Santa Picture

We started of the Christmas season this year with a trip to the Erin Mills mall to visit Santa. At that visit Aiden asked Santa about how Blizzard the house elf has been doing in the North Pole. Santa didn’t miss a beat and told him that he was excited to come and see us this Christmas season!!!

Blizzard

Blizzard arrived on Dec 1st or 2nd this year and did not waste anytime getting into his mischief. Highlighted below are some of his more mischievous adventures such as getting stuck in the shadow box, fishing in the sink, drawing minions on the bananas and redecorating the tree again (this year with balloons!!!)

Christmas Tree Decorating

As always the kids helped with decorating the tree this year, hanging up some of their most favourite decorations. For those that do not know our family tradition, every year we get decorations for the tree that represent an important event or moment from the year. Melissa and I started that tradition on our very first Christmas together and have carried that on since. I will buy her a special decoration and she will buy me one and we get a decoration for Abby and Aiden as well. It makes decorating the tree really special because we can look back on and reminisce about previous Christmas’s. It is a great way to get us in the Christmas spirit 🙂

 

 

Gingerbread House

Another tradition in our house in the making of the gingerbread house. This is one that started when we first visited North Bay over the Christmas holidays and decorated house with Philip, Stephanie and Lucas. We carried on the tradition when we started our own family.

This year’s house was decorated completely by Abby and Aiden. They told Melissa and myself what they wanted decorated on each side and then we helped with some of the icing. Abby decorated the Merry Christmas side and Aiden decorated the Happy New Year side while dressed in his ninja costume. It turned out pretty good.

 

PNP

 

Christmas at Home

We celebrated our Christmas morning this year on Christmas Eve since we were travelling to Douro for Christmas morning. On Christmas eve morning this year, the kids stayed in bed until 7:00 am which was a surprise because leading up to that morning Aiden had been getting up regularly at 6:00 am. I am not complaining though, the extra hour was nice. Below are a couple pics of items that they got on Christmas eve morning from Mom and Dad (FYI: Dad did not approve the Habs socks)

Unfortunately Melissa was quite sick so she was only able to participate in a few minutes of the festivities and then went back to bed.

 

This was the second year in a row that Melissa got me a Christmas gift that was ripped, The year before she got me a Toronto Maple Leafs hoodie that we discovered had a rip in the arm, and as you can see from the picture above this year she got me mitts that had a rip in the lining. Both gifts were returned but could not be exchanged as Costco was out of each item. Better luck next year sweetie!!!!

This is a video of the kids thanking Uncle Jason for their Christmas gift which was money towards their college fund. As you can see from their video, the kids have already started studying for post-secondary 🙂

Christmas at Mama & Papa’s

We travelled to Douro for Christmas morning this year. We travelled late so that Melissa could stay in bed as long as possible because she was still feeling quite ill.

We also brought our Santa key and hung it outside of Mama & Papas so that Santa would know where the kids are. On Christmas morning the kids got to open lots of gifts from Santa and all their relatives. You can see some of that in the videos below. What you won’t see is the part where Santa gave me some Habs gear in my stocking. He must have got the stockings mixed up with Melissa’s. The funny thing was that when I looked at the hat and was jokingly disgusted, Aiden, without missing a beat, whispered to me: “Dad, what do you say when you get a gift that you don’t like.” I was left with no choice but to say Thank-you to Santa for the Habs gear. The reason Aiden told me that was that we had been coaching him to say that to anyone if he got a gift from them that he did not like. I was so proud that he used something that I taught him against me to get me back:)

In the evening we had a traditional dinner and the kids got to play with their cousin Macklan.

 Here is the text that was attached to the Toilet Paper Craft that the kids made for everyone.

Money is scarce and times are hard. So we’re giving you this instead of a card. Something to use, something to share, so bottoms up, just cause we care. Merry Christmas!!

Love Abby & Aiden

Videos from Christmas in Douro

 

Lunch with Mpumi & her nephew

On Boxing Day we went out for lunch at the Old Stone with Mpumi and her nephew, who was visiting from Germany. Abby and Aiden immediately hit it off and giggled and played all through lunch.

 

Dinner with Sandra & Ted

In the evening of the 26th, we had a lovely dinner with Ted & Sandra at the restaurant. As you can see from the pictures the sillies were starting to set in on the kids, especially Aiden. 3 days of presents and sweets were starting to add up.

 

Christmas at Shawn & Megan’s

On the 27th and 28th this year we had our Miller family Christmas at Shawn and Megan’s. We went out to pick up Bruce from the home and had him join us as well for the night. We had big family dinner and then in the morning we opened presents and had a big family breakfast. Some of the highlights were Bruce getting a Super man shirt like Aiden has and of course Shawn always impressed us with his selection of PJs. It was a blast.

And that was our Christmas 2014.