My CMS

It’s a new day, the baby slept MOST of the night in her own room and I’ve had my morning coffee … time to blog about …

Richmond Centre always has an amazing Santa set up complete with elves. For the past couple years Marley and Paige have enjoyed collecting Elf Cards so today I decided to take them “Elf Hunting”. We missed the Elf Inspection (something Santa does when he arrives at the mall) but we were in time for the School of Christmas – a new activity this year.

My cover page (above) is a cut down 4×6 protector page into which I’d put the tag “2 Days Until Christmas” and then added a picture of the School of Christmas sign. It was draped with paper chains made up of children’s wishes written onto “Believe” tags. That’s the mall’s theme during the Christmas Season – I Believe.

The back side of the cover page has a picture of the girls with a couple “captured” elves. As you can see, Paige was in her usual cooperative mood!

Next I added a cut down card protector page with 3 elf cards – the least detroyed ones of LC’s!

On the Main page I added a picture of the girls and two elves “in class”. Not sure what LC was doing in the middle of the circle but … it’s cute!

The back of the main page is blank at the moment and will actually become part of the Day 24 story. Stay tuned for that!!

Thanks for checking in again.

Today was a day to get all that last minute Christmas shopping done. Buy the turkey, the potatoes, the yams, the ingredients for those yummy Land of Nod cinnamon buns, the Wife Saver and the Christmas crackers for the table.

It was a day for Grandma and Grandpa Day to drop off presents. Suddenly our tree is BURIED!! Every year we say we’ve got to buy less and yet somehow that never seems to happen!

Today the girls got letters from Santa.

Form letters but they understood that Santa is a bit too busy right now to write each letter personally. But he did sign them himself which was pretty exciting!

Today the girls made something special for Grandpa but I can’t show that til after Christmas. Wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise and all!!

Here it is … Day 22:

I decided to include my shopping list and receipt on the main page as that was really my main activity today. Greg took some vacation time in the afternoon to allow me to get last minute shopping done plus the grocery shopping for Christmas Day. We were going to host his parents, his sister and her family, and a cousin of his plus his family – 15 in all. Only 14 were eating solid food though!! Zoe’s still taking mostly breast milk! Can’t help her out there any more – thank goodness!

On the back of the main page I made a pocket out of some Dear Lizzy patterned paper and tucked all 3 letters from Santa in them. LC’s didn’t arrive until the 24th but I decided to include it here to have them all in one spot.

Okay, I was hoping to get Day 23 done tonight too but it’s pretty late so I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

Good night. Hope you’ve enjoyed these installments!!

Today I took the girls to the brand new Vancouver Christmas Market. I’d read about it towards the end of November, and planned to take the girls once school was out. It’s a new thing that I really hope they make an annual event as it was really fun!

Paige was having a rough day. I’m not sure what has got into her but the past few days she’s been positively bi-polar! She’ll be trucking along happy as a lark and then something happens (and for the life of me, most of the time this “something” is completely unknown and unknowable to everyone but Paige!) and she turns into a wailing, screaming 2 year old!

Anyway, despite her refusing to pose for pictures and pouting when I wouldn’t allow her to sit in the stroller with her baby sister, she and we had a great time. Greg’s afternoon meeting got cancelled so he took some vacation time and joined us downtown. It was really nice to have him there. It’s always nice when we get to have fun experiences together as a family!

Okay, here we go …

Kept things simple – there is the back page of Day 20, and then on the cover page I just added the number and the note from the girls advent calendar.

The back side of the cover page has a 5×7 shot of the girls in front of a giant nutcracker decoration. Paige is sort of cooperating here. Then on the main page I added a snap of Greg and LC (to prove he was there!) and some journalling.

On the back page is a collage of our time there. We spent most of that time in the Children’s area where the girls had a blast doing all the activities available (not cheap mind you!!)

That is Paige with her decorated candle in the bottom left picture. They were given the plain white pillar candle and got to pick 2 colours of beeswax to cut and glue to it.

Going around the collage; the girls in the sleigh (Paige most definitely was NOT cooperating but I managed to get a picture where she is kind of smiling. It was a little blurry though so I played with it in Picasa to make the blurring look intentional.) Next is a decration from the main stage area, the two little pictures at the top right are of Paige getting her airbrushed tattoo and Marley’s Tinkerbell tattoo. Below them is Marley and LC looking through the cutouts – Marley’s the Santa and LC is the bee! And last but not least, LC eating her decorated gingerbread person. I only bought her the one ticket figuring the tattoo and the candle were too tricky for her to do. She enjoyed the sprinkles and the icing!!

Next up is Day 22 … see you there!!

I think I kind of checked out for these two days.

The activity filled weekend and the busyness of the last week of school caught up to me and I switched off. It’s nice to do that once in a while.

I sat down to lay out these days and couldn’t remember what we did though! Whoops! Too much of a check out I think. But once I opened up Picasa I saw the Project 12 layout and remembered that I actually got scrappy on Day 19 and did most of my “checking out” on Day 20.

So, here we go …

After a fairly slow morning of computer time, watching TV and snuggling, Greg took all 3 girls to Go Bananas in Richmond. As he is the coach of Marley’s soccer team, he organized the Christmas party for them and figured since the weather is unpredictable at best, and since we’d been away the day before, meeting the team at a place where they could run wild and have some one else clean up after them was a great idea. And he was right! They all had a blast!

I took the opportunity to scrap Days 16 and 17 and then remembered that my November layout for Project 12 was due on the 20th so pulled that out. It was fun to work in “full size” again! I even got a tiny head start on December’s layout while I had everything out.

I kept things simple for this day. The main page has journalling plus some embellishments and the back of it has a collage of my scrappy creations.  

Day 20: 

Another “do nothing” day. This was the first real Christmas Vacation day so I took full advantage of the fact that I didn’t have to hurry up and shower, get Marley’s lunch packed and hustle 3 girls out the door to do the school drop offs. I was determined to stay in my PJ’s as long as possible and even after I (reluctantly) showered and got dressed, I put on some music and read a book. The girls cooperated for the most part by playing nicely with each other! Miracles do happen!!

For my main page I simple journalled at the top of the page, added a tag from a recently purchased pair of pj’s and a photo taken with the self timer of me reading on the couch. I didn’t show the back here (check out my Day 21 post) but I just adhered a piece of patterened paper to it. Simple. Easy. Done. 

Thanks.

We went out to Abbotsford last night so todays story came easily.

It’s all about family!

Dave and his family flew in from Edmonton in the morning which was the main reason for the gathering. It was the first time in about 3 years that all of us had been together. Dave has 2 girls, Makenna (8) and Kole (6), so our girls had a few hours bonding time with their girl cousins before the hordes arrived. Don and Ina were given a massive doll house for the grandchildren to play with and the 5 girls had a blast with it.

After lunch Paul and his family arrived and then it was all about baby Drew. At 2 weeks old he is the youngest grandchild (#14 if you’re interested) and was quite the magnet for Marley, Makenna and Kole. They all took turns holding him!

The family fun was scheduled to begin at 2:00 with a Treasure Hunt which Ileana had organized but … all good plans and all that … they got delayed. We waited for Matt, Ileana and their family and Andrew and his family to arrive before starting it. By then it had started snowing too! Not that the kids were slowed down at all by a few flying flakes. They were full of pent up energy and fairly flew around the neighbourhood to find all the clues!! Even LC and her compadre Sadie got into the action!

Anyway, here is Day 18:

The whole clan. All 26 of us!! 

I took some “arty” shots of the decorations on Friday night. Don and I were having fun playing with the settings on our cameras!! Some of them were kind of good so I decided to add them in these trading card pockets.

On the opposite side I included a picture of LC and her closest cousin Sadie taken during the treasure hunt. LC is holding a cookie that the kids were given from the neighbour they had to sing to for their next clue. On the main page I added a picture I took of Jonina taking a picture of me … in the snow storm! And then a picture Greg took of Poppa (Don) trying to climb over the gaggle of grandkids that decided to congregate on the landing!!  

I knew that today would be one of those days hard to condense into a couple pictures so the extra pages were needed. These ones tell the stories of the kids; the dollhouse, the Baby Drew Groupies, the Treasure Hunt and the gang crashed out watching a movie while we got dinner ready. 

On the last page I decided to focus on myself (an all too rare occasion.)  Greg took this shot of me serving up the lasagne to the kids and then I asked him to take the shot me with 3 of my 4 sisters-in-law (unfortunately Miles got sick just before dinner so he was taken home which is why Joni wasn’t present for the phot op.) My brothers all found wonderful women!!

Thanks for tuning in again.

To recap all the brothers and nieces and nephews etc …

1 Ammee + 1 Poppa

+ 4 brothers + 4 sisters-in-law

+ Greg and I

+ 14 grandchildren

= Chaos. Mayhem. Loudness.

= Laughs. Screams. Giggles.

= Love.

Okay, got behind again!! Surprise, surprise!!

I have a good excuse this time though – we went out of town! We went out to Abbotsford on Friday night to visit with my family. Just wait for my Day 18 posting and you’ll see what I’m talking about! I need a photo emailed to me first though so …. that one will have to wait!

But before we get there we have to go here …

The girls made Christmas cards for the kids in their classes today. What a messy adventure!

I knew it would be and was somewhat mentally prepared but it exceeded even MY expectations! I used to allow the girls to do things like paint, use glue, play with play-doh etc but a couple years ago I became intolerant of the mess left behind. I’m trying to soften my “No Paint, No Glue, No Glitter” policy but it’s tough!! I feel it’s hard enough to keep this place looking somewhat neat and tidy without the added mayhem of the above mentioned paint, glue and glitter. I’d like to be the type of Mom who relishes letting her kids get messy but I’m just not. And I’m learning to be okay with that!

But … cards needed to be made so a mess was inevitable. Sigh!

I took some old cardstock, cut it down and then folded it into cards for Paige to decorate with stamps. A couple Christmasses ago I bought them a pack of 30 wooden Christmas stamps plus a red and green ink pad at Michael’s. It was one of my best purchases for them! It has offered up hours of fun. Quiet fun! With relatively easy clean up!!

That was before LC!!!

After we picked Marley up from school she got to work too. She was very creative and (in a very familiar way – no, she’s not a chip off the old block at ALL!!) made her project more complicated than it needed to be! She used some Christmas stencils to trace the shapes onto paper (having folded it first so her cards would open), then she coloured them in and cut them out. Inside she wrote her messages of love. Yes, she told every kid in her class that she loved them! Very sweet.

It was the last day of school for both Marley and Paige and they both had parties. I wasn’t able to attend Marley’s party (younger siblings are not really welcome) but I made a point to return to the preschool to be with Paige. The reason? Santa was coming to visit! Paige has always had an intense fear of anybody dressed in costume. Greg took Marley and Paige to a pre-season event with the Canucks a few years ago and almost suffered an injury when Paige completely FREAKED at Finn, the Canucks Mascot. Yup. Fun times! We’ve purposefully not planned to take the girls to Disneyland until she has overcome this fear.

After this, I think we are getting closer!

Santa has always been a particulary poignant issue for us. I’d really like to have those pictures of my kids on Santa’s knee but the tears, screams and escape attempts make it not worth the attempt.

Before I digress too much, here is a close up of the main page. I made a collage of several pictures and then added some ribbon – to make it look like a present.

Kind of.

Maybe if you squint! LOL!

Of course the kids were all excited for the Special Guest … Paige included.

My journalling reads: “What a week this has been for Paige! First she conquered her stage fright and today she conquered her fear of Santa Claus. Way to go Paige! Paige has always been terrified of any person dressed in a costume – team mascots, PNE Bears, clowns and  … Santa Claus. Today she not only did NOT run and hide when the Jolly Old Elf came to visit her preschool, she sat on his lap and told him what she wanted for Christmas. She may look nervous in this picture, but really she is thinking hard!! Awesome Paige! Just awesome!”

Okay, that’s it. Like I said, I need a specific picture in order to do the layout I want to do for the 18th. Hopefully I’ll get it soon.

Until then, enjoy the season!