december 2010

december 21

zoe is officially 2! she had a very nice little birthday party with a few friends which went well.

zoe requested a fork to eat her cake [she's a very strange toddler!]

we did an early christmas in victoria this weekend since sascha's family will be in hawaii for christmas this year. it was very odd to come back home and have christmas still ahead of us! unfortunately zoe was not feeling well at all and slept through the present opening. she did rally around a little bit, but didn't improve greatly until we were on the ferry on the way home. hopefully she was just getting it out of the way ready for actual christmas. rumour had it [via the girl at the ferry ticket booth] that michael keaton aka batman was in the ferry queue just ahead of us, but he didn't seem to have brought the batmobile so we never found him.

anyway, after an extraordinarily hectic week last week i'm ready for a quieter week and our quietest christmas ever!

zoe's quote of the day: 'zoe want to do it my byself'

december 4

see my fun fact top left of the page about use of the word 'gotten'. it's one of those terms which has always driven me mad to hear, but i'm going to try and let it go in 2011 since it seems to be a real word!

december is looking to be it's usual chaotic-self - despite the fact that we're just having a small, quiet christmas here this year, AND i pretty much have the entire month off work! throwing an extra child's birthday into the middle of the month doesn't help. there's the 2 christmas concerts, 2 work christmas parties, 3 birthdays, 2-day christmas fundraiser at school, 2 school christmas parties, and that's before you factor in any food/present preparations. having said that I LOVE CHRISTMAS. i'm pretty well sorted for christmas presents except for the children. i did a lot of online shopping this year and have very mixed emotions about it. on the one hand, it's extremely efficient and a lot cheaper when you're ordering in england to send items within england, but i miss the touchy/feeliness of shopping in real life and miss the atmosphere. since i moved to north america almost 10 years ago, i've really missed english christmas shopping; shopping in brighton or london or chester. they're all so beautiful with such great shops [if VERY busy]. anyway, december i'm ready for you... bring it on!

we see pileated woodpeckers every now and again in our trees, but this day, one came to feed from our bird feeder on the balcony. it dwarfed all the other little guys!

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