Sister Gifts

Last year we started the tradition of Sister Gifts, where each of the girls draws one name and they have to buy a small gift for that sister.  They have a ton of fun thinking about what to get each other.

 

Lily gave to Olivia.  A little glass egg she really wanted and a small R2D2 stuffy

Izzy gave to Chloe and gave her a mini "Gillie" as she calls it, and an R2D2 mug!

Olivia gave to Lily and gave her a Chewbacca key chain toy and a Golden glass egg

And Chloe gave to Izzy....a Chewbacca mug (can you tell our girls LOVE Star Wars?) and a green turtle stuffy.  She did give Chloe a hug I just never got it on camera

Pre Christmas Fun!

It's always fun to decorate the tree!  Our lovely small house always has to be completely re arranged every year to FIT the tree, so it is a lot of work.  We tried out the tree in a different corner this year and I loved it!  From now on this is what we will do.  I actually love how cozy our home feels when it is set up for Christmas, even though it is crazy squished!

The finished result!

Olivia's dance class had a fun little Christmas party to celebrate...

The girls love making sugar cookies. We only make them once a year at Christmas time!  The recipe I have makes an ENORMOUS amount of cookies, and so we actually gave away about 3/4 of them to neighbours and friends!

This is the first year we served at Santa's Anonymous.  It is a charity that gives toys to less fortunate children in our city. I couldn't believe the stacks and stacks of garbage bags packed full of wrapped toys they had!  SOoooo many!  We took 6 bags, everyone picked one, and picked an area close to our house.  The people were so grateful to receive the bags.  It was such a great experience for our kids to do this, we want to make it a tradition and do it every year!

One small section of the bags in the giant warehouse

On our way with the gifts!

 Ben wanted to get his dad a homemade baseball bat for Christmas, and one of the YM he works with actually makes them as a hobby.  So for $20 he let Izzy, Lily, and Ben go to his workshop and carve out a baseball bat! The girls had a lot of fun, and Grandpa Dennis loved it!  Ben got a good video of him opening it up, I will post it later!

Sanding away

This was the hunk of wood before

And here it is after!  They burned his initials into it too.

 Christmas Sunday! Photo with Mama...

 Pretty girls...

I actually love going to the malls at Christmas and just feeling the Christmas excitement, and seeing all the beautiful decorations!

We made gingerbread houses...

I was taking this pic and Ben started to pretend to squirt icing on my head and this is the reaction I captured.  I love it!

Yummy peppermint pretzels we handed out to friends and neighbours as well...

Christmas Concerts 2014

The kids' school is so big that there are actually 4 nights of Christmas concerts!  Plus they each have a rehearsal concert during the day, and so in total they have 8 concerts.  By the end, we were all happy they were done. 

 

 

This year, Isabelle and Chloe had a chance to be in the school play, and so we had so much fun watching them.  There were 2 plays, one in division 1 (grades k-3) and one in division 2 (grades 4-6). They only allowed grade 2 to be in the Div 1 play, and they only allowed grades 5-6 to be in the Div 2 play, so Lily looks forward to trying out for the play for next year!  It was a great experience for both of them, they both had a lot of fun!

 

This was the night Lily's class sang.  She looks so beautiful!

 

 

Can you spot Lily?  3rd one on the top row, peeking out.

Here is Izzy and her bff Libby.  They had a blast being in the play together.  Their other bff Sydney was also in the play, but I never got a picture of all of them. They also played in the Orff Ensemble.  Videos to come!

Here she is in action! The play was called "'Twas One Crazy Night Before Christmas." Izzy's favorite part was when she got to catch the turkey.  I'll post the video....eventually!
 

Olivia all spiffed up on her performance night. 

Olivia and Chloe had the same night.  Chloe has a kazoo there!  It was part of her class' song.  So cute!

And here is Chloe in her play!  Her play was called "Toys!" She played the Blue Crayon so well!  I was actually really impressed with how loudly and clearly she spoke her lines. She can be quite shy and quiet sometimes, I wasn't sure how it would go.  But she did GREAT!

Merry Christmas 2014!

This post is a few weeks late!  We had a wonderful Christmas.  This was our card this year, and I think it is my favorite one of all time!  AND, I ended up getting an amazing deal on them, because they had messed up the gold foil font, and so they sent me new ones and reimbursed me 50%.  On top of coupon codes I found,  I paid very little for them.  I love me a good deal!