Christmas 2012 - Reported to You in February 2013

I should probably clarify that this is February 3, 2013 and not Christmas time. I took a bit of a break from blogging this winter but I figure I should still make note of what happened at Christmas. It was a fairly typical Christmas. This was Carter's last year with Santa at Day Care. I think they've had the same Santa since Callie went there and he's great because he's one with a real beard. The parents bring a gift for each kid and Carter sat very patiently until it was his turn. I'm glad he was in the first half because as more and more kids get their gifts it gets louder and more chaotic.

Callie's Christmas Concert was pretty good. They have two sessions because it's such a big school.  I went with Barb, Reg and Sean Duke in the evening. Looking back on my own concerts I'm glad our school was small enough that we could sit beside the stage and actually see all the other kids. Kerry has to spend the evening in her classroom with her class waiting to sing. She does  get out long enough to see Callie who looked very good in her newly knitted scarf from Gub. We didn't realize why she wanted it until we saw she was singing Frosty the Snowman.

It was a good year for gifts. No giant toys and I think everyone was happy with what they got. Barb and Reg got an iPad mini from everyone and we had a similar everyone gift of a TV. Callie and Carter both got lot's of lego and Uncle Ronnie helped Carter put together his Tyrannosaurus Rex. As per usual, the first Christmas is with Kerry's family and my parents come down for New Years. We also got in our traditional fondu and had a second one with the Dukes in between Christmas and New Years. A busy time.

Christmas number two had my Mom and Dad come down just before New Years. We keep the tree up until January 1 so we put the new set of gifts under the treat and have a second present opening. (If you count Daycare, Corey and Carmen coming over, Kerry's parents and then my parents I guess technically we have four Christmas'.) 2012 was another great year. Looking forward to Maui in 2013!

Autumn Leaves

We have two maple trees in our front yard and when you rake the neighbours trees as well you end up with an excellent jumping pile. I always know when it's time to create the family calendar because Kerry starts to ask about leaf pictures. Callie just likes to jump in them but Carter was eager to help rake as well. Of course once the pile was ready it was my job to keep it together while Carter spent close to an hour jumping. He'd get up good speed coming down the slight slope and enjoyed finding new techniques. No fear.

Callie is a bit more cautious, always going feet first. She actually enjoyed rolling around in them more than jumping.

My favourite part of raking leaves is getting them into the compost pile. With a couple of turns and a mild winter it should be black gold by spring time.  Everything is all cleaned up and ticket away. Another growing season and a few hardscaping projects complete. Looking forward to next year. Hopefully adding a pond, replacing a portion of the fence and expanding the vegetable garden.

Halloween

Every year at Halloween the costume box seems to come up earlier and earlier. We still have every costume for both kids including the baby duck that both Callie and Carter wore for their first halloween. Callie would have been just three months cold and Carter only 8 weeks. Carter hasn't quite clued into any sort of gender role so Callie is able to convince him to wear all of the costumes he fits into at least once. He really pulled the witch costume off nicely.

I was hoping to spend more time on the pumpkin this hear and improve on the shading technique, however Callie had some odd ideas in her head about who got which pumpkin and Carter and I only got one pumpkin. We went with Agent P (Perry the Platypus) from Phineas and Ferb. Just a basic trace and cut. (Any pattern I do is going to be traced. I'm not that creative.) I also did a skull and cross bones for Callie which she took to the pumpkin carving contest at school. Not sure what the teachers are expecting. It's not like any of the grade two kids are carving their own pumpkin.

With such a wide array of costumes available including a couple that Kerry picked up at a garage sale up the street it was tough to figure out what the kids were going to be. I was certain that Carter was going to be Spiderman but in the end he chose the horse costume from last year. I think he felt a bit more secure plus the horse costume was much warmer. Callie didn't waiver. She was planning to go as a Pirate from the beginning. It turned out to be a very simple costume. The dress was something Gub and Gampoo picked up in Vegas and the accessories were pieces we had picked up for the Pirate Party on our Disney Cruise last year.

Pumpkin Patch

We took our annual trip to the Aldor Acres pumpkin patch in early October. Hitting the pumpkin patch at the right time is a tricky thing. It's no fun when it's cold, rainy, wet and muddy but as I discovered this year it's not quite the same when it's 22 degrees and sunny. We were able to go in shorts and a t-shirt. This year dust was the problem and all the trees were still green. I think the perfect weather is a sunny day, around 15 degrees with the leaves just starting to change.

Callie's favourite part is definitely the animals. Depending on how she does in high school biology, I can definitely see her being a veterinarian. She's happiest when it's just her and the animals. This year we got to go in the pen with some bigger rabbits rather than just the bunnies. There were also plenty of baby goats and piglets. They don't seem to have the turkey's anymore. I suspect Callie's turkey incident of '08 was not an isolated one. (She got bit on the hand.) Those things can be very mean.

Carter is not quite as thrilled with the farm animals. It's not the creatures that scare him. It's the smells. He's always had a very sensitive sense of smell. The barn also has the scary singing pig which doesn't help matters. Despite the dust the pumpkin patch itself was perfect. Lot's of big bright orange pumpkins. You pay by the width so we encourage the kids to pick out tall and skinny as they measure smaller and are cheaper. (We get our big pumpkin form Superstore for $2.99)

San Diego

Before you assume that this trip was all fun I should mention there was a definite work component involved. I'm off to write my book report for work right after this blog entry. This report is purely the non-work portion of my trip. The mapping technology that I use is owned by GE and they had their annual conference in San Diego this year. I had asked a while ago and it didn't look like I'd be able to go as there was co-worker who had a better case but he ended up being sent to Serbia on the same week and I was next in line.

The conference started early Monday so I had to fly in on Sunday. I took the earliest flight so that I'd have a bit of time to go sight seeing. Last time I was here I went to the zoo and the aquarium. I only had time for one this time and the zoo is first class. Highlights included the sky tram,  the pandas, the elephants and of course the monkey on the hippo. The San Diego Zoo has some great exhibits and I like when they mix up the animals. (When I say great, I mean if you can get over the fact that they are caged animals. Many are in the name of conservation but I don't think they all are.)

I only found out that I'd be able to go about a week in advance so by the time I tried to get a room at the main hotel it was already booked for some of the nights. My amazing travel agent, Kerry, managed to get me into the hotel across the street. It's a turn of the century mansion with a lot of history. It was also close. So close that I was technically closer to the conference area than much of the main hotel was. The place was called the Glorietta Bay Inn and with few rooms and friendly staff it had a great ambience.

The main hotel had a lot of history as well. It was called the Hotel Del Coronado and it was built in 1888. It seems that many great hotels of that era never made it past the 60's and 70's so it's in a class of it's own. I'm fairly certain that many areas of Disneyland were modelled after this hotel. The shops on main street, the layout of the Disneyland Hotel and even the fonts on the signs all looked like they were inspired by the Del. The hotel itself was where the 'Wizard of Oz' was written and it was the backdrop for Maralyn Monroe's movie 'Some Like It Hot'.

The beach was definitely the highlight of the area. The sand was like talcum powder and I saw several sand sculptures get created while I was there, including a near full size Audi for a convention of top sellers that was taking place at the same time as our convention. On the Tuesday night we had dinner on the beach and I started every morning with a walk in the sand. (And a bunch of work stuff happened. Let's not forget the work stuff.)

Happy Birthday Carter

Technically I was in San Diego for Carter's birthday but more on that in a future blog. Carter has lot's of friends at preschool that we hear about all the time but because Kerry tends to drop the kids off later and pick them up earlier than most parents she doesn't get to meet many of them and at Carter's age you're really inviting the parents. As such we had mainly a friends and family evening with pizza, burgers and cake. This was our first store bought cake for a kids party which may be an ongoing theme for Carter. It's so soon into the school year we haven't settled enough to put a lot of time into homemade cakes.

After Callie's marathon of gifts and parties including her real birthday in Disneyland, Carter was very excited that this day was going to be about him. Callie helped with much of the planning and made sure that the traditional 'present opening chair' was in it's usual spot. When it came time to open gifts he seemed surprised that all the presents were for him. He seems to have very low expectations so I get the sense we've got to make more effort to even up the amount of attention we're paying to each kids party.

Lego was a constant them for presents which suits me fine. Once they are opened, built once and destroyed they go into the general lego collection and don't take up much room. Once we start to give away the little kid toys we should finally be able to reclaim our home. The weather, food, friends and family were all great. (Except for that minor food poisoning incident with the beef from Costco. We got a phone call the very next day from Costco indicating a bad batch and it seems more than one of our guests were impacted. Our apologies.)

The Death of Summer

Summer comes to a very abrupt end in our household. Not only does Callie have to go back to school, Carter goes back to daycare and Kerry goes back to work. We did a good job of going out with a bang though. My mom came down and we managed to go to the aquarium and the zoo and had a thoroughly enjoyable final weekend. For the first day of school I took the day off so that I could help Callie with the change. She was excited to go back but very apprehensive as well and I knew it was going to be a tough morning.

We had a few things prepped to help. Barb had ordered her new backpack from the Disney store in Edmonton. (The store in Vancouver had sold out.) It was surprisingly cheap. Lesson learned to buy school supplies before the last week of school. I had also planned a trip to Ricky's for breakfast. We did this when she started kindergarten and she still remembered. Things went well until Callie discovered that we weren't going to breakfast till after school. (School was only from 10:00a to 11:00a) It took about 30 minutes of convincing but I finally managed to get her there on time.

Carter was much easier. At least for Carter. Much tougher on Kerry of course. He took his new cars lunch kit that he got from Kerry's friend Melissa and had no problems at drop off time. He has a friend named Taven and as soon as they saw each other it was like they hadn't been apart for the last two months. He only had a half day as we picked him up for breakfast too. When I went to pick him up he turned to his friends and said "My Daddy is taking me to breakfast!" and then ran to get his coat. Nice that the simple things seem to go so far.