Merry Christmas

The day finally arrived to much excitement from mommy and daddy :o)

We managed to get Jared past the playroom door without him seeing the presents so that we could give him breakfast first, since we knew we probably wouldn't get him away from the new toys once he saw them. He is incredibly observant though and did spot the "doggie" in his stocking hanging on the fireplace.

After breakfast we took him and showed him all the presents. He was quite overwhelmed to start with and not quite sure where to start or what to do. He got into the swing of things really quickly though. It was really nice though that he would open a present and then spend time playing with it. He never rushed off to open something else, in fact, we had to try and prise the stuff out of his hands to give him something else to open. (I am sure that come next Christmas things will be much different though ha ha!!) Eventually we decided to leave him with each toy until he had had a chance to have a good look and play and only then to encourage him open the next thing. So present opening took a looooong time which was actually really special.

After getting through all the presents we sat down to a yummy lunch and then we all had a nice long afternoon sleep. How's that for a wonderfully relaxing Christmas Day! After our battery recharge we were all ready to go another round and spent the rest of the day playing with all the new toys. I think Hannes and I had just as much fun as Jared did today. Children are a wonderful excuse to behave like a child yourself. To say we are having fun being parents is an understatement :o)

Here are a few of the pics taken over the course of the day. It was a tough choice, we took 274 photos in total. WOW!!! These aren't all the toys he got, I ran out of space to post everything.

Breakfast before presents

His stocking on the fireplace

His first look at all the stuff that wasn't there yesterday!

His new drum and instruments. They are all sorts of insects. The drumsticks are centipedes.

I don't think he could believe his eyes when he opened Barney.

His new talking bear

Kisses for the bear. He is so affectionate that even the centipedes got kisses. Adorable!

Shrieking because we were all throwing balls at each other.

Saying "oh no"! Everything that does not meet his approval is met with this phrase and matching face.

I'm tired of eating now, can we go and find more presents rather peese?

Teehee!!! That was funny!

Christmas came a little early...

Well, a bit of Christmas anyway!

Hennie has been visiting for the last 10 days and he spoilt Jared rotten on the weekend. He bought him the most divine little easel. You can also put the top down which then converts it into a desk. Jared of course loves it. We bought him the cleverest (for mommy anyway) paints. They only work on the special paper which is wonderful because he like to test the floor, walls, his hands etc if you give him half a chance.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

Christmas is coming up at a rate of knots and with all the festivities going on around Calgary it is difficult to keep up and even more difficult to decide what to go and take part in. We went to Heritage Park on Sunday. They do The Twelve Days of Christmas every year. It was lovely. The day started off chilly but it got really nice. How nice, 0 degrees nice. Can you imagine wondering why it is so warm and finding out it is 0! Nope, neither could I, but it happened. Anyway, they had Santa on the train for the kiddies to meet. We gave that a skip because of Jared's last encounter with the man in red. We still live in hope of getting a nice pic in one of the malls with Santa so we don't want to totally scare him. :o) We did a hayride though, that was great. There was an outdoor skating rink which was fun to watch. The kiddies start skating here as early as 2 so it is really adorable. It is very easy to make a skating rink here, all you need is a body of water and the rest is self made. Seriously!!! There was also a lovely Christmas Market with all sorts of quaint little goodies for sale. My favourite was a kiddies only section where your children can go and buy a Christmas present for their parents. No parents are allowed in that stall. There are adults to help the kiddies on the other side with their shopping.

We put up our Christmas tree yesterday afternoon when Jared woke up from his nap after getting home. It was fun and Jared was actually very good. He of course insisted on helping (which was the idea) which was really cute. He gets an ornament and rests it on a branch, steps back, pats his chest looking very proud and says "there you go". If he drops something he is very quick to pick it up and tell you "I got it". He is honestly so adorable. 100% edible. Being our first real family Christmas we are working very hard at starting some of our own traditions. One of which is buying a special ornament for Jared every year. When he leaves home one day he can then take all his ornaments with him for his own family tree and hopefully he will have some really special memories attached to each year. This year he got a bear in a stocking on which we had his name and the year painted. He saw it for the first time last night and was really enamoured with it. He kissed it and told us "cute" and then just wouldn't put it on the tree. He would think about it and then decide otherwise. He was very funny. We have decided against putting out any presents just yet because Mr Chatterbox will definitely get stuck into those. They are staying in the basement until the 24th. Oh, and our tree topper is too big! He is gorgeous though so we have decided that he will be an ornament instead.

I think that's all the news for now. Here come all the pics xxx

This was taken on the hayride

Our little helper "hanging" the ornaments. You can see one of the bears he hung lying on the branch. (If you double click the pics they enlarge just in case you never knew)

The finished tree, except for our tree topper which we need to go and buy still.

Jared's special ornament

Oooohhhh!!! You're kinda cute Mr Bear!

So cute in fact that I think I'll kiss you.

And now I'll put you with on the tree with the other bears so you won't be lonely.

Jared's stocking that we have hanging on the fireplace mantle.

Our treetop Santa who is now an ornament because he is too big

The fireplace which is a work in progress. I will show you another pic once it's done

Run, run as fast as you can.

You can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man!!!

Jared and I met some friends at one of the malls today. We had a lovely time looking at all the beautiful displays. Each mall has their own Father Christmas and you can have photos taken with Santa. We will go back on the weekend and have some done because we would like to have some done as a family too. BUT, Mrs Clause was very busy with the children in her cookie kitchen today so we stopped in for a visit. It was adorable. They had little tables and chairs out with little gingerbread aprons. Each child was given a colouring in book, a gingerbread man and a cup of icing and some sprinkles. They then got to decorate their gingerbread man and they got a little bag to take him home in afterwards.

Jared had lots of fun. He thought it was great. He quite fancied eating the sprinkles straight out of the cup rather than putting them on his cookie. Also, once he decided he was finished decorating he started to eat his gingerbread man. The little girls who were sharing the table with him were still diligently decorating and he was already munching. He is a real little boy. Oh, and just a side note, this was all free of charge!

Mrs Clause in her kitchen

This looks like fun...

Oh, this IS fun!

Heavy concentration. The sprinkles were in this cup

The finished product.

And just for good measure because I know I haven't been here for a while some snow pics. We were playing on the snow board over the road again last night. It is loads and loads of fun. Jared loves it as do both Hannes and I. You go to the top of the hill, put Jared on the board, get on it yourself and yeehaaaaa, off you go, down the hill.

We were trying to throw snowballs again yesterday, but the snow is still so powdery it isn't even wet. I am sure our chance with that will come though.

The weather was also not so cold, unless you were whoosing down the hill then it really wasn't bad. I didn't even have my gloves on while I was taking the pics.

On the way back to the top of the hill. If you aren't fast enough he goes back up on his own.

With daddy after a ride down together.

SNOW FIGHT!!!!

With mommy at the bottom of the hill

Santa's Parade of Lights

We spent last weekend in Banff for their parade of lights. It was so stunning. We stayed in a gorgeous cabin at one of the lodges in the mountains. There was a bedroom with 2 beds and a lounge with a gorgeous fireplace. Jared slept in one of the beds and thought it was very funny to chat to us at 4am when he realised we were in the room with him.

Saturday night was the Parade of Lights down the main street in Banff. It was very pretty in the snow. It was cold though. We were all dressed warmly though, but we had a good taste of real minus weather. We have decided that we will survive it just and in fact we may even enjoy it ;o) We did feel sorry for Miss Canada who was part of the Parade. She certainly earned her crown, you could see the poor girl was freezing!! Unfortunately the photos never came out of the parade because of the light. I managed to get a few, and next year we will be better prepared with a camera suited for the job.

Sunday morning was breakfast with Santa. Jared did not like the man in red. I managed 1 photo and it is of him making a run for it. He wouldn't even sit on his lap for a minute. We decided not to traumatise him for life and left it at that. Poor Santa said he had had his fair share of screamers over the weekend.

After breakfast we went up the cable car again. It is really so beautiful up there. The view is just amazing. And of course it is different from the last time we were up there because there is now some snow on the ground.

We then decided to take a drive through to Lake Louise. We found an interesting looking side road that indicated it was going to Lake Louise and so we tried that route. WOW!!!! We kept having to stop along the way to take photos because it is just so beautiful. We chose the place and designed and built the house that we would like to retire in one day ha ha ha!!!

You will see a train track in the one photo, that is the route the train runs from here to Vancouver. We have put that on our list of things we want to do.

Here are the photos. Lots of them I know, but it was a weekend of memories to share :o)

Jared wrapped up nice and warm waiting for the parade to start. It was easily -15!

Not the best shot, but an idea of the lights in the main street

The start of the parade

One of the floats

He was off faster than if he'd had an electric shock

Looking down on Banff from the top of the mountain

Standing in front of the SA flag on the mountain. It is marked with Pretoria. The listed direction is heavily disputed ;o)

The view down the mountain taken out of the cable car window. It's HIGH!!!

A very tired but toasty munchkin on the way down the mountain.

These were all taken on the side road to Lake Louise. It is breathtaking!!

You can see the train track in this pic.

Tada!!!!

We're back :o)

These photos, although funny and really cute, come with a bit of a warning too. If you have children, never ever run the hot water before you have run the cold as you never know what can happen when you turn your back...

We were busy getting the bath organised for Jared the other night. We had decided to bath him in the small bath on his own so that it would be a quick in and out. We were running the water while getting PJ's etc ready for him. Hannes walked past the bathroom door and this is what he found

Jared was as happy as Larry already playing in the bath. He must have been really determined to get in there because the bath is actually very high. He was ready to bath and was not going to wait for us. We were VERY happy that we are in the habit of running hot and cold water together and also that he did not have any shoes on :o)

No more posts for a while

Hi family and friends. I am sad to report that I will not be able to update the blog for then next while due to some technical problems on my side.

I promise to get back to it as soon as I can with some back issues :o)

Love Carol

A Winter Wonderland

We had what we consider to be our first real snow today. It started at around 5am and has been snowing on and off since then. It was really well timed because our clocks were turned back at 2am, so we are now 9 hours behind SA.

We decided to drive out to Bragg Creek this morning. The snow was really coming down there. We drove a little bit out of town and pulled off on the side of the road to have a bit of a run around in the snow, and boy did we have fun!!! Just after we had pulled over a gentleman in a bakkie stopped and asked us if we needed help. He thought we were in trouble and needed a hand. Imagine, "we are fine thank you, we have just stopped here so we can beat each other with snowballs"!!!

We had so much fun in the snow. Hannes and I chased each other throwing snow balls at each other and Jared. He thought it was an absolute scream and did his best to retaliate. I was amazed at the snow though. I always imagined it to be wet. This was so dry that you could barely get it into a ball. Our jackets and gloves were dry after we had finished. That really wasn't what I had expected at all.

So, we have officially had our first play in the snow, although, I have been told that today's snowfall is nothing compared to what is still to come.

Our next fun purchase is going to be a toboggan. I wish you could have seen the kiddies in the park over the road riding up and down the hillside this morning. And the dad's pulling the little ones on the pavement on a sled. We wondered how long these children have spent waiting for the snow to arrive, since it is late this year.

While we were getting ourselves organised to leave, Jared sat on a chair at the window and watched the world go by and the snow fall.


Putting in fuel in Bragg Creek. You can take the monkey out of the bush... :o) My crazy South African love in nothing but a T-Shirt!!!



Making a run for it!! That big stretch of white to the left is the highway.


"Let me go mommy!!!" He doesn't stand still for a minute.


Me and my daddy.


We now know for sure that every cent we spent on his snow suit was worth it. He loved the snow. Or in Jared speak the "nowe"


When we got home Jared and daddy shared a story on our very comfy new lounge suite before they both went and had a well deserved sleep.