Our Christmas

Christmas this year ended up looking a lot different than what we had planned. My Dad and Sandi were supposed to come here to spend Christmas with us, but on the day before they were going to arrive, Dad was admitted to the hospital after scans revealed multiple tumours in his body. So, our plans changed rather quickly. We borrowed a cartop carrier from friends and packed up everything we needed for 4 kids and a dog, including everyone's Christmas presents.

We let the kids open the gifts they had bought for each other, before we left for Vernon, because they had been very creative about wrapping and there was no way we were going to fit those gifts in the van!

The great thing about our change of plans is that Faith got to meet her Granny and Grandpa (Ryan's parents) much earlier than anticipated.

Mom and Dad were planning to leave right after Christmas for a 3 month trip to Arizona, so they hadn't set up a Christmas tree. We improvised!


Christmas morning, the kids were very excited to open their stockings, bright and early!




Grace and her Grandpa - do you see the family resemblance?!

Faith in her sparkly Christmas dress.

Faith also got to meet her cousin Tia, who came over for Christmas dinner. She was quite content in Tia's arms. She knows an experienced big sister when she meets one I guess!

The lovely Christmas dinner that everyone so graciously rearranged their plans for, in order to include those of us who invited ourselves unexpectedly.

I skipped out on the Rachwalski family dinner and had Christmas dinner at the hospital with Dad and Sandi but I didn't get a picture of that - my bad.

December highlights

I am trying to play catch up so I am going to give you a quick glimpse in photos of the month of December in our house.

Decorating the Christmas tree at the beginning of December. We do not have a designer tree by any stretch of the imagination, but all of the ornaments on our tree mean something to us and it is fun to reminisce about Christmases past as we place each one lovingly on the tree. The kids each get a new ornament in their stocking every Christmas so there are lots of ornaments now.

Our little Florida-born baby, all bundled up for the Canadian cold weather.

Doing puzzles together is a favourite family activity.

Rachel participating in our church's kids Christmas production.

Faith being snuggled by a dear friend and mentor of ours. Dave and his wife Nancy have been very supportive of us through our adoption process, having adopted a daughter themselves.

In mid-December the girls and I did a field trip to Burnaby Village Museum with some other homeschoolers. It was a cold, rainy day, but still a fun one. Burnaby Village is a great taste of pioneer life in the early 1900's and the highlight for the kids is always the ride on the carousel.

After Burnaby Village we drove to Port Moody to my cousin Julia's house. It was a special visit because we got to see my cousin Alysia who lives in Australia and was visiting for Christmas.

Alysia got to meet Faith.

and we got to meet her 2 sweet daughters, Miranda, who is only a month older than Faith,

and 2 year old Emily

Another Christmas tradition in our family is decorating a gingerbread house together. We just buy a kit with pre-made walls so it's not too difficult, but the kids have lots of fun decorating it. This year we had an extra pair of hands because the girls' friend Alanna was over. I enjoyed being able to hold Faith in the mobi wrap and to be hands free to help with the icing. As you can see, Evan was his usual crazy self!!

After we finished decorating the gingerbread house, we headed off to our ultimate favourite Christmas tradition - our church family skate. I didn't skate this year, just held Faith and enjoyed watching everyone else. Evan loves to play hockey with his buddies and it's neat to see the guys (and a few girls) of all generations get in on the hockey game. Rachel's highlight was being pushed around the ice by her Daddy!

So Blessed

In December, a dear friend from church hosted a baby shower for Faith and for Alyssa, a baby who was born three weeks after Faith.

Faith got the chance to be snuggled by the wonderful ladies who had been praying for us as we went to bring her home.

and to visit with her friends!

I am so thankful that there are so many little girls her age at our church. I look forward to seeing her develop friendships with these sweet little girls as they grow.


Nora made this very creative "cake."

and planned a game where Sarah and I disassembled it and threw the diapers in our own diaper bins in order to win the privilege of taking them home. :)

We feel very blessed to have such a wonderfully supportive church family.

A New Favourite Christmas Tradition

I know it's past Valentine's Day, but I guess it's better late than never!

We have a lovely advent calendar made by a dear creative friend of mine. Instead of putting candies in it, I put pieces of paper with activities that we can do together as a family. This year, one of the activities was "act out the Christmas story." Well as soon as the kids read this one, the wheels started turning and they were assigning roles and looking for costumes. The girls wrote a script and practiced everyone's parts while Evan was at school and Ryan was working. When the boys got home, Grace the director organized us all to do a run through. The plan was to perform it for our family members who were coming for Christmas, but life took a turn and we didn't end up having Christmas here. Next year though, look out! :)