A little bit of this and a little bit of that.....

Sorry for the lack of posts lately...  I have been so busy I don't know if I'm coming or going some nights.. and it's not like I try to do a million things, it's just that work is always super busy at the end of the year, coupled with all the extra work events going on and fitting in some Christmas stuff for us inbetween makes for very busy weeks!

So where to start...

The 25 days of Christmas have been a lot of fun!  Matthew is probably a bit young to care if we do an activity every day, but he sure loves getting his letter every morning from Crinkle. 

last weekend we visited Santa at the mall.  I was determined we would see our favourite Santa, so we had to endure almost an hour and a half in line... luckily Matthew was well entertained so he didn't even notice!

We also had Darren's work Christmas party last week.  It was a lot of fun!  This year they did it completely different than the traditional sit down dinner and served everything in little stations so you had to walk from one to the next to complete your meal.  My favourite was the Martini potato bar.. I'll have to do that for a party some day!

I got in a session of Dashing Dishes last week... Have you ever done them?  They are a life saver and I look forward to going and assembling my dishes every month!

We also had a girls night at work last week... it was a lot of fun to get together with just all the women who work on the 3rd floor of our office building... I think they should open it up to all women next year.. us girls don't do enough stuff like that where it's just us and no guys!

I tackled Cross Iron Mills last night.  I hadn't been there yet.  For those of you who don't know, it is a mega mall that opened up North of Calgary.  I fell in love with it!  I love shopping where everything is nice and new and the stores are huge and there is just about every store you could want in one place!  It is my new go to place for sure.. and I walked the whole mall in under 2 hours (that must be a record)... although when you have to walk as far as you do carrying as many bags as I had, I had to wonder if I could go into business renting little scooters out to people.  Seriously, I'd make a killing.

Matthew finished his last class of 2009 this morning at "school" ... they got to pretend to be Santa Claus sneaking around and reindeer prancing around and had a lot of fun!

And today Matthew informed me Santa is coming "all the way from the North Pool!!"...  I couldn't stop giggling....

If only it were that easy...

M woke up this morning and called me into his room as he does every day.  I try to tell him it's still night time and he has to sleep for a little bit longer, but it never works!  So, he ends up telling me all kinds of random thigns while we lay there.

This morning:

m:  After my nap I want to go on a trip to a hotel!

m:  uh..... yep, Boston!  I want to go to Boston!

M:  Buddy, Boston is pretty far away

m:  no it isn't!  It's 47....  uh.. it's just by the other hotel by my house!  It's not far...

I hear ya buddy....

I wish we didn't have to look at this either..

and were still looking at this instead!

Dear Matthew....

Here is Mr. M and his Christmas Mailbox.  Yeah, I know it's pretty pathetic so far, but we haven't had a chance to make it all Christmassy yet.  I think Crinkle might bring some stickers tomorrow to help us decorate it!

On the second day of Christmas....

Matthew got his first letter from Crinkle, the Christmas elf!  It read:

Dear Matthew,

Hi!  My name is Crinkle.  I am an elf and I live at the North Pole with Santa.  Your Mommy asked if I could come and bring you a letter every night until Christmas so that your family can do all sorts of fun Christmassy things together.   I hope you will enjoy getting my letters in the mailbox each morning!  Today, I would like you and Nana to make some snowflakes so that you and Mommy can decorate the house with them later.

love,
Crinkle

So, Nana apparently didn't read the letter quite right and thought that Crinkle wanted Mommy to make the snowflakes so she got all the paper ready but they didn't make any!  Doh!!  We ran out of time in the evening, but we did manage to get our tree up (literally, just the tree... decorating was to be the next day!)

On the third day of Christmas..

Matthew got another letter!  It read:

Dear Matthew,

Did you put up your tree last night?  It is very beautiful!  I hope you ahve fun today.  I would like you and Mommy to make gingerbread cookies!  Tomorrow I will have a new surprise for you.

Love,
Crinkle

So Gingerbread cookies it was! Mommy and Matthew had lots of fun making cookies together as we always do.  This time, Matthew discovered that cookie dough is even yummier before it goes in the oven :O)  adn as always, there was more flour on the cupboard and kitchen than there was in the cookies!

Cutting the shapes out

Gingerbread Men of course!

Tasting the final product :o)

Together,  I must admit, Matthew and I ate almost the whole batch throughout the day!  We rounded off our night by watching Franklin's Christmas special on T.V.  I couldn't have asked for a better night than to be cozied up under a blanket with my baby :O)

On the Fourth Day of Christmas....

Yep, another letter was waiting!  This time, Crinkle brought a little Snowman ornament for Matthew to keep on the shelf.  His letter read:

Dear Matthew,

Brr... it was cold flying here last night!  There is going to be a big snowstorm tonight so make sure you stay home cozy with Mommy and Daddy!  Did you have fun watching the Franklin movie last night?  I watched it at Santa's workshop too!   Today, I want you to paint me a Christmas picture.  Here is a present from me!

Love,
Crinkle

Matthew thought it was pretty cool that Crinkle watched the same movie as he did up at the North Pole!  Crinkle was right, it sure was a miserably cold day yesterday!  Mommy had planned to do a big shopping trip to Cross Iron Mills since she missed her trip to Vancouver, but it wasn't meant to be either. 

For some reason, I always feel like cooking when the weather gets ugly... So, at 9am , when the big flakes were already starting to fall, I darted over to Sobey's and loaded up on some essentials to make some freezable dishes.  After a full day's work, I accomplished 30 cups of chicken broth, a huge bowl of chili and a batch of spaghetti sauce! 

Matthew watched The Little Drummer Boy on TV, and learned more about the baby Jesus.   Which I'm hoping is why at bedtime, out of the blue, he said:

m:  Do you remember when I was born?

M:  Of course (um, pretty sure I was there.. (I didn't say that though))

m:  When I was born, everyone was sooo happy and they all brought me presents!

uh huh... maybe we better work on the baby Jesus a bit more....


So today is the 5th Day of Christmas...

We managed to sleep a bit although the house was rockin' and rollin' to the windstorm all night long.  I looked out the window in the morning and thought.. hmm... I can see the grass in the backyard, we couldn't have gotten that much snow.... Only to find out that all of it was up against the side of our house thus requiring hubby to shovel for an hour so that I could later get out of the garage!

And of course, there was a letter from Crinkle this morning, but you'll just have to wait until tomorrow to find out what he said!

Tomorrow we are venturing out to Daddy's kids' Christmas party... cross your fingers it isn't -30 in the morning!

The 25 Days of Christmas - Day 1

So today, at precisely 10:43 a.m., when I was supposed to be working, but actually was taking a little blog break and catching up on a few blogs, I came across a few bloggy moms who were writing about the 25 days of Christmas starting!

Oh Junebugs! (as Matthew would say).... I had first seen the 25 days of Christmas last year and decided that it was something that I wanted to do with Matthew this year for 1 reason:  Christmas always comes so darn fast and goes so quickly.. and I wanted a way to savour the Christmas spirit for longer....

But then I forgot about it for the next 340 days!  And Oh Junebugs!  I just remembered today...

So the wheels in my brain started turning as fast as they could!

We enjoyed learning about the advent calendar today and Matthew was super excited when he foudn out there was chocolate behind Number 1!

We then got to work on making our mailbox.  You see, Mommy explained that because Matthew has been such a good boy lately (and Mommy was thrilled that he went to daycare yesterday without any tears!!) that one of Santa's little elves, named Crinkle, was going to come visit our house ever night until Christmas and bring Matthew a letter!

So you can imagine that naturally led to being asked 50+ times how Crinkle was going to get here (fly his airplane of course) and then where the airplane was going to land (on the roof because it's easier)... and how he was going to get into the house (he's magic)...

So tune in to see what Crinkle has in store for us over the next 25 days

and of course, I did have a picture, but Blogger has other ideas about me posting it this morning, so I will try again later tonight.

and yes, I probably will go crazy trying to think of activities over the next 25 days, but the excitement and 100 questions about Crinkle that already came tonight are going to be well worth it!