Christmas in Short Form

As evidenced by the lack of posting over the past two weeks, it’s safe to say that we’ve been enjoying our holidays. We really, really have. Despite the fact that traveling exhausts our wee family and we’ve been battling a few different types of sickies over the past month, we did our best to soak up this holiday season. Having time off from work has rejuvenated me so much. I’ve read an entire book series, finished and ordered Evalyn’s first year photo book, done some much needed reorganization around the house, and napped. A lot. It’s been wonderful. And since the holiday season has flown by without so much as a single blog post from me, I decided to just write a little quicky to sum up the last three weeks of our lives.

I spent so much of my time savouring the moments and the details that I found I was left with relatively few photos. But that’s okay. Because I was there, in the moments, always.

We kicked off our holiday season by traveling to visit Evan’s family. We played with cousins. We ate. We danced. We decorated Nana’s tree. We opened our Christmas PJs and book. We opened our stockings. We didn’t sleep, at all. We cut our first two molars. We opened gifts. We played outside on the sled. We had fun.

We then came home for almost a week before heading to my parent’s cottage in the Muskokas for Christmas weekend. While we were there, we played. Hard. We didn’t sleep, at all, again. We got two more molars. We had a cold. Mama had a cold. Daddy was getting over the flu. We rode a reindeer. We decorated the most Charlie Brown’ish tree that you ever did see. It was perfect. We got a kitchen and some play food. We walked in the snow. We loved on our Nana. We kissed our Uncle. We played. We played. And we played some more.

We came home on the 27th, a day earlier than we had planned, because sleeping was not happening and we were all too exhausted. Despite that, though, we had a good time. The past week at home has been spent enjoying lazy days. Cleaning up from the chaos of Christmas. Ringing in the New Year with good friends.

This week, Evan is back to his regular schedule and Evalyn and I are working on getting back to ours. She goes back to daycare tomorrow, and I have work to do to tie up last term and get ready for the new term to begin next week. We’ve enjoyed our small break from reality, but I’m ready to get back to normal.

Welcome, 2012! Here’s to a great year.

Jolly Old St. Nick

If you are around these parts this time last year, you may remember that Evalyn had a grand old time visiting Mr. Claus at the mall.

It was definitely hard to beat last year’s photo, but this year she had just as great of a time. As soon as she saw him she asked me to get out of her stroller and kept saying “Ho, ho, ho peas. Ho, ho peas”. She had no hesitation going to sit on his knee and started saying “Cheeeee” for the camera right away.

What a difference a year makes! (Excuse the quality of this year’s photo, it’s a picture of a picture since I didn’t get digital copies yet and haven't been able to scan it).

Let the holiday season begin.

Let’s call this The Great Pumpkin Patch Fail of 2011

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving! I know many of you reading are from the country to the south, and are not celebrating Thanksgiving today. But in Canada, we are. Unfortunately, this year, we’re unable to be with our families for Thanksgiving because of Evan’s work commitments. Last year we missed Thanksgiving too, because we had a brand new babe and had to travel the weekend following Thanksgiving so decided to stay home. But, both years, friends who are like family to us took us under their wings and ensured that we would get to celebrate Thanksgiving properly. So we’re looking forward to a feast with all the fixings later today, thanks to the gracious invitation extended to us by Wilma.

Now that the wee babe that entered our life last autumn is now a wee toddler, it’s time to start creating some seasonal traditions and making memories. Of course, heading to the pumpkin patch has to be one of them. This year, we decided we’d try to skip out on the formal pumpkin patch experience and do it at home. There is a field at the very back of the property that, in past years, has been rented out and planted with pumpkins. I figured Evalyn would enjoy this experience just as much as the real deal. And I would save myself a few bucks that could be better spent on pumpkin spice lattes.

We, like many places, have been experiencing weather that is uncharacteristic for this time of year. Basically, it’s summer. Which is nice. Kind of. I’m all for great weather, but at the same time, we love us some fall around here so I kind of feel like we’re missing out. I want to dress her in cute fall clothes. I want to feel the tip of my nose getting rosy when we’re walking outside. I want to drink apple cider and bake pumpkin stuff. But anyway. I digress. I knew the weather man was calling for another roaster today so if I wanted to do the pumpkin patch thing in fall clothing, we’d have to go out in the morning. When the ground is covered in dew. So, I grabbed a blanket to keep her dry. Which I’m sure was a fabulous idea since my child hasn’t stayed in one spot for more than .562 seconds in about five months.

So, there I was at 8:45 this morning, with my child dressed in clothing that was far too warm for the weather, my running shoes on, sweat pants rolled up in hopes of staying somewhat dry. I loaded her up in the stroller with a dolly, my camera, some tissues (hello, runny nose season is back) and a blanket. I was smart enough to take the stroller with me because a) I would need a way to get the pumpkins back, b) I didn’t want her to get soaked and dirty on the way out and c) I didn’t want it to take fifty hours to walk to the back of the property.

We started the trek – which was quite a trek, I might add as my faithful Graco doesn’t do so well on the bumpy terrain – through the orchard to find the pumpkin patch. We were singing. We were chatting. We were pointing to everything we saw and saying “ball”. Along the way, we did find a ball. Or a giant mushroom, rather. Even though I have small’ish feet, the comparison still shows that this guy was a honker. Of course, Evalyn was none too happy when I continued on our journey without letting her touch, hold, smell, or eat this “ball”. (Sidenote: anyone want to guess her favourite word right now?)

By this point, my feet were soaked. My rolled up sweatpants had come unrolled and were also soaked. I was sweating. Dolly had dropped to the ground multiple times and was covered in dew and grass. But, we were almost there. And it would be so worth it. Because the end result would be amazingly cute photos of my sweet daughter frolicking in the pumpkin patch. Running around to her heart’s delight. Selecting the very best pumpkin to bring home to show Daddy this evening and carve up in time for Halloween.

And then we got there.

And found this.

The “pumpkin patch”.

Apparently I should have sent the Daddy out ahead of us to scope out the situation. Because “the pumpkin patch” was nothing of the sort. It was more like, the ridiculously unkempt field of some type of creepy crawling plant. See those fines in the top right hand corner of the photo? That is the only evidence that there is, in fact, anything planted in this field. But upon closer inspection, I discovered they weren’t even pumpkins anyway,but some kind of squash.

So, fail.

At least we had fun. Or something.

Any locals know of the best pumpkin patch to visit with a little one?