December Diary #2

And now we head into our Christmas adventures.  We stayed home again this year.  Christmas was Wed and Thu, which always makes it a rush to get to and from Perth with James' work days.  Just like last year it was lovely and peaceful again and so relaxing.  And it was perfect cool weather too!

The boys with their bags full of reindeer food.  They actually made the bags last year, I saved them, and then we put new food in them for this year.

Playing with the new soccer table we bought Daddy for Christmas.  Sadly he even had to construct it himself on Christmas Eve.  I did try but it was so hard to manoeuvre my knee around it!

Feeding the reindeer, and the dog!

Then when it got dark we headed out on a Christmas light hunt, that ended as usual at Mrs Maschette's house.  Henry just loves watching the train and playing with all the interactive toys she has on display.

Boys are all in bed, not yet asleep, but it was safe to get all the presents out and load up the tree.  It looked awesome!

 Yippee its Christmas morning and in the very excited words of Henry when he was opening his gifts in his Santa sack, "Yes, I got it, I got it!"  Monsters University DVD.  Then he opened his other gift, which was a jar of jelly beans and said "But this was supposed to be Ninja Turtle Lego".  Too funny.

 Lego for Jamie - Hobbit Lego.

 A new camera bag for me, which had lots of other little gifts stashed inside it! 

 James with his new Star Wars shirt.

 Thomas very very happy to receive the Ninjago Temple of Light Lego set that he has been talking about non-stop for a while now.

 Opening some shared gifts - top one is a water knee hockey game from Andrew and Eloise.  Bottom one is a Dr Who DVD Board game from Ganma and Gandad.  Thomas was pretty excited when he saw it was Dr Who!

 A ha, here is the Ninja Turtle Lego he asked Santa for!  This is the first time Henry has specifically requested a set of Lego.  He spent a long time pouring through the Lego catalogues and discussing with his brothers which Ninja Turtle set would be the best one to have.

 Reggis getting some help opening her gifts.

 And its Lego building and playing time x 3!

 Vicky gave us a fiendish 3D jigsaw puzzle.  James quickly took it off to my scrapbooking table and started trying to figure it out.

 My new necklace.

 Magic Christmas trees that Ganma and Gandad gave the big boys last Christmas and we forgot to set them up - done now!  They were pretty cool.  It is some kind of cardboard tree and a sachet of magic water.  You set the tree up, pour in the water and leave it.  Within 12 hours the tree forms.  Very bizarre.

 I attempted a new recipe for Christmas - homemade cinnamon scrolls for lunch.  The liquid part of this recipe was not butter or milk, but a whole tub of thickened cream - soooo delicious!

Dinner time - camera on a self timer sitting on the bench, turned out to be one of my favourite shots of the day.  The weird things on our heads are a Guess Who game that came in a set of Christmas crackers.

 Playing the water hockey game.  It uses a fair amount of water so can really only be played for a short time, but it sure created a lot of laughter!

 Still puzzling away!

 Mum and Dad came to visit on Boxing Day so there were more gifts to open then.  Mum has just found her next season of Grey's Anatomy on DVD.

 Opening gifts from Grandma and Grandad - Thomas has just discovered that there is a kindle in his bag - they all had one.  Henry was very baffled as to what this weird black thing was, but now that he has some comic books on there he is addicted!

 Grandad with his squeaky pig.  There was one of these being messed around with in Albany and he kept declaring that he needed a squeaky pig, so we bought him an extra gift.  It is actually a dog toy, so I think Toby will end up with it!

 Light saber icypoles - the molds were in a Star Wars cookbook that Thomas received from his brothers.

Look - its done!!!!  This took hours of work, but now we don't know what to do with it.  It stands just over 1 metre tall!

Jamie has been growing at an extraordinary rate over the last 6 months.  He has grown more in those 6 months than he did in the entire year between age 11 and 12!  So I asked Mum to get a photo of us with him, before he shoots straight past us!  I reckon by next Christmas we will no longer be the tallest people in our house!
Enjoy.
Amanda

December Diary #1

So a quick wrap up of December in the McGregor household before its all gone and we hit 2014!

 Henry with his toy he chose to buy from Target, and then leave it there to be donated to someone who doesn't have any money to buy their little boy a Xmas present.  This is the first year we have done this.  I wasn't sure how he would cope with the idea, but he was awesome.  No requests at all for us to keep the toy or buy another one for him.  Very proud of him indeed!

 In the clothes he chose to wear out to the OPSM Christmas dinner. Mum made the waistcoat and bow tie for Thomas when he was the narrator for his preprimary Christmas concert, 5 years ago.  I love that it is being worn again!

 Finally happy to have a shower.  He has yelled and screamed and protested about showers (and baths) for a LONG time now, but thankfully he thinks showers are pretty cool now - phew!

 This year the boys each have an advent calendar that has an activity to do each day (as well as their lolly and lego calendars too!).  Today's activity was to have dinner by candlelight.  I have amassed so many Christmas candles lately that it was quite a bright dinner actually.

 Graduating from kindy!  How fast this year went by.  He has learnt so much about school and himself and changed so much too.  He is much more confident now and has quite a smart little brain in there, if only his fine motor skills would catch up so he can write all those cool ideas down.

 Thomas at his 3-6 Presentation Night.  The Year 5 performance was singing Silent Night and another song too, in French.  It was so beautiful and rather haunting too.  Thomas achieved silver in the Round Square Ideals this year, so was presented with his certificate that night.

 Henry at the K-2 Presentation Afternoon - such a beautiful angel!!  And he did a great job with the couple of songs that the kindy kids joined in with.

 Jamie at Secondary Speech Night, looking super handsome and grown up.  He received the Year 7 Maths Prize, so was pretty impressed with himself.  Year 7 has been amazing for him.  He has matured a lot and is amazingly independent, but has also achieved huge things too, including 100% in his end of year Maths exam!  We are very proud.

 Then he went on to compete in his first (and probably last, according to him) kids triathlon. Thomas was supposed to compete too but had an awful chest infection.  Jamie struggled with the swim, but was all smiles on the bike and run (walk!) leg.  Here he is after, with his medal.

 Annual gingerbread house creation.  We had a problem with a very saggy roof this year, so had to prop it up with a glass inside. Not my best effort but it still tasted good!

 Visiting Santa at the local shops.  Glad I took this photo in the end, as I was in Albany for the tennis club Christmas party and missed getting a shot of them with Santa there.

 And this is why I went to Albany.  My Nan and Grandad celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.  Here they are with Uncle Alan and their letter from the Queen.  Wouldn't it be cool to get one of those!

 Me, with Nan and Grandad ... and what's that on my knee, well we took the kids and Veronica to Adventure World when school finished.  Within an hour of being there I badly locked and twisted my knee coming off one of the water slides.  It has been extremely painful ever since.  It doesn't like bending, turning, squatting, kneeling, weight bearing .. basically everything that a knee should do!  I have since had X-rays and MRI, which seem to suggest that the injury at Adventure World didn't actually damage my knee, it merely worsened some kind of chronic degenerative condition in my knee joint!  So off to the orthopaedic surgeon I go!!!

 Henry being very brave at Adventure World.  This time around he was much happier playing in all the water jets and fountains.  Must be all those showers!

And more button ornaments for our Christmas tree.  I have plans to make a lot more of these next year, for Christmas gifts.  It should take a heap less time than the boxes I made this year, and the kids will be able to be involved with this too!
Enjoy.
Amanda