Joey & Alex's Christmas Picture

I can officially send out my Christmas cards tomorrow now that I have the boys pictures to pop in.  They turned out pretty good, it's a nice pose but the colours aren't as bright as they could be.  This was the second time I've had them done at Wal-Mart, the last time was when Joey was 3 months old and they sucked so I vowed to just keep going to Sears but after I seen the $19.95 Wal-Mart package I thought I'd better give them a try again.  Sometimes quantity is just as important as quality and there's no way I could get that many pictures at Sears for less than $80.

Anyways...it's nice to see that we can communicate with some more of our family via the blog-system. Hi Jen! It's cheap and easy and most of the time I find it pretty fun to do.

Joey came home from school today with some homemade lick and stick stickers with ugly elves on them (the old men with long white beards versus the cute kids with the curly hair and pudgy cheeks) these were a Christmas gift from his classmate George....well...I wasn't about to let Joey not be THE coolest kid in his class so I whipped out the crafty stuff and whipped up 28 litttle white triangular boxes stamped with red candycanes and filled them with chocolates, jellybeans and gumdrops. Now who's the coolest mom? I mean coolest kid, right?

Heather and I went shopping without the boys tonight and picked up some hotwheels and a case for the cars for Joey's class and I got Aaron a tree stand for Christmas. Now when he said tree stand I was thinking of a Christmas tree stand but oh no, what Aaron was talking about was this camouflauge chair that you put in a tree and sit in.  He asked for it so I sure hope he plans on using it.  I can't picture it though...I've never seen him climb a tree before and you must have to, to get the stand up there...should be worth a few laughs if nothing else!

Only three more days until the Cookie Extravaganza, I was planning on making three batches of cookies and ended up making four so that's 24 dozen cookies I've baked in the past two days. And surprisingly enough I haven't burned any of them yet.  I have all of the games organized and prizes wrapped, I just need to make the food, put up my Christmas tree (Aaron's procrastinating), spike the punch and we're good to go! I'm almost looking forward to it!

Dad's having his gallbladder surgery tomorrow afternoon and will be out of commission for a bit but Mom and Dad are still planning on travelling down here for Christmas.  Today he was awarded another medal of honour.  I think this one was to commemorate Albertans that have served their country and been awarded the MMM which is the Military's Order of Canada.  If I'm wrong Mom or Dad will correct me...Kudos to you Dad, just one more reason why it's great to be an Albertan, eh?

The Mac-Beck's are going to Beaverbrook!

http://www.themelvinfamily.blogspot.com is where you can catch up to Jen, apparently Norma's just about legally blind. Unfortunately you can't comment on her blog so she has no idea we're reading it and we have no way to 'talk' to her, I have her old mailing address and that's not going to do me any good.

Anyways... our tickets are booked we're officially going to holiday in the Maritimes next summer! I think we fly into Halifax at 8 in the morning on August 8th and then fly out on the 16th at 6 in the evening. We were trying to plan the timing so the kids will sleep on the plane...it could totally backfire on us but we'll give it a go. Now we just have to book a car rental and we're set. We've booked for Aaron, Les, Joey, Alex and Heather. Mom and Dad are planning on spending a month holidays driving across the country in the new truck and bringing the home away from home trailer with them. I'm not 100% sure about Jeff yet, "we" (Dad) were using "our" (Dad's) aero-plan miles to get the tickets and "we" had just about enough for 5 tickets so "we" bought the extra miles to get the 5 tickets so we're booked for sure and then if Jeff comes we can hopefully pickup a seat on the same flight plan.

I've printed off some maps of the Maritimes and distance charts so Aaron has an idea of how things are laid out there, he really had no clue how close everything is.

Party #2

Here we are all dressed up and ready for party #2 at Heritage Park hosted by Wilbert Vault. It was a pretty good night, good food, good company, good music, bad karaoke-ing. We were the last of the M & H'ers to leave I think we were home at 11:30, but we had a good time visiting with our friends, Right before we left Joey had an accident (he's still sick) so we were a little leary of leaving the boys but lucky for us it was Grandma's turn to sit so we went anyways. Turns out it was only a one shot deal and he was good for the rest of the night just a bit of a cough. Check out the sexy shoes, they're so not typical Lesley-style but amazingly enough they were comfy enough that I'll wear them to next weekends party. Coincidently I've probably be doing an encore presentation of tonight's party dress. I wore Leanne's pashmina tonight so I'll switch to a sheer fancier wrap next weekend and go with an updo. I think most of the ladies at tonight's gala are wearing the same outfits next weekend. Gotta get our money's worth!

I swear "It's a Small World After All" should be our theme song!

So, here I was taking a break from my boys today and I thought I'd check out the blog and figure out what could I possibly write about tonight when I clicked "next blog" and what did I see but my mysterious (only because we've never met) Auntie Jenny's blog. I think it was called A Day With Daisy or something like that so I was having a little looksy and the words BLUE WEDDING DRESS just kind of jumped out...now how many people that you know got married in a blue wedding dress?!? So, needless to say I've got the full story now. And then I had to go back up to the top to see the profile and sure enough it's the Melvin family blog. What a coincidence! Are there any more MacAulay blogs out there?

Doesn't this beat the Superstore story from last night?

Highlight of my Christmas shopping...

We decided to buy Joey's class the Little People's Garage which is listed at $44.99 in the Wish Book so when I seen it at Superstore tonight for $34.88 I jumped on it. When I got to the checkout it came up as $44.95 so after they checked it out they not only gave it to me for $34.88 they gave me an extra $10 off in accordance to the Scanning Code of Practise. I've seen that sign a hundred times and I'm sure I've had more than just this one item come up at the wrong price, but in any case it was a nice surprise! So now that we got the Garage for $25 I think we'll probably buy them some books and some shaving cream as well.

There's another baby boy in the neighbourhood, our next door neighbours had Aiden Isaiah on Tuesday. This seems to be the year of baby boys...except Joeye and Courtney of course.

Cheers!

Here is our picture pre-Christmas Party #1...notice Aaron's cute holiday shot glass necklaces. 

So, in the background you'll see pretty  much the extent of our living room Christmas decorations. The tree won't be up until Sunday, oh and there's also poinsetta garland wrapped along the curtain rod which is not pictured.  Aaron doesn't believe in putting un-necessary holes in the walls so there goes the idea of hanging anything and he's not willing to put up a shelf to display things on so I think my decorating is going to be somewhat limited. (hence the dining room holiday curtains) I have the Partylite stuff on the end shelves of my kitchen cupboards and stuff in the high windows in the dining room....Pretty sparse if you ask me, but this is a losing battle with Aaron.  He actually read an article in Men's Health about 9 years ago that was titled "Knick-Knack's CAN Kill You", he should have laminated it and stuck it in his wallet because he quotes this article an awful lot.  It said that about 15% of all accidental deaths are related to knick-knacks. 

The playroom on the other hand is my domain and is done up quite well, bulletin board and all!  The kids and I started our Christmas ornament crafts this morning, we're making the candy canes a la beads and pipecleaners.  I can't count how many times I pricked my finger on the pipecleaners, I'm sure I'll have a big callous by the time we're finished our project.

What else are friends for other than embarrassing?

I'm sure my day will come Tina when someone does the same to me...and if you're lucky you'll be the one with the pictures.

We had an awesome visit with Brooklyn, Mackenzie, Aunty Cindy and Auntie Heather today! I was short a Zeke today and had lots of adult help which is rare but oh so appreciated!

So, going back a week or so of blogs I wrote that we were going to buy Joey's classroom something for Christmas and had asked for suggestions from his teacher...You won't believe the reply we received. A toy garage for little cars, some construction diggers for the sand box, a hardcover book and shaving cream(for crafts)! That's it! We were a bit surprised at the requests...if someone offered to buy my classroom something I think I'd have a huge list with a few pricey items just in case someone is feeling very generous this Christmas. The way we look at it though, Joey's Junior K and bussing is covered by some provincial funding so we're saving $610/month. So even if we spent a couple hundred we're still on the winning end of the deal!

The school is having a visit from Santa/and a party on the 19th and unfortunately I can't get the morning off with such short notice and Aaron has to work that day too...so unless Auntie has the morning off Joey won't have any family there. Apparently they have a family party in lieu of a Christmas concert in the evening. I guess we know for next year though. Sorry Joey!