Holiday Pictures.

We are home for a quick minute and then off to wrap up the rest of our holiday travels, but we are back from Florida nonetheless. It was overall a delightful trip filled with time with family and a few adventures. While in the Orlando area we went on a boat tour and then played some mini golf.  
 Snuggles with Daddy on the boat tour.

 It's a Christmas miracle, the elusive car nap exists!

happy mini golfers.  

a captive audience. 

he "helped" me on every hole. what a guy! 


why play the game when you can become part of it! 

arghhh. matey! it was a pirate themed mini golf place.


silly boys.  

clearly one lemonade was not enough. 

One afternoon, Matthew and I left Oliver with Grandma and Kurt and met up with our good friends Mollie and Greg. Even in the whirlwind of the holidays they were kind enough to carve out time of their schedule to meet up with us and even take us sailing! Thank you, Mollie and Greg!

Matt getting sailing lessons from the pro.


happy parents. 


back in the harbor, ready for dinner. 

back home at 53 and imagine that, Santa made a stop here too! All in all a fun holiday trip but man did it feel amazing to sleep in my own bed last night!

51/52

We are in sunny Florida for Christmas this year. It always feels a bit different to be in a warm climate over the holidays but honestly we went to the beach yesterday and there were no complaints. 

Family shot.

Oliver is my beach buddy. We run around, build sandcastles, and of course play in the surf.

Wave jumping, a favourite activity. 

Pensive sandcastle building. 

My bug. (And I'm wearing my grandmother Sally's hat).

Matteo and I.

Sweet treat après swimming on Christmas Eve day.

Sweetest snuggles. 

Watching the Polar Express, who is having more fun?! Hard to tell. 











Holiday Cards

Do you send out Holiday cards? It has to be one of my very favourite holiday traditions. I love receiving them and I also really enjoy sending out our own. There are quite a few really great holiday card purveyors, but for the past two years we have used Paper Culture. I love their simple, classic designs and a bonus is that with every order they plant a tree! I usually take a "festive" picture but I loved this shot of Oliver from the Head of the Charles, such a serious face in a fabulous hat! I am a sucker for snail mail so holiday cards fit the bill perfectly!


50/52

Well here we are rolling down to the end of another 52 project. And yes the majority of the pictures were snapped on my iphone but I still love the premise behind capturing one moment every week of the year. It truly is a simple way to concretely view the passage of time. Here's to trying to keep it up in the coming year!

I love the sweet snuggles during our evening book reading and selfishly I love that Oliver loves my koala bear as much as I did when I was a kid. She really does give the best poly-filled hugs.

We had Oliver's 4 year wellness check. He is 70th percentile for height and 50th for weight. Skinny minnie. He does amazingly well at the doctor's office. He is always curious and flirtatious with the nurse (cheeky man). He also got three shots and rather than look away or look at me, he watched the entire process; from swab to poke to band-aid. And not a tear was shed. He is pretty amazing. 


Oliver also had his ears checked. He kept wanting to look at the nurse to give his answer (he's a flirt, I told you) but he was suppose to raise his hand so it took a couple extra minutes.  

pressies! he was a master at ripping into the gifts this year whereas in the past he wanted help. no help needed. I am seeing a whirlwind Christmas present opening in about a week. 

new toys. lucky boy. 

it's a...


baby! That's right, we are expanding our family to four this coming May. We waited until after Oliver's birthday to fill him into the news, although I was surprised with my growing bump he did not figure it out a bit earlier.  We are very excited so excuse my non-smiley face...an iphone self timer is a bit tricky when balanced on duct tape and boxes for holiday shipping. 

A Birthday Celebration

Last Friday we had a fun, simple birthday party with friends from the neighborhood. Everyone came over for movie and cake (made by yours truly) and decorated with Airhead candy, rolled out and cut with a sharp knife (thank you Pinterest).  

Matt brought home a projector from work and we played the movie, Cars while the kiddos sat on pillows and munched on popcorn. 

then it was time for cake! Always a highlight for little people! I love seeing all the small faces light up with anticipation for a sugar high.  


I mean really with the cuteness! Oliver has a fabulous group of friends. 

make a wish my bug!

happiest of birthdays, my love. 


9 years.

Everything you want is on the other side of fear. -George Addair 






















A day for me that must be marked. Every year it stills makes my heart ache but I also get to look around and see a whole lot of love and joy. And that always make the ache just a little bit less. Miss you Daddy. 

sweet tradition

One of my favourite aspects of the holiday season are the traditions that I get to carry on with Oliver. A very happy day near the holidays in my house growing up was when a rather crumpled package would arrive smelling of sugar and butter. Inside was a plastic bag filled to the brim with sugar cookies, Stubby's sugar cookies.  Stubby was a close family friend and to this day I do not know how one person could crank out as many sugar cookies as she did, but I am very thankful that she devoted that time each holiday season. We would tear into the bag and pick out a favourite shape; a reindeer, or a christmas tree, or a star, each one impossibly thin and tastefully decorated with sugar sprinkles. We would munch on them after dinner, come home from school and sneak one before homework and of course they were displayed with care for Santa and always on a plate while we opened stockings and gifts the following morning. Quite simply the humble sugar cookie is a sweet reminder to me of happy childhood holiday seasons. 

So a few days ago Oliver and I set out to make a batch of sweet sugar cookies. Now I did not labor over creating the most perfect sugar cookie dough but it was still a joy to get into the kitchen with Oliver and make our own sweet smelling sugar cookies. 
all rolled out and ready to cut out...dinosaurs?! Eh, whatever works, right? Festive holiday dinosaurs. 

that's a bit more festive!

and then Oliver found out that the cookies had to bake in the oven. it clearly was a crushing moment. 

all baked, cooling as waiting for icing and sprinkles. (Stubby never put icing on her cookies but I had to indulge a four year old's desire).  

sprinkles...sprinkles...sprinkles! 

focused sprinkle application. 

tada! all done. Oliver was very proud of his encrusted creations. 

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