A Few More Christmas Week Things!

 

Advent Puzzle Complete!

Grace and Jasmin went to a friend's party!

The girls (re)taught Aiden how to skate

And...

Lots of lovely sleep-ins

Lots of yummy remember-Asia meals: mee goreng, char koey teow, moo palao, teh tarik, dim sum...

A library hour (or 2)

A swim afternoon

A night walk to see neighbourhood lights

A few hours of shared computer games

An evening of popcorn and movie - our yearly treat!

And... us girls made this "video" pre-release of some of Grace's songs:

Happy Christmas!

Advent Week Begun!

Grace in on break!

It took her a few all-nighters

but she's done

And now we can have fun -

When she's caught up on sleep!

Our first day we slept in (of course)

Ate pad thai and baote

At the request of kids missing Asian food

(we'll eat other favorites all this week)

Played board games 

until Mom's headache interfered too much

Played computer games

Grace got in some practice driving 

While Aiden had his last volleyball session

Mom got her latest crochet project done:

Rather unsure why it is so grey in the photo 

as it's comfortingly yellow and white IRL

She also finished her dragon collage!

A rather poor representation of a love-gift from God:

A message of belonging and gifting

Despite how others see 

And we finished the day

With a time of family meditation

Advent longing and living hope

Our God will surely come!

The Get Everything Done Week

 This week and last week are definitely the "get everything done" weeks. Starting on the 17th, Grace has 4 precious weeks of break from her university and we want to make the most of it! So we're trying to clear the decks to focus on one another and the many Christmas activities we've written on our bucket list. It is a bit of a struggle since Jasmin has her book editing to do this month, Aiden and Mom have school work still to finish, both girls are slogging away at the online instructional portion of their Driver's Ed program, Dad is juggling lots of Zoom meetings and website creation, and Grace is now deep into her final projects and such for the semester. Hopefully we are successful and next week can be the restful fun that we dream of. Since for the last 5 years Christmas traditions and celebrations have centered around a big campfire feast on the beach, we're not just sliding into our usual, but having to come up with "new" ones.

Like most lists, there are way too many ideas to fit comfortably in a week, so curating the list and planning is also on mom's plate for this "get it done" week.

Our foster dog is feeling very comfortable and at home now. We've had her for over 3 months as she recovers from hip dysplasia surgery. This is where we find her when we don't let her out into the back yard because she tends to bark at every noise she hears from the neighboring yards. So she sits here and watches the squirrels run along the fences instead. :) We are probably saying goodbye to her soon, as she will be in the shelter while we visit Edmonton, and so she might get adopted while we are gone.

Imma has graciously dressed the girls for winter! We had very few suitable sweaters for these grown up girls but now they are warm in style. 

We've had a few Christmassy things happen already. The girls went to a Christian ballet production by an old friend. We tried out the studio's worship evening that same weekend. It was quite interesting and different. Rather than just music with space and permission to dance, it was a guided experience of using gesture and dance to pray, praise, and worship our God. It happens once a month, so we may try again - though it does clash a little with other scheduled things and is quite far.

Grace and Mom headed to Ellel for another afternoon of ministry. Grace with a prayer team, and Mom in the creativity room. Even the 2.5 hours was not enough for Mom to finish her collage, but as far as it is, it looks good and portrays the meaning she desired. Hopefully there will be some time in the next week for her to finish it (and maybe post it?).

We actually had a snow day for Aiden's co-op last Monday! So he had an "extra" day this week - throwing out our carefully planned schedule for finishing school work. He's working away with a will to get finished on time though.

Let's get it done so we can rest and celebrate!

Winter is finally nicely here!

 We've had some decently cold days, but this morning we woke to the white world of a long gentle snow. It made the dog walk this morning extra delightful - and reminded mom she'd really better get some decent boots soon. The ones she has are from pre-marriage days and are no longer warm and don't have any support inside for her still bothersome plantar fasciitis. Of course, Aiden talks of snowmen and sledding, but the likelihood of this snow still being around tomorrow is pretty slim as the temperature creeps upward. Now we sit in the in-between of do we put our bikes away for the winter or not? Do we get out the proper winter coats or not?

It also feels like winter because we've begun our Advent - this year a puzzle. Each day we complete a portion of the puzzle so by Christmas we'll have a completed 1000 piece picture of a stained glass nativity. So far, so good. Instead of a missing piece we have a duplicate! Hopefully someone's box out there is not missing it!

Also wintery and thinking about Christmas: Mom and the kids have been asked to help prepare the children's addition to the Christmas Eve service at church. We just spent the morning making and practicing a ribbon dance in our livingroom and tomorrow we'll see how well it can be passed on the the children... hopefully not too difficult and chaos causing.

Grace and Jasmin are trying to squeeze in as much driving practice as possible before there is snow on the ground for the winter, but what with both them and mom having course work to do and other extras that take our time, it is difficult! Our goal is to have at least one of them driving by February, so we'll have to get better at that.

Mom started an end of semester list of accomplishments for Aiden to see how far he'd come so far in his school. This new way of school can often feel like it just goes on forever and it is difficult to sense the progress. Both mom and Aiden were quite flabbergasted to see that he's read nearly 20 books since September!