Monday, December 22, 2014

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Christmas parties


Dino & I attended my work Christmas party (even though I am on mat leave) on Sunday, Nov. 30. It was held at Gasoline Alley in Heritage Park.

The party was nice and the food was tasty. And we had great company at our table with one of my favourite friends at work and her husband, and my retired boss & his wife (he left work just after I did).

We stayed a few hours and were back home by 10:30 to relieve our babysitters (my cousin Bronte & James), as Rhys would not take a bottle, nor go to bed. He was happy as can be just chaperoning them on the couch while they watched TV though - haha. And he was super giggly (overtired) when we arrived home).

It was nice to get all fancied up for a night and visit with all adults, even though I yawned all day prior to party!



We've seen Santa twice now - both on the same day!

On Sunday, Dec 7, we had such a fun time at the Smith's! It was Breakfast with Santa, AND PJs were mandatory!! Yay! Great excuse for mommy to get some new pjs too ;-)

Ginger & Cory & Kinley (Santa's elves) made a fabulous breakfast (the food was amazing as usual) and Santa made an appearance!! The kids got to sit on his lap and receive a little present. Skye was okay with it, but Rhysee's lip started to quiver a little bit - first time on Santa's lap. We all enjoyed the visit with friends as well!
Lucky Rhys with all the girls (Kinley, Emily, Skye & Sofia).
He's taking it all in cause soon there will be 2 more little prince's born to the group! :-)

Getting manhandled!
looking for Santa!
He's here! He's here!
Santa looks great for as busy as he has been!




the Smith ELF family - so funny!!
bye Santa

After that we went home for a little downtime and a late nap for my THREE babies…and then had to try and get everyone back up for round 2 - my work kids Christmas party. Skye did NOT want to get up - she was pretty wore out from a few late nights. I had to keep repeating that we were going to a play centre to try and convince her. It finally worked.

We headed up to Tommy K play in Beacon Hill - which is the other side of the country for us! Once Skye saw the fun going on, it didn't take her long to run around and explore everything. This was the first time we had been there, so it was new for me too. Skye crawled up in to the maze of upper tunnels and tubes and after about 5 minutes, I admit I was having a bit of a panic. I couldn't see her at all and I was afraid she was stuck in a tube. It took another 5 minutes or so until I spotted her and this sweet little boy helped her find her way back to the slides! What a nice kid he was. :-) And thank goodness Daddy was there to watch Rhys. It was a bit of a gong show!

When it came time to sit on Santa's lap again, the kids looked a little less than impressed! This time Rhys had a full on meltdown :-(
It was a very busy day, but lots of fun.

Monday was a stay at home, lazy, re-charge day from the weekend! We had originally thought about going to do Santa pictures at the mall, but quickly changed our minds on the ride home Sunday night. I think we had enough Santa for a week or so. Maybe try again next week…

Thursday, December 11, 2014

8 months old

8 months old and starting to get into trouble!
What??! I'm not doing anything!
I'm just chewing
Rhys does a great army crawl right now and can get anywhere he pretty much wants to. He is also pulling himself up to his knees on whatever he can reach. Already proving that he will be a little dare-devil like his sister. He does not like to sit/lay still for more than a few seconds. Skye is getting good at yelling "Baby RHYSeeee! NOOO!". His favourite things to get into at the moment are reaching for the lower decorations on the Christmas tree and trying to grab the new choo-choo train that goes around under the tree. He also loves to bee-line for the edge of the bed or the dressers when I set him on a bed. 

Rhys has 4 teeth now. The top two front came thru mid November. I think he is working on another couple the way he is always chewing on his fingers. 
That looks like a fun thing to try and touch!
He is eating 3 big meals & 1 snack during the day. Nursing 4-5x during the day and 2-3 during the night. Such a heavy little guy. Last week he was approximately 22.5 lbs when we weighed him at home. 

He is getting a wee bit better with nighttime sleep. And if he does wake, I can usually just pop his soother back in and he won't need to feed every time. He is usually sleeping in the playpen in our room and/or in our bed, but him and I have been bunking in Skye's room for the past 4 nights, as she is sick with a bad cold and is snuggling with her dad. Rather than all 4 of us sharing the bed, we opted out and are getting more sleep in the other room. Always musical beds around here...
I did it!!

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Decorating for Christmas

Mommy tackled almost all the Christmas decorating while Skye was gone to Saskatchewan (2 full days worth!). We put our usual ginormous tree upstairs, and put the smaller 4' tree from last year downstairs. I left the little tree for Skye to decorate when she came home. She had fun with that.



I LOVE my new Reindeer photo holder from Pier 1!! It lets me display a bunch of Christmas photos from years past. And it fits perfect in the niche that I hated trying to decorate!
New stocking holders from Pier 1 as well. I've been looking at them for 3 years now and debating. But I finally just decided to buy them this year! With 4 stockings we weren't able to display them as we had other years.








Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Visit to the farm

In between the two weekends of baptisms, Grandma & Grandpa kidnapped the two oldest grand babies and took them home to the farm with them.  This was Skye's first solo trip to the farm and she didn't even blink an eye about leaving mommy, daddy and Rhys!
The kids were really only gone barely 4 days (including travel time), but it was a nice break and they had tons of fun. They spent a lot of time outside getting fresh air and helping Grandpa in the tractor. I'm sure they got spoiled a little while they were there as well, although we will probably never get the real truth from Grandma.


a new growth chart to measure the
kids every time they come to visit

cleaning corrals with Grandpa - a stinky job!! Definitely not FRESH air that day!

Skye loves to just run and run on the farm for hours!





 

Baptisms

We celebrated Rhys' baptism on Sunday, November 16. My family all came down for the weekend. And Dino's family joined us, as well as Rhys' godparents - my cousin Niki & her family and our friend Peter. It was a nice service and we all went back to our house for lunch after. Unfortunately the photos didn't turn out that great at all, because of the "no flash" rule in the church (aggravating to say the least). I tried to salvage a few…


Most of the extended family. Missing a few.






The following weekend we made a trip to Edmonton to celebrate our niece Aviana's baptism. It was a fun weekend too! And the pictures turned out better as we were allowed to use a flash in that church (grrr…)



Rhys is almost as big as his 87 year old Great Grandma Pauline! ;-) She wanted to hold him and kept saying how he was so cuddly and that she might just take him home - haha!! I asked her if she REALLY wanted to start all over again, after having 13 of her own children - and she said "Well, no". She is so funny and loves a good party :-)
Rhys is the youngest here and the biggest! Veda (left) is 16 months old, Rhys is 7.5 months and Aviana (right) is 8.5 months. 
Playtime with another Grandma