Christmas Holidays

girls enjoyed reading books with Grandpa

     
      This year we kicked off the holidays with Laura's preschool concert, which was almost cancelled due to inclement weather. I'm really glad they didn't have to postpone it until January, it would have been really anticlimactic. Although she couldn't come, Grandma Dawn made Laura a special Christmas dress to wear, and Grandpa Dave attended and then came for a lunch visit afterward.
     On the last weekend before Christmas, we had the neighbours over for dinner, and the girls exchanged presents. I didn't make many handmade gifts this year, and subsequently was a lot less flustered and stressed than usual in the days leading up to Christmas. Josh worked until noon on Christmas Eve and then we packed everything up and headed to my mom's in the afternoon. We had our usual shrimp alfredo Christmas Eve dinner, and afterward my cousin and her daughter came for some eggnog and carolling around the piano.

Laura's Christmas dress, to match

Rachel's Christmas dress
(a hand-me-down of Laura's, made by Grandma two years ago)

     Christmas morning my sister and her fiancee came over as well as my dad and we opened stockings downstairs in front of the fire. Laura was adamant that Grandma made sure the fire was not on over night so Santa wouldn't burn himself. :)

Laura and Aunty Kaitlyn (and Pippin) with the stockings

After stockings we opened Santa gifts upstairs. Laura got the plush snow monster ("Bumble" from the Rudolph movie) she so had her heart set on, and Rachel got a Van Fleet book about cats. Laura decided last minute that Rachel should get a snow board from Santa, but luckily Aunty Kaitlyn and Krista had bought them a sled, which is pretty much as good.


After our traditional bacon and egg sandwiches (that my Grandpa always used to make for us Christmas morning) we spent the afternoon at the family cottage for the last time. Kaitlyn took Laura out to try the new sled, and explored the ice on the lake with the cousins. We played some games, and the girls had fun running around with their cousins, too. I love love love watching them play with their cousins. We had a delicious Christmas dinner with our big fam and I was so happy we decided to do it one last time. After dinner we all played charades. Such a nice last memory to have (although could have done without watching Mom act out 'cow'.) The kids all stayed up until they crashed and the adults looked through a few of the last items remaining at the cottage, trying to find keepsakes to remember our grandparents by. I must say I'm pretty sad that we won't have big dinners together like that again.

      Boxing Day morning, the got the girls to have a bath in my grandma's deep jacuzzi tub. I thought it would be fun, like swimming for them. However, Laura managed to get soap in her eye, and did not end up enjoying herself, and Rachel was not particularly interested in staying in once Laura got out. So we gathered up our beasts, children, etc, and headed to Josh's parents' house. It took us seven hours due to an unfortunate timing incident of getting caught behind plows that were not even plowing the road, but the emergency lane, going ~25km/h for two hours. Brutal. We finally arrived around dinner time, hoping to see some family, but were informed they weren't coming until later in the week, and others we were supposed to see the following day weren't going to be able visit either. A bit disappointing, but happy we were able to spend some time with the family that was there.
We played some games, as usual, (my fave) and ate way too much food, as usual. The following morning we opened more presents, and again, the girls were spoiled. One of the days Josh and I managed to sneak out for a lunch date together at a lovely new restaurant in town  - where there were no high chairs! It was so nice to be able to live life at a snail's pace while we were there. Nowhere to be or go at a certain time, all the time to spend with each other cuddled up on the couch, or play games, or go tobogganing, which we did one morning and had so much fun. 
My plans to visit my girlfriend in Ottawa on Sunday got bumped to Monday, which was the day we were planning to go home, which subsequently got bumped to today. I was so happy to be able to visit her and meet her new baby (don't know how I forgot to take pics!), but when we attempted to go home this morning, the roads were terrible and we turned around to head back at the first interchange. The visibility was extremely poor due to blowing snow/ whiteout conditions, and everyone was driving with their emergency flashers on. I had checked the road conditions before we left, and the whole way was marked as 'poor', so we figured we couldn't drive like that for seven hours and decided to stay an extra night (which was now really the second extra night). Luckily our in-laws are happy to have us back and we will attempt to head home tomorrow. I'm really glad now that Josh had the foresight to take Thursday and Friday off.

 ETA: It took 6 hours door to door to get home, no major hold ups, and roads were pretty good.