It's true!

Coming around the end of May 2012....

Little McCrimmon #2 is on the way!

We are super excited (especially Amanda, now that the nausea has subsided) to welcome our second baby into the world!

The Completed Tree

Here's a picture of our tree all decorated.  No complete family picture since Joel was sleeping at the time, and we didn't want to wake him. Maybe next year!

Christmas Tree

For the past five years, Dan and I have had the tradition of carrying our Christmas tree home over our shoulders. Last year, I was 9 months pregnant, ready to pop at any moment. This year, we have a one year old who we wanted to include in our tradition.

Joel added a bit of "stress" to the situation. We discussed various options for how to get both a Christmas tree and our little bubby home. Do we use the wrap? No, Amanda's back hurts too much. How about the backpack? Won't the tree stump or leaves be in his face? Okay...how about the stroller? Can we push it one handed and still carry a tree? Ultimately, the stroller won out!

Joel really enjoyed shopping for the tree. He would giggle every time I held up a tree and asked, "Is this the one?" That kid really loves nature...and especially pine needles.

Eventually, we chose our tree, put it up on our shoulders and proceeded to the local Starbucks for a hot drink (yet, another one of those wonderful traditions). By this time, it was past Joel's bedtime and he was starting to loose it. (Which may have had something to do with the creepy man outside who kept asking us questions and trying to touch Joel....which neither one of us liked.) Dan finally came outside with our drink (which spilled all over the stroller) and we proceeded to city hall for our annual photo shoot.

Joel basically screamed the whole time. We gave him a bottle, which we kept trying to pull out for photos. (He didn't like that!) Finally, we just gave up and walked home, where we put the boy to bed and the tree outside for a few days.

A few days later (after Joel's birthday party), we decided to put up the tree. Joel likes to touch the leaves, but isn't eating them (bonus for us!!!)

We let Joel put the star up on the tree. Okay, he didn't really put it on.He tried many times, but we just couldn't get him to get it up over the top of the tree. This picture is Joel taking the star off of the tree. But it still looks cool. Later that night we decorated the tree while Joel slept. Every day, Joel seems to take a decoration off the tree, walk over and hand it to us. He just hasn't grasped the concept of "don't touch." But its such a joy to see him stand by the tree, staring at the lights. Reminds me of when he was just born, and Dan was holding him. Joel lifted his head to look at the lights and he was just 20 minutes old.

How to Make a Shark Cake

Step #1: Spend two weeks worth of nap time scouring the Internet for images of shark cakes. Realize that this is the best one that you can find...even though its missing the second half of his tail and has a really large fin.

Step #2: Cut out the outline of the shark. Realize that it looks ridiculous and spend a few hours "fixing" the image. Basically, redraw the shark picture. Cut the outline of the shark out of the cake.

Step #3: Put the two pieces of shark cake together to form the shark.

Step #4: Ice the cake. And add additional cakes (seaweed and fish) out of the leftover cake pieces.

Step #5: Admire your finished cake.

Step #6: Add candle and allow birthday boy to "try" blow out candle. Blow out candle for him.

Step #7: Give piece of cake to birthday boy. Watch as he slowly pushes it away and melts down into tears. "Don't make me eat this bright blue thing!!!"

Step #8: Wait until following day. Give a piece of cake to birthday boy on a fork. Watch him eat it. Then watch him devour cake, piece by piece.

Step #9: Watch cake being eaten.

Step #10: Allow birthday boy to eat every last piece of cake. Or at least throw it on the floor until he's finished.

 

Christmas Baking

Our dear friends, Matt and Rachel came over a few weeks ago, so we could bake some delicious Christmas cookies.

In just over 3 hours, we had a TON of cookies baked, fudge cooling in the freezer, and some savoury treats to enjoy.


We each chose some of our favourite family recipes, and a few new ones to try out.

The evening was filled with wonderful smells, good memories and almost losing our treats to a vicious neighbourhood raccoon (Note to self: do not leave treats outside to cool, raccoons may abound). We thanked Rachel repeatedly for saving our treats!

We had a few good laughs while we assembled gingerbread men (and woman). By that time of night, we had eaten way too much sugar, and didn't have enough protein in our bodies. Things got a bit crazy....but were easily fixed by eating a few pigs in a blanket.

This is our half of the haul from the evening. Pigs in a blanket, quiche, sugar cookies, chocolate mint cookies, chocolate mints, butter tarts, shortbread cookies, gingerbread cookies. And missing from the photo, cookies and cream fudge and chocolate mint fudge. Yummy!