Cruising into a New Year!!

Happy New Year, everybody!

I'm particularly happy to see January arrive because I WON A CRUISE for John and I that departs Ft. Lauderdale on Jan. 12th. We are gearing up to fly down to Florida next week. John's parents are coming on Thursday and will be staying with the girls while we are away. The girls are excited about a whole week of having Grandma and Grandpa all to themselves! And John and I are excited about having this slightly delayed (by almost 13 years) honeymoon experience. :) (Does our real honeymoon that consisted of tenting in the rain in Cape Breton really count?) This website for pastor's wives that I won the cruise through (www.contagiousjoy4him.com) has absolutely blessed my socks off! Another girl that I "met" through this site is also going on the same cruise with her hubby. They have three children the same age as ours and pastor a baptist church about the same size as ours. We are really looking forward to meeting them. This is the same website I won the iPad through back in the summer so I felt pretty silly and very surprised to win the cruise.

The rest of the ladies on there probably hate me by now. :)

We had a great Christmas. The cards I ordered to send to family and friends were very slow coming in the mail. My apologies to any of you that received Christmas greetings from us after Christmas. I did think the cards turned out pretty good though! Then again, in my "mommy" opinion any piece of paper with those three smiling girls on it would be beautiful!

Clara and Elizabeth were both in Christmas concerts for their schools, but get this...both concerts fell on the same day, AT THE SAME TIME! What are the chances? John went to Clara's, and I went to Elizabeth's.

Another highlight of our Christmas celebration this year was going caroling in our new neighbourhood with lots of friends from church. We passed out invitations to our Christmas Eve service while we were spreading a little holiday cheer! Then everyone came back to our place for cookies and hot chocolate. I'm hoping it will be an annual event! I'm also hoping our family Christmas brunch that we hosted for my family will be something we can enjoy each December too! I just love the new house for entertaining. It's so great to be in the kitchen and still be part of the party...love the open concept.

The girls are growing and changing by the day it seems. Clara really enjoyed her Christmas vacation and being at home. I'm not so sure she wanted to go back to school today. She has so much fun with Elizabeth. John and I love to listen to them as they make-believe any number of situations. They have fantastic imaginations!

Clara was so proud of her little snowman she made all by herself with what little snow we had. (If you look really hard, you can see the carrot I gave her for the nose.)

Ella is starting to say some new words. She's mastered "NO-O-O-O-O!" She can also say "Mama", "Dadda", and "wow". She also loves to wave and say "i-i-i-i" for bye. We officially retired our gate at the top of the stairs yesterday. She has finally learned how to safely crawl up and down them.

Ella has also adopted Clara's little Mary Poppins carpet bag purse. She carries around a tea cup and spoon, a play cell phone, and a little toy pony.

pyjama problems...

Elizabeth is really maturing lately, learning how to brush her hair and teeth all by herself in the mornings. We've also noticed that she has a gift for relating everything in life to a song. She'll hear a phrase and it will remind her of a song...she'll just start singing it, even modifying the lyrics to fit the situation. It literally cracks us up...which she hates! How ironic...a wonderful sense of humour but not wanting anyone to laugh when you crack a joke. We'll see how that plays out as she gets older.

Elizabeth showing Ella the ropes on the driving carts at Home Depot...she's a big kid now!

With a new year, I'm motivated to get organized! I've tackled a complex menu planning system that I've put together from ideas from various blogs. It's complex to begin with, but I'm really excited about how it will save me time, stress, and money in the long run. You'll probably think I'm crazy when I explain what I'm doing, but I think it's really going to work for me!! I'm choosing about 30 (or six weeks worth of) recipes...ones that our family really likes. I'm grouping them together in groups of five, trying to overlap ingredients to simplify shopping and food prep. So for each week (or each group of five recipes) I've created a shopping list, a sheet of step by step instructions for early preparation I can do at the beginning of the week...chopping, making sauces, etc...things that will speed up my supper making each evening. Then for each week I also have a sheet of instructions detailing how to prepare each meal on the day we'll eat it. So, away with my recipe cards, recipe books, printed online recipes!! Everything I need will soon be in one binder! So far I have two weeks done. Looking at my purple binder just makes me want to smile...perhaps I'll be jumping up and down with glee by the time I get week six in there! :)

Well, I better sign off before you all start to think I'm becoming a little militant about mealtime! Here are some pictures from the last couple of months. Enjoy...

Daddy's birthday celebration...and probably one of the nicer pictures we have of all 5 of us together.

This one is not too bad either...boy it sure is difficult to get a good picture of five people, especially when three of them are so small and squirmy.

Christmas Eve...

Christmas morning...can you believe everyone had the same idea? Our girls got a total of 4 tents this Christmas (at least they're all different).

sitting down to Christmas dinner at our place...we were so glad to have our good friends from Japan here for Christmas and New Year's! Miss you, Kaori and Tom!

Elizabeth trying her first oyster. We were astonished to hear her ask Banky if she could try one when she saw him opening them on New Year's Day. What did she say right after that blob of slime made its way down her throat? "Could I maybe have something else to eat?" But a few minutes later she ate two more!! That's more than her mother and father have eaten in a lifetime, combined! We didn't bother to tell her they were uncooked, let alone ALIVE!

Our Christmas princess enjoying a visit to a very tacky yet beautiful light display. This house is an attraction for islanders from miles around each Christmas. You can kinda see some of the lights in the background. It must be absolutely magical for someone who only stands a few feet tall. (Elizabeth fell asleep in the car and was not too pleased when she woke up on the drive home and realized she missed the fun.)

Clara loved playing crokinole at a family game night we had at church!

Having some fun with a cool app...I love the expression on Elizabeth's face.

The girls enjoying some whipped cream on New Year's Day at Baddy and Banky's place. If anyone has a lead on a 3 beater mixer, please let me know. :)