december 2013

december 15

toby made us breakfast in bed this morning - us being sascha, aly and i. i practically fell out of bed with shock. the pancakes were cold and sascha only had a few pieces of cereal floating in a giant bowl of milk but we couldn't be happier. we celebrated by deciding to stay in bed all morning very content with the thought of how independent all the children are.

speaking of how old the children are, it's zoe's 5th birthday this week. she had her party on saturday. it was disney themed and filled with a lot of princesses. it turns out that a lot of princesses leave a LOT of glitter in the house when they leave. it’s everywhere! fortunately, it’s easier to get away with your clothing being covered in sparkles when it’s christmas

we went to sascha’s christmas party on friday night. it was at the eldorado which is a great location. unfortunately i got snow between my toes on my way from the parking lot into the hotel. mental note to wear closed toes shoes for christmas parties when it’s snowing!

zoe’s christmas concert was great but with over a 100 kindergarteners, it was a little tricky to see her, so i was very glad we’d had a preview of her frosty le bonne homme (?) at home.

we’re very happy that the williams’ family have decided to join us for christmas so we don’t have to be so lonely. who could resist the beautiful white christmas outside the window? maybe we'll make them some rudolph pancakes and waffles to celebrate

december 4

it's been a CHILLY week. it's taking a bit of getting used to - especially after being in florida so recently. the pond is doing some funky freezing at the moment. very weird.

why is december always so busy? i've mostly finished christmas shopping, the decorations are up and the christmas cards are almost written but the kids activities are going to be the death of me - although the older two being in middle school and not having christmas performances helps a little. of course having a birthday party to plan for the weekend before christmas adds to the general mayhem - poor zoe!

sascha is away in argentina and then brazil for 10 days and boy are those three children difficult to drag out of bed at this time of year. i feel like it's groundhog day. i have the exact same conversation every single morning - i'm too tired to get up. i don't want to get up. can i just stay in bed today? do i have to go to school? i finally get one up only to move on to having the exact same conversation with the next one!

toby and i have always been big fans of the crowd sourcing site galaxy zoo where the public classify pictures of galaxies taken from satellites. we moved on from that to old weather which tracks historic weather patterns by transcibing weather logs from old ships. more recently, i've become a little obsessed with shapshot serengeti where you get snapshots taken by automatically triggered cameras hidden all over the serengeti and you have to figure out which animal has walked in front of the camera - not too bad if there are giraffe legs in front of the lens but a little trickier when you just see a horn at the side of the shot. toby has also been exploring various other sites including genetically modified worm egg-laying behaviour, space lens spotting, and bat colony behaviour. it's much more fulfilling than candy crush, but for some reason hasn't managed to curb my addiction. hopefully we'll have some time over the christmas break to do some more together.

right - i've finished making a christmas tree out of cheese and crackers for girl guides and i'm off to write christmas cards and wrap presents.

back home