Afternoon at Inglewood Park

Addison became quite the little "stunt man" on the hill and had an absolute blast! Speed is definitely his thing, much like daddy! He is 3 and he was telling Wes to set him up so he could hit the "jump" on the hill...haha!

Asher was so darn cute on the sled. He kept his arms out to the sides everytime he sat on the sled as there really wasn't anything to hang onto. As they started going down the hill and the speed increased he would cover up his eyes with his hands. Maybe he is more like mommy :)

Aidan brought his skates, hockey and a puck and chose to skate around the rink with one of his friends from the neighbourhood. After we left him and Kyle decided to go back and bring their sleds and try out the hill as well. Got home just in time for some pizza and then he was off to skate-church which is held down at Vertical Edge indoor skateboard park. Very cool idea as a group of men introduce the bible and Jesus to skateboarders in our city. Aidan loves going to this each Sunday night and has even started going by himself (without a friend by his side)...so brave of him to step out like that and show his independence.

A fun afternoon with friends from our small group down at the park here in our neighbourhood. It was our first entire-family outdoor activity as we bundled Abigail up and she slept in the stroller while the boys played and mommy took photos. It was a lot of fun for the kids as they love to be outdoors! Looking forward to doing it again.

Gingerbread Time

Our first family photo with all of us in it...I took 4 of them and that is the best we got :)

Note the look on Wes' face in the above photo...this photo is taken right after Asher decided to dump all the itty bitty candies on the table and half ended up on the floor.

Yes, we even forced Aidan to join in on the "fun" and put a few candies on. He thought he was too cool to decorate...why wouldn't a 10 year old boy love this????

Our finished product is in the photo above and you can find my post down below:

Last year I bought a "giant" gingerbread house to decorate with the kids. The kit sat in our garage for an entire year until today. I decided, since we were going to have a "home day" it would be fun? to decorate this house. The kids had already done some decorating on a house that Grandma Barb had built but that was over a month ago...so...off I went to mix the icing. About 10 minutes into the icing mixing and trying to get the house to stick together I was questioning "why am I doing this??" as there seemed to be icing EVERYWHERE(so much so that I was afraid to get the good camera out to even attempt a photo) and I am sure the little guys ate half of what was supposed to be our building glue. Anyways, after that dried and I had cleaned up a little and everyone had lunch we began to decorate. Wes took over the icing duties while I snapped away with the camera (one of my favorite places to be). After the decorating and vacuuming was done we decided we would keep the gingerbread tradition for Grandma Barbs house :)

Our Tree Tradition

In 1999 I started buying a Christmas ornament and putting a photo in it of the each child...well at that time there was only Aidan. I have done that every year since then and so you can imagine our tree is getting nice and full of "photo ornaments." What better ornaments could there be for someone who loves photos so much? Aidan is on his 10th ornament this year and Abigail is on her first. Each year when I take the ornaments out of the box I love seeing how the kids have changed over the year(s) and take much time and care to make sure they are wrapped carefully when it is time to put them away. I treasure these as my heart lies in each one holds memories of each of our children at a certain time in their lives.

Here are the ornaments for 2009: