The Christmas Train

We don't have a ton of traditions. With 2 parents working shift work in this family we can't guarantee we'll be free a certain day or that we can always have Christmas dinner on the 25th. People are in the hospital over the holidays so people have to work at the hospital over the holidays. We fit everything in the best we can. But one thing we always do is the Christmas Train, aka Bright Nights in Stanley Park. We kind of went by accident the first year when R was a baby and I think we've been every year since. When cousin A was born we made it an event with hubby's side of the family.

This year there were 12 of us including some friends. The theme was the Polar Express- so appropriate since we watched it Christmas Eve and K asked for a sleigh bell from Santa.

It was wet but fun none the less. What a great tradition.

What Christmas Looked Like

Opening Nana and Grandad's gifts Christmas Eve after the service.

Christmas morning blur...

Princess tent for the princess's bed

Family visit to Papa's

December in Review

I tried to publish some pics before Christmas but blogger crashed on me, twice. So here are some of our December experiences in picture form...

Pick out the famed IKEA Christmas tree

Hilarious Preschool Concert

Santa visits at the concert

Falling asleep reading about Rudolph

Calvary Christmas concert

Cousins Christmas fun including movies, cookies, a ride on the Carousel and a sleepover!

I will upload the camera later and share Christmas day fun in the next few days, stay tuned.

lunch with Santa

Just at the end of November we spent some time with grammie and Skipper and Auntie and went out to Gram's house for some Christmas fun. It started with a Santa party that had dancing and singing, meeting the jolly old elf himself and getting awesome presents. It was a great time!

Dancing with Grammie

Avoiding all audience participation and doing a word search instead

Then we spent some time decorating trees and gingerbread houses. Very Christmas-y stuff!

Wearing his present from Santa! He was first to finish his tree.

Look at all that candy... those are some sweet houses.

Trying for a nice picture...

In other words "Just stop it, be serious and smile for goodness sakes!" Or something like that. That's what I get for trying to take their picture after I just got off night shift. And when Dad is off mountain biking for, oh, three hours when I just got off night shift. But it was overcast and dry and Christmas is coming sooner rather than later, so out we went. They had their own ideas for poses so we tried one of their ideas then one of mine. Worked fairly well. I had the camera on a program setting. But I didn't realize it. Oops. Good thing the set program was a good choice as it turned out.

I had to delete quite a few pics from the end of the session because they were all blurry as I was laughing too hard. So it wasn't all bad. And the pictures are cute!! I saved the real winner for the Christmas cards, so hold on you will see that eventually. These here are the runners up.

Camping in the Basement

Another case of cool things happening when mom is at work. Kinda sad for me, but so fun for everyone else. Dad really pitched the tent in the basement and let them sleep there all night. He slept in his sleeping bag on the couch. Before bed was a little movie on the nook (e-book). What great memories!