Starbucks. I did my best but I don't want to get sick again so I only drank about half of it.

Yesterday we had an appointment with the psychologist at Alberta Mental Health. It was supposed to be just Michael and me but we weren't sure so we brought Aidan. She asked us what our expectations of him were and I said I expected him to listen to me and not to whine (not that I expect him to be an angel all the time, but I don't want to have to ask him 5 times to do something and I don't want him to disobey me and ignore me when I tell him not to whine) and she said my expectations were too high. I think I would have to disagree. It's not like I'm freaking out at him the first time he doesn't listen or the first time he whines at me, but what's wrong with setting the bar high? He knows I'm the boss and he has to listen to me and he does, for the most part. The last thing I want is a whiny bratty kid who I have to capitulate to because I can't control him. There have to be clear expectations and clear consequences and I'm pretty sure that Aidan understands that. I don't understand how we're going to have a generation of responsible mature adults if we're supposed to raise our kids the way I understand this lady is suggesting! Anyways. Michael said he thought Aidan was good 95% of the time and I said I thought Aidan was good 75% of the time and she said that that was really excellent. So maybe setting the bar high is working. I have noticed the tantrums decreasing which is reassuring. We have our little tussles, but for the most part he's doing pretty good. Lately he's been wanting to wear diapers and hasn't been doing all that wonderful at not peeing his pants, so I asked about that and found out that I shouldn't have taken the nibs away so soon. Sure enough, when we were leaving he didn't want to try going to the bathroom, but when we dangled nibs in front of him he managed to go and actually do something. So I've got to go get nibs now. I also asked about speech therapy because a couple weeks ago at church this lady asked me if I had ever thought about speech therapy for Aidan. I was actually offended that she would say that - it's just an extension of the constant comparison that starts when you're pregnant and probably never ends. I always hated those stupid questions like 'is he sleeping through the night?' 'is he crawling yet' 'is he walking?' 'has he said his first word?' He's going to move at his own pace and unless he's really far behind I'm not going to worry about it. He crawled late, but made up for it by walking early. He didn't really seem that into talking, so he started late, and true, sometimes he's hard to understand because he talks fast and it comes out garbled, but for goodness sakes he's 3! She said that 3 is much too early to be worrying about it and I agreed.

Okay enough about that. I think I'm rambling. Aidan is excited about Christmas coming and opening his presents. We bug him and tell him the presents are all for us and then he says 'NO! For Aidan!' and then we laugh and say just kidding. He knows it's a joke, but he's pretty serious about all those presents being for him. I took him shopping on the weekend to get a present for Michael. I asked him what he wanted to get Michael to see what he would say. He said he wanted to get him a game (I asked and he explained it was an Xbox game he wanted) where bad guys would fight. I said where bad guys fight good guys? And he said yes, maybe pa-man (Spiderman). So a game on Xbox with bad guys fighting good guys. I said maybe we could get Daddy some music or something BC Lions or Oilers but none of those were acceptable. It was very clear in his mind that there was only one thing to be gotten for Daddy this year and that was what he had just told me. We picked up a game at Wal-Mart but we still have to wrap it up. I told Aidan not to tell Michael what we had gotten because it was a surprise, but Aidan's not too good at keeping a secret. He doesn't really get the concept of keeping a secret. Michael would say 'What did you get me?' and then Aidan would kind of smile and look at me as if to say 'what do I do?' So I told him to say that it was a surprise and that he couldn't say what we had gotten. But that little weasel asked Aidan while they were out together and Aidan told him that he had gotten a Spiderman game. Then he was so proud of himself for getting it out of Aidan. After our appointment on Tuesday, Michael took Aidan out to get my present. He said I could ask Aidan all I wanted and Aidan wouldn't tell me what they got. I'm almost tempted to try. I asked him once in front of Michael and he said it was a surprise. He's getting the hang of it little by little.

Well I think that's enough for now. I'll try to update again before the weekend. Hope everyone is having fun getting ready for Christmas!

Mini Freak Out

I really honestly meant to post this on Friday. I'm not sure why that never happened. Anyways, here it is now:

The other day I realized just how close Christmas was! This weekend is the last shopping weekend - well, I should say the last sane shopping weekend because I refuse to go out on December 23rd. Also, this paycheck will have to last through the last minute shopping ('Oh no! I completely forgot about _____!') as well as the Boxing Day shopping. I always go out on Boxing Day and spend quite a bit, although each year both the amount of time I spend in the stores and the amount I spend diminish. I wonder how many years it will be before I completely abandon it. I always get next years Christmas stuff on Boxing Day. I see no reason to pay double the price for cards, gift tags, ribbon, wrapping paper, decorations etc. when I can get it for at least half price and keep it downstairs for next year. Plus, then it's already down there ready for me whenever I want to pull it out. I even got my tree a couple years ago half price. In a couple years I think I'll get a new one because the one we have now is pretty sparse. This year I wanted to get a king size duvet and some new feather pillows on boxing day and a USB flash drive and a matching mitten and toque set. Currently our blanket situation leaves a lot to be desired. Michael uses my old duvet from home and I use a fleece sheet and 1 or 2 blankets and maybe my heated blanket, depending on how cold I am. I thought it might be nice to just have one nice warm blanket on our bed instead of 4! As for the pillows, we got some nice feather ones after we were married and the one I use is in good condition but the same cannot be said of the one that Michael uses. For some reason he folds his pillows or punches them down so they're like little rocks, and then he lays his head on them. I totally do not understand that. I like fluffing mine up so that my head sinks into them and is actually comfortable but hey, to each his own. Plus, I was planning on getting groceries this week to do Christmas baking, I have half a month's daycare fee to pay today, the car needs gas etc etc. Isn't it amazing how quickly you can use up money? And not just frivolously, a good 90% of those things are legitimate essentials.

Okay, enough about money. I think I should be fine as long as my wants don't get ahead of my needs.

Study Break for Rachel

(Remember Skinhead? *laughs*)


I felt bad for not updating my blog. I really meant to do it last night, but it just didn't happen. So here are some funny cartoons for you to have a laugh on your next study break. *smiles*