Our Little Family Christmas

I'm slowly trying to post some pics about our Christmas events. But I can't seem to figure out how to post a whole bunch of pics without them getting out of order.

So, I'll do it one post at a time!

I'm finding that as our family gets older we're having a harder time fitting in our own family Christmas in amongst all of the family and friends events. Last week Sunday we went to church Sunday morning, which personally was a highlight for me. There's nothing more fitting at Christmas time than singing songs about Christ's birth, at church with so many voices. And to top it off, Cyndi was singing and Rob was fiddling! Doesn't get any better!!

When we got home we did a power clean......yep, "op zondag!" (on Sunday!!). It was actually a quick tidy of breakfast dishes and kids stuff in preparation for company coming that night.
Then we got to our own little family Christmas.

One little tradition that we've been doing with the girls is what we call....Dollarama shopping! I know....doesn't sound very spiritual! We wanted them to get into the habit of remembering that it's more about giving to others than focussing on the 'getting'. That's hard to do when they're kids and they're pretty much just on the 'getting' end of things at Christmas. So, we take a family trip to Dollarama sometime before Christmas, then we give the girls each a gift bag to hold thier purchases in so noone else can see and their job is to find a gift for everyone else in the family. The nice thing is that the decision is totally up to them, and it's not costly for us to fork out the money on gifts that they've chosen which may....or may NOT....be suitable for the receiver. It really is a lot of fun and the girls get quite excited about buying for others.
(And always interesting to see what they pick out!).




Rachel is quite decisive. Once she decides on what she's getting there's no deterring her from that. So......

here's Dave opening up his....

yep...

whoopie cushion!

She was sooooooooo excited and when we were wrapping it she kept saying "I'm going to make Daddy TOOT!!!" "Mommy, I'm going to make Daddy TOOT!".



Rachel thought I should apparently be prepared for the real toots in the family as well, because I received some lovely Dollarama Lavender Air Freshener!

mmmmmm, lovely.









She was quite proud of herself and how well she did with her purchases!






Lauren is VERY good at taking hints. As we go through Dollarama she picks things up and asks, "Do you think you might like this?" Then she beelines back to those items that you showed interest in. So, Dave got some lovely clamps and I got a purple shower liner (I had told her I normally buy my shower liners there....purple was her little added touch).

Madelyn is getting that little bit older and takes the hints but also does a good job of coming up with ideas that she thinks we might like. She loved giving Rachel a Dora and Diego mug.

Later, on Sunday we hosted our annual Christmas Eve party. It started quite a few years ago because family would be in town, but not everybody and we didn't have a Christmas eve service at our church. So, family and friends that didn't have much on the go would pop in for treats and it's always a good time.

This year, a highlight for me was watching Annika scrunch up her nose at Dave's mom every time she laughed (which, if you know Magda J. at all, is A LOT!). Mom J. would laugh and Annika would stop whatever she was doing, look over, scrunch up her nose and look quite disgusted.....which in turn made us all laugh even more. It was hysterical!!! I'm quite convinced that Mom J's laugh sounds a lot like Annika's Grandma Gail's laugh....so she'd look, but then it wouldn't be her so she's look all funny about it. Man, that was just too cute!