Little Dumer News: Wrapping Up Our Winter Holiday

It's been a beautiful holiday season around here!
In a few more days the kids will be back to school and Chris will be back to work.

I wanted to share some of our Christmas fun times before the New Year began,
sadly, I fell a bit behind. So much for good intentions, I suppose!

Chris and I got to snag a little time away at the Christmas Market downtown,

and I also snapped the picture below of Harbour Centre, framed by pigeons on a wire, it's one of my favourites from last year:

On December 8th we attended Cygni's Christmas program.
It was as bad as you might expect. Poor Cygni was very nervous to begin with, but it did not help her to be placed right next to a crying little boy, and you can see her below, at the far right crying, and then covering her ears! She did warm up eventually, and actually sang along to about one and a half songs, but by that time, the little girl to her right blocked my view sufficiently that it wasn't worth trying to photograph or tape her. Oh well! There's always next year, and she didn't slap Santa, unlike the other Little Dumer....

Ah, here she is looking much happier, with a treat from Santa.

I took the kids out to Capilano Suspension Bridge one night to see the Canyon Lights. It took a little convincing to get Jordan there, and he whined for about a half an hour but then he lightened up and tried enjoying himself.

Jordy has got this sleigh-thing figured out!

it was cold, but fun!

The next night we stayed home to make Christmas ornaments for the special adults in the kids' lives. They both loved painting and decorating.

We found time to visit the Dumontet abode for their annual Christmas sing-along, and Jordan was once again fascinated by Uncle Ross and his 12-string guitar. The owl in the middle is Dr. Hoo, J's kindergarten class mascot who happened to be spending the weekend with us.

Both Little Dumers provided excellent percussion, and

as we climbed into the car afterwards, Cygni declared, "I had so much fun singing, Mom!"

the snowline dropped down to our level for about 15 minutes one day!

And we had a grand time making homemade Christmas cookie care packages for our neighbours!

Yum! I want to be my own neighbour!

A few days before Christmas my friend Eryn and I took the kids to the Carousel Theatre for Young People's interactive production of Where The Wild Things Are. Originally I only wanted tickets to their show Go Dog, Go, which is based on one of J's favourite books, but it was a really good deal to get the package that included this production. I was a little trepidatious as it would be the kiddos' first exposure to theatre, but they truly enjoyed it and I cannot be more pleased with them. The cast asked Jordan to help at one point and he gently declined, at which point, Cygni stepped up. She did great! She got to hold the Royal Cushion at Max's coronation when he became the King of the Wild Things. Yay, Cygni!

The kids loved helping wrap and write out their own gift tags for Christmas!

Of course, they were great about getting to bed and quieting down for Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve! And they even let us sleep in til about 8 on Christmas morning. In fact, I was the last one to bed and the first one awake! It was fun to watch the kids open up their gifts and interesting to see the differences between J and C. Jordan generally wants to open a gift and play with it, whereas Cygni wants to open one gift after another, in as rapid succession as possible. We had to play catch up several times.

Christmas Cracker fun!

My favourite part of the holidays is always our Boxing Day Open House, and Chris would agree. We had a steady stream of visitors from one to ten! We had lots of kids playing together with Jordan and Cygni's new toys upstairs and no shortage of laughter and conversation from the adults downstairs. We had a lovely time entertaining friends and family.

We love making merry!

We never planned on it being a New Year's Eve tradition, but our annual visit to Burnaby Village Museum's Heritage Christmas seems to have evolved into one. We somehow manage to discover something new every time we go. This year we all had a few giggles at an old-timey silent film screening at their "Central Park Theatre." And of course, the lights never fail to astound, and the carousel lights up the children's faces too.

Dad tries to keep warm with a cup of cocoa

Even though it didn't go up and down, Cygni was enamored of this tiny carousel horse

My horse though, seems a little put out over working on New Year's Eve....

We came home and the kids celebrated the new year with some mac'n'cheese and

a bit of sparkling juice in some very grown-up glasses

CHEERS!

Today, to welcome 2016, we headed up to Westwood Plateau in Coquitlam to play a bit in the snow. Check out this amazing view with the Pinecone-Burke Mountain wilderness in the background limned with the pink tinges of a sunset!

We didn't have any toboggans or sleds and the snow was a little too dry to pack into snowballs or build with, but the kids were still happy to crunch about in it. Oh and eat it, these kids are obsessed with eating snow. Don't worry, I cautioned them about the yellow stuff.