Some Late but still Awesome November Bdays!

So... I have been slacking on the picture taking since Christmas. Yesterday I went to the Food & Wine show and those were the first pictures that I have taken since Christmas! I need to get back into picture mode so I can appropriately blog. I somehow didn't even take 1 picture on New Years! I am going to post some pics from November when Birthdays were in full force (Nov and Dec are busy birthday months!). I will post also about the food & wine show but I don't have all the pictures yet because the Western Fair posts their pictures from their photo booth online and they aren't up yet!

Our besties Al & Steph are now a family of 4! We were very excited to meet Chase Osborne at the hospital after he was born November 7, 2014! He slept the whole time, but we could see he has resemblance to Colton but definitely his own thing going on... can't wait to watch him grow :)

Scarlett turned 1 in November! We went to Scarlett's open house birthday party in November, where her colour theme was yellow and gray. She had her high chair all decorated with balloons & tulle for the cutest 1st birthday cake picture... but then this happened:
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So funny! She would absolutely not sit in that high chair... she balled her yes out until she was picked up out of there!

And Serena turned 5... so crazy that she is 5!! We headed to Stoney Creek after a long 2 nights of Black Friday shopping... it was a lot of driving! But Serena's birthday was so cute. All the little kiddies running all around all sugared up... such a fun age!

This is present time.. Serena opening them all up by the Christmas tree!

And Serena's birthday was frozen themed! When we got to the birthday party the kiddos were doing snowflake crafts. The whole house was decorated with snowflakes too!

Christmas 2014!

These holidays seemed to be really busy... and long! Christmas celebrations always kick off with the Santa Claus Parade in early November!

This year was the first year that the parade switched from Dundas St. to Queens St. I definitely noticed the difference since it was so much more residential and the places to find a spot were more sloped. It was kinda a rainy day, but that didn't stop us! We got there early and landed our spots with Timmies with a little bit of Baileys (cause its the holidays). On the way to finding our spots Rachel dropped her letter to Santa. So Kenny went to the rescue and re-tracked our steps and found the letter! Rachel was very happy.

That is Aleksy with the 15 gravies that we ended up with after the parade! This year, the people in the parade loved giving Aleksy candy canes, candy, and loved giving all of us gravy! There were adult treats this year like Mountain Dews and these gravies. I thought that we'd have gravy for the next 10 years but they ended up coming in handy with all the leftovers we had after Christmas super!

One of my favourite things of the Christmas season is the Christmas concerts that Rachel is in! I have gone to Christmas concerts for the last at least 12 years: before it was Travis, Trevor and Brandons and now Rachels! Last year Rachel had a part where she had a sentence to say (and was super speedy through it) and this year she had 2 songs... actions and all! She was so enthusiastic (not shy!).

Our house all decorated  for Christmas! It wasn't quite the same being a green Christmas and all, but we did add to our decor this year. Aleksy has wanted these light-up reindeer for years. So when he found them on sale, we quickly became proud new owners. We already had the house lights, wreath and bows but had to replace our 2 little trees after the wind storm in November broke our old ones :(

We had our first Christmas get-together mid-December with Al, Steph, Colton and newborn baby Chase! We got Colton this Thomas the train track and he loved it!

We had some delicious breakfast made by Al and Steph of blueberry pancakes, eggs and bacon then opened some presents. We got the best gift ever: Racko!! A card game we play when at Al & Steph's trailer and now we can play anytime!

And Chase got lots of  Christmas love too! We got hi this little monkey book. He was so alert the whole time we were there! Only 1 month old here...

As tradition, I took my Christmas tree picture on Christmas Eve when all the presents were underneath wrapped up. Every year I get new sparkly ornaments to add to the tree, usually from Aleksys Mom or a good find when shopping.

And my Christmas baking this year!! I made an ample amount of treats this year (although post-Christmas/New Years thinking about all I ate, in retrospect it may have been too much). The line up was: shortbread squares, chocolate peanut butter squares, ginger snaps, christmas sugar cookies, krispie peanut butter balls, toffee squares, chocolate meringue cookies (gluten free for my Mom!), and turtle cookies. I like variety.

And these tins were gifts for our family members!

Christmas Eve at my Ma's. My adorable nieces in front of the Christmas tree before opening tons of presents! They were all about opening the big presents first!

Every special occasion, Aleksy is the official cutter of the meat! This year we had a rib roast instead of turkey. Aleksy was very accommodating and found he was just as capable to cut a big ol rib roast.

And Christmas morning, Aleksy couldn't wait to exchange our stockings! We didn't do a gift exchange this year to save some money and decided to do just stockings. On Christmas morning, we went to Aleksys parents place for breakfast and present opening and before we left, at 8:30am Aleksy insisted that we do our stocking exchange first! Kate also had a full stocking with some kitty treats.

After a big & delicious Christmas brunch at Aleksys parents house, we left around 12pm to get home and get the turkey in the oven! We got all the stuffing prepared and the turkey in the oven for about 1pm. We spent the afternoon preparing this table plus carrots, turnip, green beans, a veggie tray, pickles, a cheese tray, and kielbassa tray all the while listening to Christmas music... which Aleksy allowed (I guess the only day he agrees to this is Christmas day and maybe Eve).

As my sister would like to point out, due to borrowing her amazing pan, we had our turkey perfectly ready for 5pm!  We had our supper at a very fine 5:30pm time and had so so much variety of food: all the items we prepared plus my sister did up mashed potatoes, and Aleksys parents brought a delish turnip/carrot concoction, and 2 amazing polish dishes: begos and petichky... I know I botched the spelling of both those...

And everyone at Christmas day supper! My Rachel & Brandon, Steph, Kenny, Dad, Richard, Lorraine, Mike, Matt & Aleksy. 11 is a very manageable supper number! It was nice this year to have both our families together... its always hard to share Christmas time between families.

After supper, we did presents and dessert and my Grandparents and Aunt, Uncle and cousin joined us for this part. Once everyone left for the evening, we stayed up until the wee hours of the morning playing Apples to Apples and also looking though wedding pics!

When I Online Christmas Shop...

So this year I thought I had a head start on things and began my online ordering from Aliexpress in early November. After ordering many things from this website for our wedding, which we had so many amazing cheap deals for good quality products, I thought I would get some awesome Frozen gifts for my 4 nieces (also my 4 flower girls!). I got all the girls frozen colouring books, stickers, gym bags, and miniature plastic character figurines.

I got the colouring books and stickers in good time but found they were much smaller than expected and not great quality.

I then received the Frozen gym bag. This was actually a good quality product and looked pretty great. The problem was that I only received 1! I had to dispute this with the seller on the website and requested a full refund which was denied and he just refunded me for the 3 I didn't receive. So I was not able to give any of these to the girls :(

I also gave up on the plastic character figures a few days before Christmas since they hadn't come in yet. So I headed out to the mall for a replacement gift for the girls just days before Christmas. And on Christmas Eve, after heading out to run some errands in the afternoon, I received a Canada Post note on the door. How wonderfully convenient that I received this on Christmas Eve and I was able to pick up the package on Sat the 27th.

Lesson learned!