Sunday, November 29, 2015

Feeling Festive!

Its the most wonderul time of the year! Guess what? I love Christmas! And the festivities have begun in our house with the usual start: The Santa Claus Parade.

Logan's first Santa Claus Parade was on Saturday the 14th. We got him all bundled up for the cold evening with multiple layers plus his cozy winter onesie suit. This is his Christmas bib: Baby's first Christmas and a little added antlers for the Christmas feel. We left for the parade around 5:45... usually it a bit earlier but leaving with baby takes extra time!
We made a mandatory stop for coffee at McDonalds (there is no convenient timmies between our place and downtown) before meeting Steph, Kenny and Rachel in a parking lot. But... we still managed to get a good spot at Dundas and Waterloo! It was in the middle of the intersection so the people had not yet filled that area... but very soon after it was full. Here's our annual Santa Claus parade picture... my Rachel was so cute his year she wrote a letter to Santa for her and also for Logan with lists of what she and Logan want for Christmas. Rachel thought Logan could use baby toys and a hockey stick...
The best part about the parade is we were only in the cold for about 2 hours total. Some kind of record for the parade. It was either that there were less floats/marching bands/participants or the parade moved faster than usual. This year we noticed the Shriners didn't participate at all... they usually have a huge part in the parade so it was really sad.

And Logan... he though the parade was pretty boring and slept in his stroller the entire 2 hours! But our awesome sleeper still slept through the night with his usual 3am ish bottle.

I love the seasonal snacks that come along with Christmas like egg nog, candy cane ice cream, peppermint kisses and look what we found at Wal Mart! Peppermint popcorn! We had some when Rachel was over for dinner and it as actually pretty good... different but good.
A stocking has been added to the stocking family. Preparing for Christmas, we had to get Logan his Christmas stocking and added his name to it with glitter glue. Now he's all ready for Santa!







The Christmas tree went up the day of the Santa Claus Parade! Logan gave us just enough of a break while in his swing so Aleksy could put up the Christmas lights, wreath, and reindeer outside and I put up the tree! Logan likes to look at the lights and sparkle on the tree. Here's my boys with our pretty tree.

And the Christmas shopping has started! Definitely not finished but you can see all the presents warped under the tree before December! The less December shopping we do, the better! Logan and I will have to switch from our daily shopping trips to library and other outings once we're all finished... hopefully within the next couple weeks!

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Because Its Fall!

This is all the fall things we've been up to! Life with Logan is very much the same, although also very different! We still do all the same things we did before baby, its just the experience is very different with Mr. Logan.

Aleksy always liked football but it seems with Logan that we have more time for football watching (this is for Aleksy and Logan... I cant watch football because its boring). I think its because where we used to be out of the house for hours at a time, now we spend more time at home.

This little shirt for Logan I bought with a gift card... Daddys little football buddy. And Aleksy bought the coinciding beverage for football day... As much as football can annoy me, it does remind me of the Fall time of year!
We've had some pretty sweet Fall weather.. like summerish but with pretty leaves. In early November, we had a stretch of 20 degree days and since my days are pretty free with this mat leave thing, Logan and I were able to get out to Springbank park for a walk along the river. It was a long one too... about an hour and a half! Such a gorgeous day. As you can see Logan slept most of the walk...

Most days our long walks are in the mall (which we go to about once a week) so it was nice to get out in the fresh air while we still can... before the snow!
Saturday November 7th was Chase's 1st birthday party! Logan's first friend birthday party (he has his second coming up .. his friend Scarlett's 2nd birthday party). Chase got lots of new toys and his birthday cake was amazing! It was a homemade apple cake.

This banner was pictures of Chase for every month of his first year!
There was also big news on the birthday party day! At Colton's 1st birthday party, the last gift he opened was a "Big Brother" t-shirt and look! Chase also got a Big Brother t-shirt (and Big brother book) for his birthday! Our crazy friends are expecting their 3rd come June! So many friends for Logan!



Logan and I also took our first road trip in November! We headed to Kitchener on Tuesday afternoon.. just over an hour drive to visit Tabi, Nikki, Kailiegh & Logan's friend Maiko! On the way there, Logan had a few cranky points and wouldn't take his soother but was generally good for the ride. He was awake for the visit and we got this adorable shot with Maiko! Maiko also pulled Logan up and gave him a kiss after this was taken... Maiko likes his friend Logan!

We stayed a few hours until Logan got really cranky then all the crying he did before we left wore him out and he slept the whole drive home.
Logan's second evening with Nana and Dziadek was this week too! Aleksy and I went to Aleksy's P Eng ceremony on Thursday and Logan stayed with Aleksys parents for abut 4 hours... my longest time away from Logan since he was born!

Here's Aleksy receiving his certificate... he is now officially a certified Professional Engineer since he's been working for 4 years under the engineers at his company (actually more like 5 now...) and wrote his P eng testing. My husbands pretty smart.

The ceremony was at the Highland country club complete with a 3 course supper and by the time we got back to Aleksys parents, Logan was soundly sleeping on his Nana! It took the help of an exercise ball (which is gold in our house) and Logan was bounced to sleep.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Halloween 2015

Our Halloween festivities began this year with my Mom's Halloween party on October 24th. We needed to make sure that we had our costumes complete before the party, so I started planning what our costumes were going to be early.. by pinning family costumes on pinterest! We got out a few weeks before to buy some fabric from fabricland and got the rest of the costume materials the weekend before! We spent a total of about $25 for all 3 of our costumes! Gotta keep it frugal now with being on mat leave and all...

And by our little Logan's costume, you can probably guess the rest of the family costumes! Logan made a fantastic Bam Bam. I even made his little bam bam pants with orange fabric (and hot glued the black triangles on). We still haven't learned from previous years that use of a sewing machine would be an asset and I had sewed his little pants which took a couple hours, and Aleksy hand sewed his costume. Luckily this year it was pretty simple!
Family shot! This one was taken at the first Halloween party at my Moms. The rubbles! I lucked out with finding this dress for 7.99 at Talize in just the right colour (we started at Salvation Army thrift store but there was nothing.. I was a wee bit deterred). Actually Talize was amazing and my wig was only $3 and they actually had the Bam Bam stick for $2.99... best find ever!

Logan did really well at the party although the little high maintenance guy did require us to walk around patting his back... we just took turns. He started to get tired as the evening progressed but was fighting the tired so we ended up leaving about 11pm... not bad for lame new parents!
The festivities continued on Friday October 30th, which is when we had our celebrations of Aleksy's bday/Halloween. I knew it would be more of a challenge this year with having Logan to prepare the fun Halloween themed food that I usually do like barfing pumpkins, pumpkin shaped veggie trays etc. I made pulled pork on the Tuesday before the party and froze it to make Friday easier and then just served coleslaw and cheese, meat and crackers. But... on the Friday morning, Logan gave me a chance to bake this cake for Aleksy! He even gave me the chance in the afternoon to complete it with icing and sprinkles to make it a jack o lantern. Logan and I had gone out to bulk barn earlier in the week to get orange and black sprinkles to make the pumpkin!
When Colton first got to the party, he showed off his Moose costume... his doggy's name is Moose so he dressed up as his doggy! But then wanted it off immediately! So this is Colton after taking off his costume holding our Logan aka bam bam. Just the cutest!
Group shot! We got this picture before everyone started leaving and before our Bam Bam went to sleep! Costumes of this year were: Steph and Kenny as the Adams family, our Rachel as a vampire with some awesome make up, Nikki as a crazy cat lady and Jon Jon as a cat, Al as Old MacDonald and Steph, Colton and Chase as the animals on the farm (cow, dog and chicken), Cadence as a shark with Chels as a lifeguard and Warren as a shark attack victim, and Scarlett as yoda, Sam as princess laya and Zac as another star wars character (I don't know star wars and actually have never seen a star wars movie!).. ok hansolo.. aleksy just told me.

The party was a lot of fun and Logan slept like a champ! He went down at 9:30pm and woke up only at 1:30 and 5:30 to eat! We actually stayed up until 1:30am with Nikki and Jon Jon... everyone else left before 11pm! Our parties have evolved over time and now everyone has kiddos!

And then Halloween day was the final day of birthday/halloween celebrations where Aleksys opened his presents, had a visit from his brother then Aleksy carved our pumpkin (I did the easy sharpie face!). Every year we get way more kids than the previous year. Last year we had 25 kids and this yer we had 53! Most kiddos were between 6-7pm...
Our Logan was dressed for Halloween day in this outfit for the first part of the day, which was given to him by my friend Annette and he also was given a skeleton onesie from Aleksy's Mom, which he wore the second half of the day! It worked out so well since he peed on this Mummy shirt during a diaper change!). My Mom also got him a little halloween bib which he wore to catch some of his spit up through the day!

And we actually had almost just the right amount of candy to give 2 chocolate bars per child and we had about 10 leftover. We've eaten those now and now just need to get rid of the leftover cake in the fridge so I can get back on track to getting back to my pre-baby weight! I just can't say no when its in the house!