In hand-me-down clothes

I was looking at pictures from Christmas past.  It seems the pose in a bouncy-chair by the tree with the festive red shirt and kaki pants is a popular one.... 

The picture on the left shows Johan at age 3 months.  Below is Mathias at 9 months.

December 24th

Merry Christmas, everyone!

We hope you find the season enjoyable, fun, and (perhaps) relaxing!

White Christmas

It is confirmed: it will be a white Christmas this year!

And, if the past week is any indication, a cold one at that!

M and I went out to play in the snow and get some of it out of our driveway.  We both lasted less than 15 minutes. Brrrr!

Christmas preparations: the holiday train

There are a number of things only few people have seen....

• On nine occasions have people claimed to have seen a very large creature in the Scottish lake of Loch Ness.
  
• A slightly larger number of people report having seen the Yeti in Tibet.
• Apart from pictures, few people make it deep enough into the ocean to see the large teeth and glowing fins of Chauliodus Macouni, the Pacific Viperfish.

We find ourselves in such exclusive company as we got to witness parts of the enormous logistical machinery that allows St Nicholas to single handedly deliver gifts to millions and millions of children in the course of a single night!  

We took the boys to see the Holiday Train as it passed through our town! It is true,  Santa's preferred carrier for pre-christmas transportation and warehousing is the Canadian Pacific Railroad.  It is known to whistle through the midwest on winter nights with glowing lights and lovely Christmas tunes blaring.  It even made a stop but it was way too cold to take the boys out of the car for any kind of photo opportunities.  (sounds like the explanations for why nobody has a high-resolution picture of the snowman, doesn't it?!) But we were there, we saw it and, by-golly, Santa Claus IS coming to town!

Christmas preparations: breakfast with Santa Claus

The other day Ericka and the boys went to the annual breakfast with Santa.
After putting away a couple of french toast sticks, Mathias got to make Christmas ornaments (they're adorning our tree as we speak).


And they met the big guy himself!

Christmas preparations: timber!!

In a brief hiatus between snow events coating the ground we ventured out in search of a Yule tree.

Upon finding the chosen one, our firstborn insisted on trying to cut it down himself.... But he was happy to have dad pitch in too!

The proud lumberjack posing by the grand prize:

Afterwards, we celebrated a job well done with a cookie and some hot cider.

On the eve of 1/4 year

Or 90 days old!

Personality-wise, Johan appears to be walking in his brother's footsteps - he is a very happy and mostly content baby! We're two-for-two: how lucky is that!?

Let it snow

It's sneaking up on us and Christmas is only three weeks away!  

For a brief shining moment it appeared that we were headed for a white one!

Mathias was cautiously intrigued with the winter wonderland scene.

Not like a little snow on the ground should make you surrender your bike for the season though!