Christmas events

I can't believe Christmas is come and gone. It seemed so crazy before Christmas, as usual. When will I ever learn to plan further ahead? Mr W's family STILL have not received the gifts we sent on the bus that were supposed to arrive before Christmas. He phoned today and due to the snow there have been long delays.
Our Christmas was spent at my parents. We woke up to a power outage on Christmas morning so scrambled around trying to pack up and drive to their place an hour away. We got there for brunch, and a nice afternoon opening presents and of course, cooking (mostly Mom!). Check out this picture of the baby with his uncle, wearing the new Canucks jersey Uncle C. got him. Baby had a busy day, and melted down a few times. I ignored the nap cues, wanting to spend Christmas opening presents with the babe. Oh me oh my. Not worth the screaming and crying that resulted!!! The three of us spent the night at a hotel in Sidney since Grandma was staying at my parents so we couldn't stay in the guest room. Next day everyone was meant to come to ours, but snow created anxiety so we stayed until later afternoon and took the little ferry home instead of driving the treacherous, snowy roads.

On the event side, baby started eating solid foods with gusto this week. He loves loves loves solid food. Within the week he happily eats rice cereal, banana, applesauce, and squash. Yay baby! He has breakfast and dinner, and the dinner, combined with his bottle, seems to make him almost sleep through the night. If only, instead of waking at 6, he could wake at 7? That would be sooooooooooo nice.

Pics of gifts

My three sets of fingerless mitts:
The blue set is for a good friend, the pink are for me, and the gray/pink on the left are for my sister-in-law-to-be.

And here are pics of the easy yummy yummy chocolates Mr W and I made. Pictured here is white chocolate, pistachios, and cranberry bark, and milk/white chocolate almond bark. The dark chocolate, almond and cranberry bark didn't make a very good picture, being all brown :)

Baby its cold outside

We have the Christmas tunes going around here. And the weather is cooperating, it uncharacteristically feels like Christmas with all the snow and chilly weather we have had in the last week. It is quite lovely, I don't mind a little bit of snow once in awhile. This picture was taken with our cell phone which has a 2MB camera yesterday evening as we walked the dogs and enjoyed the sunset out in Cowichan Bay.

We are making several gifts this year. I have been madly knitting fingerless mittens for a few people, including my brothers fiancee (they just got engaged last week, yay!). I had knit one lovely one for her only to find out she is allergic to wool, so lucky me, I will keep it for myself and hope to knit up its partner soon. Each mitt takes about 2 nights to make, not bad, I like instant gratification.

Mr W and I also started making chocolate for his sisters and brother. We bought some fancy pants Bernard Callebaut chocolate from our fancy pants grocery store, melted it poured it over: pistachios and cranberries for the white chocolate, and almonds and cranberries for the dark. It is hard not to nibble, I finally had to put it away so we didn't keep indulging. We need to buy more of the bulk bricks because it didn't go as far as we thought (regardless of our eating the results!), but each brick is almost $10. Told you, it is fancy chocolate. But yummy!! And hopefully all will appreciate the gifts.

Buying gifts (for free) for self - to wrap or not to wrap?

Mr W and I tend to know every year what we are getting for each other. We often buy it together. We don't always wrap it and put it under the tree. Seems a bit strange, this whole Christmas thing, when viewed this way though. We buy stuff we can't necessarily afford (although past two years have tried to avoid this) at this time of year.... because we have a license to do so- it is Christmas after all.

Mr W just order several books for us all from Chapters, for example. For himself he got a book on playing poker (one of his hobbies), for us both he got a cookbook (even though he does most of the cooking, I get to enjoy the food so we both benefit), for me he ordered a knitting book, and for the wee one, we ordered a music cd. He paid about $1 for all this because we purchased the items with our airmiles. Nice!

But seriously, do we wrap everything up? Or just enjoy it when it arrives? The baby won't care if his cd is enjoyed immediately, or hidden in wrapping under a tree. I am just saying, it is strange the way we do things around here, it is :)

Cranky baby

We had a cranky baby this weekend. On Saturday we went with my mom's group to ride the Christmas Train. This is the only steam train operating in North America, and it rides around our outdoor forestry museum, about 15 minutes. At this time of year the grounds are all lit up with Christmas lights, and I was looking forward to the outing. Baby was pretty good, met Santa, until the whistle on the train blew as we pulled out of the station, and then he freaked out and started wailing. Poor little guy was absolutely terrified of the sound and cried for the whole train ride. I would get him calmed down and the whistle would blow again. After that he wouldn't settle for hours, just fussed about the house, sleeping in fits and starts until 8 (an hour past his bedtime) when he finally fell into a proper sleep.


Yesterday we took him geocaching, out a logging road. He was pretty good on the hike. Mr W had an adventure on a zip line over a river, and the dogs had a cold swim. Baby, however, started crying on the way home, and fussed for a few hours after that. Teething maybe? Could be. I can't see any teeth yet, but something was up, he is good natured otherwise. Today we stayed calm and mostly in our routines. I work for a few hours in the morning, have lunch, and then 3 days a week I try and walk for 5k around the track nearby. Did it today no problem, it wasn't sunny out, but was mild. We also took the dogs for a walk of course :) Must walk the beasties daily!

Who you talkin' to? You talkin' tuh me?

The little boy is getting SO EXPRESSIVE! He was hamming it up for photos the other day and my oh my is he cute. One of these went onto our Christmas Card that I designed. I can't wait to see it all printed up.

On the down side, he has started to wail when he doesn't get his own way. Yes, he has developed WILL. For example, he really wants to drink out of a cup, and when we give him one, he attacks it with glee, dribbling water all done his front. Then when we take it away he screams and cries until we can distract him from the tragedy.