Merry Christmas 2012 !!

Merry Christmas !!! We wish you all a wonderful day full of love and family :)

Maelie was up at 2:30 am asking me if she could open up her stocking. The answer was No! Go back to bed! We finally were all up by 6:45. It's like Christmas threw up all over our living room! The presents are from the whole family. Maelie was soooooooooo excited! She always gets Bill and I to open our presents first so that she can get the whole stage after that!

She had a little helper this year again.

He was very eager to see what was in the packages!! He clearly understands how to open presents! Good thing we had a couple gifts wrapped up for him too!

Maelie was so happy with all her presents!

This is one goft I kept hidden! Her famous Plasma Ball that she has wanted for over 2 years! When you touch the ball, the electric current makes a line to meet up with your finger. It's pretty neat, and it has made her one happy little girl!! She set up her whole bedroom with every light up item she has. It's officially the cleanest room in the house!!

I made some turkey, potatoes, veggies, etc etc etc for supper. I made the Epicure 3 onion dip again... I am seriously addicted to that!! It's scary! :)
I had some candles on the table for supper and Maelie was rather angry. She HATES having candles anywhere so she told me she would blow them out immediately. I at least got her to wait for one picture with the candles before she blew them out!

Dessert was a Dairy Queen Christmas log. Maelie loves the DQ cakes, and so when our friend Jacinthe introduced her to the DQ log, she said she wanted one for Christmas. There is already a missing piece because Maelie stated that since it was Christmas, she was allowed to have dessert for breakfast. Just like on her birthday. And so we did!

We popped our Christmas crackers !

Christmas evening was filled with family game night again. These are evenings that Maelie looks forward to all the time! Word Sweep was a new game she got for Christmas.

We also played You're it. This game requires us to be quick! And apparently, it also involves spilled water! Maelie and I both spilled our glasses while Bill sat there thinking "I knew this would happen!" Somehow, our french blood makes our hands move A LOT.

I LOVE a quiet Christmas at home :) I am so happy that we chose to do it this way a few years ago. It is a wonderful tradition that keeps us off the roads, away from stomach flus, and in bed early! Some people may call us boring, but we love it! We are together and that is what counts.

Thanks for reading my countdown to Christmas this year!  I am so happy with all the memories we created for our family.

Merry Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 24

Christmas Eve!! The day we've been looking forward to for a long long time! :) Maelie was coming to work with me this morning. It was quite a relaxed morning!

I brought my boss a tin of homemade gluten free cookies! I hope she likes the kinds I made. Everyone seems to love the peanut butter balls.

After supper Maelie FINALLY got to open up her Christmas jammies and the game night present. It was Christmas-oply! I love that game! It's like monopoly but quite festive.

It was a miracle because I won! Maelie usually kicks our butts big time!! We had a fun evening and decided to go to bed quite early so that Christmas would come quicker!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 23

Christmas Eve Eve! That's how Maelie is keeping track of the days.... I am glad we are only 2 Eve's away! :)

Today, Maelie was working on her nails. She is getting SO good at it! She has longer nails than me so it's more fun to paint hers.

I let her paint my thumbs because if she paints all my nails, I will just bite off the polish. That's what happens when you are a nail biter!! This is the cute pattern she made for me today:

This afternoon we went out to shop a little. Our Zellers is closing so we popped by to see of there were some good sales. There is not much left !! We did find a few things for half price though.

This evening was my gluten free baking evening. I made 4 different cookie recipes with gluten free items. I wanted to make a homemade cookie tin for my boss who is allergic to gluten. They taste good, but are a bit more granulated. Some recipes work much better with the normal flour. I tried Nutella cookies and they seem to have turned out ok! All it is is 1 cup Nutella, 1 egg, 1 cup flour! You can't go wrong with that! I hope she likes them :)

Early bedtime tonight as we have to go to work tomorrow for about half a day. A lot of people bring their kids on Christmas Eve and we socialize and have fun. Can't wait!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 22

Sweet little sleepy girl! She cannot stay in bed too long in case she misses out on Christmas!! 3 days away!!

Maelie played outside a little bit since we do have a lot of snow!

For lunch, we made some gingerbread pizzas with homemade dough. Yum!

Isn't he so cute? Too bad his head was chopped off shortly after baking!

We also have a little visitor with us for Christmas! Peluche! He has spent 3 Christmas' with us since his family goes out of town for a few days. He has a Christmas gift soon to be under the tree :)

Maelie and Bill went out this afternoon once he came back from work. I got to wrap the presents while they were out! I am very excited for Christmas!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 21

December 21st! The day so many people were afraid of due to the hype of the end of the world. I will be so happy when that is all over and done with!! :) I am tired of hearing about it. I am happy to be with my baby girl and hubby!

This is what we woke up to this morning. Busses in Ottawa were cancelled, but only the ones in the countryside in Gatineau were cancelled. I find that extremely silly.. putting the busses on unsafe roads with our children in them! For what? For a day of watching movies and playing games at school. I decided to keep Maelie home. I thought I would go in to work a bit later, but Bill had to go to work earlier today... so I did not want both of Maelie's parents on dangerous roads at the same time. Call me psycho... or overly cautious... but I figured you should only be on the roads if you HAD to until it was all clear.

Maelie had a wonderful time in the snow while Bill and I shovelled. It was sticky so she made a big ball of snow. At one point it was too heavy to push!! Our new neighbor started moving in today! Of all days!!

By suppertime, the roads were clear and it had stopped snowing, so we headed out to Jacinthe's house for a few games of Rummy and for supper. Picture time is always a perfect time to be silly!!

We came home around 7 pm and I ended up falling asleep on the couch due to a bad headache! Maelie woke me up around 8:30 to head off to bed!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 20

We're getting closer!!

I forgot to take pictures today! I guess mainly because we really didn't do anything other than school/work!! Looking forward to tomorrow's snow!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 19

Poor little Maelie did NOT want to get up today once again! I had to kinda threaten her that she would not have time for her advent calendar if she didn't get up soon. It took a lot of work to come down the stairs. She had a blankie on her back, dragging her feet and was grumbling. Poor kids are at the end of their ropes this week with school! All their energy is focussed on Christmas! I will be glad once the weekend gets here.

At work, we had a pot luck. There was an amazing response of close to 50 people which is surprising considering a lot of our staff is already on holidays! It was LOADED with food! In order to take a tiny bit of everything, you would have had to fill in 5 plates!! There were 9 slow cookers on the go!! Here is a tiny bit of what was there:

I picked up Maelie and Sierra at school since they had an activity after school. We dropped Sierra off at her house and then headed off to Cage aux Sports for a friendly Christmas dinner. Since Sonia and Naomie are out of town at Christmas, we always have a dinner ahead of time and exchange gifts. Maelie just could not wait for Naomie to open her gifts! She wouldn't let Naomie cherish one gift for too long, she handed her another and told her "come on.... open it!!" LOL

Naomie was very pleased and appreciative and tried to display that with a hug!! This is Maelie fearing for her life like hugs are dangerous! 

Our crazy friends!! :) We truly cherish our moments with them.

Maelie got these funky speakers as one of her presents.

Of course, first thing she did when we got home is plug them in to try them! They connect to her i-pod touch. These speakers worked AMAZINGLY! we can't see the effect in action on a picture, but the lights and water follow the beat of the song. It was SO cool! She played with it until bedtime, testing different music styles.

She hung out comfortably in her new pj's on the couch while testing the songs. One spoiled little love I tell you!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 18

Tuesday the 18th... just a normal day :) 1 week til Christmas day!! Maelie is starting to get really excited. She says it is feeling more real.

This evening we had to wrap some gifts. Tomorrow we are going to dinner with Sonia and Naomie and are exchanging gifts. It was so nice to sit and chat while wrapping with Maelie. How I love her!! Pic is blurry unfortunately!

Santa Maelie Ho Ho Ho!!

I also finished up my cookies from yesterday. Here is how it looks in a tin. I LOVE seeing a mixture of homemade cookies!! I must honestly say I have been through a LOT of butter and sugar this year! LOL

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 17

Day 17! 1 week til Christmas Eve!! Mondays are always difficult though. Maelie definitely was not done her sleep.

Once I came home from work, it was a busy evening getting some more cookies done! and peanut butter pretzel balls!

I completed 2 batches, however two other had to wait til the next day. They are refrigerator cookies so they have to sit in the fridge for 2 hours.

There's something about Christmas time that makes me want to bake cookies all the time and give them away!!

Countdown to Christmas 2012 - Day 16

Sunday morning at its best :) Little sleepyhead just out of bed.

Maelie enjoyed her advent present immediately upon opening! It was a dumb criminal book. She just loves reading those stories.

We were going to a brunch at our friends Carole and Bruno's house. I brought some fruit and of course...a crowd favorite! I quickly prepared a Pillsbury spinach dip wreath. This is how it started:

This is how it turned out! It was even more tasty than it looked. I used lemon dilly seasoning from epicure instead of plain dill and it was delicious!! It's a perfect festive pot luck food. Very easy to make and slice and eat! Really, when you use light sour cream and fat free yogurt, this dish is relatively healthy! They even have low fat and whole grain Pillsbury crescents now.

We had all the kids eat first since they were getting pretty hungry. Here are Maelie and Myriam enjoying their food!

The brunch was very tasty.... and to Maelie's surprise, there was a Dairy Queen Christmas log for dessert. She LOVES the DQ cakes!

Once home, it was full blown Operation Christmas gifts. Maelie wanted me to finish the teacher gifts because she cannot wait to take them to school!! Bill also needed for me to finish packing up the gifts we are mailing.... so between these 2 taskings, I didn't stop til 8 pm!! Here is the teacher's chocolate sleigh.

The support staff such as the office and the lunch monitors all get a bag of small chocolates. I wish I could get everyone some huge gift, but I think that a bit of homemade chocolates is sweet anyway!

Off to bed after this because the nights go by really really fast! Next thing you know, it's time to get up and start all over again!! A little over a week left til Christmas!!