Christmas

Esmé, Tyne, and I spent an early Christmas in Alberta with my parents.  The girls had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.

Baking with Grandma

Playing lots of games

Reading bedtime stories... with all three household pets, including the "big gog" (dog) that Tyne was a little afraid of.

Opening Christmas presents with their cousins.

And of course, playing in Alberta snow.

Meanwhile....

Kyle spent a couple weeks in Santa Monica at the American Film Market (AFM) landing a great sales company for their film...

... meeting with film folk, watching movie screenings...

...and generally just looking cool.

But he did get home in time to take part in lots family Christmas fun!

Vandusen Festival of Lights (terrible picture, but it was fun!)

Roasting Marshmallows quickly before the fire on the terrible wood we bought died out.  (That's basically just a firestarter that's burning.)

Esmé had the chance to see the Nutcracker ballet twice! (Once with her school and once with Grandma.) This led to a slight obsession with nutcrackers.

So of course she had to write a letter to ask Santa for a nutcracker.

Which we mailed to the North Pole.

And on Christmas morning... surprise! Santa (and Canadian Tire) totally came through.  Nutcracker went everywhere with Esmé for about 3 weeks (including Kindergarten show and tell) until she began to realize that nutcrackers are a little boring when they don't magically come to life and prance around on tiptoe and save you from giant mice.

This was the first that Tyne understood Christmas and of course she developed a keen interest in presents.

We hope you all had a magical marvellous holiday!

Happy Birthday Tyne!

Tyne turned two a little over a month ago and has become a little fireball full of giggles and tantrums and opinions and cuddles and personality.  Her favourite thing to do is make us laugh.  She also loves to sing and has a better pitch than the rest of our family combined.  She has a loud voice that she uses often, yet is very sensitive and gets upset easily over the smallest things (leading her to use her loud voice again.)  She's still quite clingy to me, especially around strangers, yet is so chatty at home and uses her large vocabulary to make herself heard.  She continues to hate most necessities in life, like clothes, teeth brushing, shampoo, seat belts, etc. and protests passionately.  But she loves her big sister to bits and is always following and copying Esmé.  Tyne's learned a few of her colours and letters (especially "T for Tyne!") and is counting to 20.  I really don't know where she learned to count since I haven't taught her that!  She's such an auditory learner that she picks up the things she hears around her so quickly.  It's really amazing how much she's learned in just one year.

For her birthday we went to Maplewood Farm to visit the animals.  

 The rabbits were pretty scary, sitting there half asleep in their cuddly white fur.  It took Tyne a bit of encouragement to finally touch them.  But she did.  Once.  For half a second.

The goats got some nice petting from Esmé, while Tyne kept her distance and told them firmly to not eat her coat.  But Tyne did enjoy seeing all the animals and was especially fascinated by the baby cow who was "eating it's mama's bum".  (We did explain that the baby cow was actually drinking it's mama's milk.)

After the farm we enjoyed a delicious dinner at Auntie Elaine's house.