A night on the town !

At least one person in this house will still be awake to ring in the New Year!

Grand-maman's new year visit

For the 3rd year in a row, Grand-maman came to spend new year's with us. Of course, she travels with her pie dough and all her tools!



She put Maelie to work on making Mexican pies and an apple pie.



She taught her how to cut the extra dough off ...



Here is the perfect Mexican meat pie!

a lot of this going on

How we LOVE vacation time!! We don't get to relax in our jammies much on most days... but Christmas time rocks!!! :)

Maelie's homemade pizza!

Maelie decided that it was her night to cook!! She took out her kids can cook book and started making her pizza dough from scratch!!



Half of it was covered in her favorite toppings: nothing and the other half was covered in Bill's favorite toppings: everything. LOL



It turned out delicious!!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Eve and Day filled with love. Our day started off before 5 am when Maelie got up and went through her stocking. She was just too excited !!



Once Lisa was up, we started working on the presents! It was a fun time :) Peluche's present was LOTS of affection :)



We were all very happy with our surprises! It was quite fun!! How blessed we are to be able to spend Christmas together. Maelie got an Air Hog helicopter with a camera. She spent the day flying it and charging it. It only got stuck in my hair ONCE! LOL



A colleague at work said she was doing a brunch raclette. I thought I would try that! It turned out awesome!



We had mini pancakes, potatoes, sausages, omelettes, meat pie, potato bacon pie, beans, coffee and juice!



Our afternoon was spent relaxing, cleaning Christmas wrapping paper up, and preparing for the next meal!! Lisa made some amazing dishes... Tortilla Espanola



And Croquettes with ham and cheese (to die for). We of course didn't have the proper ham or cheese on hand, however it worked well with black forest ham and mozza cheese!



I made some bruschetta with a few missing ingredients... and i made an asiago artichoke dip! MMmmmmmmmmmmm.



I guess our day revolved around food! That's what Christmas is, isn't it? We didn't go traditional on the supper, but we did go AWESOME :)



As a dessert.... what better to eat than a Tiramisu buche de Noel?! It was delicious!!!



What a beautiful day! It snowed most of the day so we did end up with a white Christmas.

Countdown to Christmas 2011 - Day 24

Christmas Eve at last!! Hurray! One little girl is VERY excited!! This morning was the last advent calendar. Her last advent calendar turned out to be EMPTY... she had to open up a gift!



She received her American Girl! It came in the mail a week ago but we waited until the right time to give it to her. She had used up money she got from different relatives to order it.



Maelie insisted we have an early supper so she could go to bed earlier. I made a Pillsbury Christmas tree and chicken veggie rice.



After supper we opened up our Christmas Eve presents .. Maelie, Lisa and Bill got jammies!



and i got chocolate covered pretzels... MMMMMMMmmmmmm!



After that we played games for family game night! Spelloker and Jok-R-Rummy. Maelie was really tired so we headed off to bed after the games!



We are so ready for Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas 2011 - Day 23

As Maelie says: it's Christmas Eve Eve. One of the 3 most exciting days this week! Maelie had a little bit of help opening up her advent calendar today!



Maelie came to work with me. We set up a movie, crafts and snacks for the kids and they had a good time. I was relieved once it was time to go home! Vacation for 10 days! YAY!!



At home, I wrapped up a few chocolate suckers I had for neighbors and friends we will see during the holidays. It just looks more festive with treats around!



I also made little Santas to put at the end of these M&M sleeves. They are so cute! I found the idea for the Santa on a blog somewhere but I forget where.



It's all made with different punches and real easy to put together.



This evening we also opened up an activity present. Maelie was curious as to why I was giving her a ball of yarn!



I quickly cut circles out of a box in the recycling and taught her how to go around and around to make....



POM POMS!! The yarn was glittery white so once completed... we used them as snowflake ornaments!



Maelie made 3 more and we hung them all on the tree :)