Christmas festivities officially began for us this weekend. I picked up a $10 artificial tree at the Flea Market on Friday as Edzea kept pestering me about a tree. So, when Daddy came home on Saturday afternoon, he came home to decorate! It wasn’t quite as “Norman Rockwell” as I’d imagined. Glass ball ornaments are no longer going to have a place in our “ornament box”. They need to be replaced with PLASTIC! Need I say more?

Anyways, there are a few pics of us going to the Festival of Trees event in Yellowknife. Santa was there but Edzea refused to go anywhere near him as “I don’t like Santa, I’m afreed of him. His beard.” So, we have a pic of Rohan with Santa but that’s it. There are pics of Edzea doing all of the activities at the Festival which she enjoyed so it doesn’t really matter if she won’t sit with Santa. She wouldn’t even sit on my knee on Santa’s knee this year. No bribe was big enough so we gave up.

We’re off to Maria and Yose’s for dinner tonight. The kids were going to go sledding but it’s already dark and -20 so we’re going to do indoor activities instead!

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Here are some photos from the Family Centre this week.The last two pieces are artwork of Edzea’s.  She did the three little pigs houses. Look at the faces of the pigs which she did herself and the E on the right of the artwork which is “her name”. Also, she did the rainbow by herself and the E underneath. She’s a budding artist!

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Rohan officially started “creeping/crawling” yesterday at 8 1/2 months. It’s a funny way of getting around but I’m sure he will have the traditional crawl mastered this week. He kind of swims himself along the floor like a dolphin. Two arm pulls like butterfly and then a wriggle of the legs. It’s very odd but occasionally he moves up to his knees so I’m sure he’ll figure out an easier way soon. At least he gets where he wants to slowly.

And “Mumamummum” is the latest thing out of his mouth. He gets so much praise for it that he practises a lot! Also, to be fair to Dada I have continuously said Mama to him for the past month in the hopes that he’ll say it…so it’s not that fair really!

He mastered clapping with the actual sound this week too. He makes a clicking noise with his mouth that I think is supposed to be clap clap but he can actually make his hands make the sound. He’s SOOOO proud of himself. It’s so cute!

It’s  been busy as usual up here. Here are some pics of Edzea dressed up to go to her first theatre performance at NACC. We went with Tracey & Mackenzie. It was billed as being appropriate for young kids but it wasn’t. It was a spoof on Fairy Tales. The whole way to the theatre, Edzea kept saying, “Mommy, I don’t want the big bad wolf there.” She fixated on this. We were met at the entrance doors by Snow White which she noticed was NOT the same as the Snow White at Mabel Lake and “where were the little people????” She wanted to see the three little pigs and that was it. While we were waiting for the curtains to rise, they were blasting hard rock music and then when the curtain did rise it came on with about 30 teenagers dressed as wolves, and various other Fairy Tale characters dancing to a very loud number. She sat on my lap and held on for dear life. Then they did a version of the dating game with Prince Charming, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. They were yelling and Edzea just didn’t understand it. Then another dance number with wolves came on and we left the theatre. I wasn’t going to force her to stay and watch something she wasn’t ready for.

So, I hung out with her in the lobby with a number of other parents and toddlers who had left the show waiting for Tracey & Mackenzie to come out. Haydon and Amanda had come and I didn’t realize they were there until they came out of the theatre about 10 minutes after us. We’ve all decided that we will attempt “The Nutcracker” at Christmas time. It should be tame enough.

Edzea is busy with Christmas projects for her friends. See the sample of one of her paintings. She is quite the artist at the moment.

She signs her letter E by herself now. It’s quite amazing. I showed her how to do it one day and she’s remembered. Also, she is trying to imitate to a degree other images I show her. She now does a half circle rainbow, trees and she is trying faces, cats. If you use your imagination you can almost see a faint resemblance to these items!!!

Rohan is doing well. He’s had a cold all week but he’s always a happy little fellow so that hasn’t brought him down too much. He loves Kindermusic and loves to dance with Daddy. He is sooooo close to crawling we can’t quite believe he hasn’t figured it out yet. It will come soon.

Also, Edzea is wanting PRIVACY in the bathroom now. She slams the door in your face when you try to follow her in. She only calls you to help with the wiping now.

Tim’s at soccer tonight. We are all finally healthy at the moment, cross our fingers. The weather is still balmy max. -4 so far. It’s been a nice winter so far.

Looking forward to our trip south in December.

Edzea and I do some one on one girl time together on the weekends. We usually go to the pool together but I’m still avoiding the pool until I’m sure we all feel super healthy. So today we went grocery shopping and then we went to the fish barge to get fish for our freezer. Edzea hadn’t been there before and she was really curious about where the fish came from if it wasn’t from Mabel Lake. So I showed her Great Slave Lake and we looked at all of the boats frozen into the ice. Then, we walked over to a new little coffee shop that just opened right beside it. It has a little craft gallery in it, a spot to order soup, baked goods, drinks, coffee etc and then a small eating area. We stayed there for a while and ate cookies and chatted. Then we went into the craft gallery where they had plain white stuffed animal cats in a big treasure chest. The lady in the gallery is painting them and then selling them with $2 from every sale going to the SPCA. I asked if we could purchase one for Edzea to paint and she was so nice. She gave us two for $5. She also gave us so me neat beaded iron on beading to use as collars when we were done and told me about a neat technique for fabric painting. All in all, we had a fun afternoon.

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