Deck the Halls

We have been busy getting the house spruced up for Christmas this week. I'm amazed at how fast the boys set out all the decorations - they remembered exactly where we put each item and had most of it done before I knew what happened!

I had some fun rummaging through our Christmas Book Box (you can see it tucked in there behind the chair in the photo). All the standard seasonal favourites are in there (How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, The Polar Express) along with some books that are more obscure but that have become our family favourites over the years.

Snuggling up together and reading our seasonal favourites in the glow of the Christmas tree is one of the things I cherish most about this time of year. If you're looking for some new books to add to your holiday collection, our family gives "two enthusiastic thumbs way up" to the following:

Rotten Ralph's Rotten Christmas by Jack Gantos - quite possibly the most-read Christmas book in our house!

Joel Schick's Christmas Present - a fanciful twist on the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring whimsical illustrations of dorkle bugs sneeds-a-slavering and many other very hungry critters.

Woodleigh Marx Hubbard's Twelve Days of Christmas - this one has the traditional verse along with playful and bright illustrations.

The Nativity, illustrated by Julie Vivas - our favourite version of the Christmas story, hands down. Beautifully illustrated, with some gentle humour.

I Spy Christmas - okay, this one can't really qualify as "obscure" but it's certainly provided many hours of holiday entertainment at our house.

Happy holiday reading, everyone!

Snow Joy!!

We got our first significant snowfall yesterday. Noah and Nathan started doing the "Snow Dance of Happiness" as soon as they saw the flakes starting to come down midafternoon. We walked home from the library enthusiastically catching snowflakes on our tongues. We then ran around the yard grabbing bikes, scooters, and all manner of outdoor items we hadn't quite got around to bringing in the house for the winter yet.

The boys tried to scrounge up enough snow for a snowball fight while they waited for their friends to get home from school. The whole gang then proceeded over to the toboggan hill (a 5 minute walk from our house) and I didn't see Nathan again until after dark. The snow accumulation was not huge but the kids were determined! By the end of the day both boys were rosy cheeked and wet from head to toe, full of sparkly-eyed excitement at the official onset of winter.

I have no photos to mark this occasion because my camera batteries died again. We picked some up last night, but by this morning the sun had come out and melted away most of the snow. I'm sure there will be more soon so I don't think I need to worry too much about getting a good photo op!

With the arrival of the snow I feel the stillness of winter settling in. It's a welcome feeling, as life has been particularly hectic of late. In the space of five weeks (between the end of September and the beginning of November), we celebrate both of the boys' birthdays (involving 2 parties for *each* boy) plus Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween. This mama is looking forward to some quiet days snuggled up under lots of warm blankets, reading books and watching movies together! Of course, it's time to start thinking about Christmas celebrations as well, but I am determined to keep our holiday as peaceful as possible this year.

March Break Mayhem

You wouldn't think March Break would be all that relevant to our lives, since the kids don't go to school. But since all the other kids are off school for a week, it definitely has an impact! Places we can normally go to during the day and find it relatively calm and quiet are now packed to the gills with overexcited children. I usually plan to avoid most of the "hot spots" during this week, as it's just too overwhelming, and we can go anytime we want.

We did venture out to a couple of the library's March Break programs, both of which the boys really enjoyed (and the mayhem factor wasn't TOO bad). On Tuesday afternoon, it was a Wii Bowling tournament. Although Noah and Nathan have had the opportunity to play games on the Wii on a few occasions, this was the first time they had tried the bowling. Nathan devised an interesting strategy for getting strikes that was a bit counterintuitive, but it worked! Yesterday, it was the Mac Fireballs, a group of students from McMaster University, doing loud, explosive chemistry experiments. The boys came out of that one all excited and impressed with the "BOOMS" they got to experience!

There is still a lot of snow here, and the enthusiasm for it is definitely dwindling. The boys are still hitting the toboggan hill with their friends, but not as often or for as long as they would earlier in the season. I think there may be a neighbourhood snowball fight going on as I type, though. I am enjoying hot beverages and warm blankets as I start to think about plans for this year's garden and wait for the arrival of spring (I know it has to show up sometime soon!)

A Cure For the February Blahs

February is usually one of those months that seems like it's never going to end (despite the fact that it's always the shortest month, even when -like this year- it's a leap year). This has been a particularly challenging year, though, due to the persistent sub-zero Celsius temperatures and the regular delivery of more snow. Needless to say, we've had a bit of cabin fever lately!

That's why yesterday was such a glorious gift. No, it wasn't suddenly beach weather, but it was definitely bright and sunny. Joe cooked up a batch of waffles, and we sat in our cheery, sun-filled dining room and enjoyed the waffles with homemade syrup and hot coffee. We then headed down to Princess Point for a family ice skate. I'm embarrassed to say that we've lived in Hamilton for over 15 yrs (and in our current neighbourhood, within walking distance of Princess Point, for over 10) and this is the first time we've skated there in the winter. Now I'm wondering what took us so long to get around to it! Unfortunately, I was suffering from "camnesia" (forgot the camera AGAIN!) but we had a fantastic time.

It's interesting to see what a different perspective you get of the area when you're skating around on what is usually marsh. The views are quite different than when you're on shore. There were several games of shinny going on, and Joe joined in on one for a while. The boys and I skated out towards the Carp Barrier. It was fun to take a look at it from the other side. While we were way out in the middle of the marsh, I noticed what at first appeared to be a very large dog walking along the adjacent Waterfront Trail. As I turned to get a closer look, I realized it was a horse pulling a small sleigh along! That's definitely something you don't see around here every day. There were many other families out there enjoying the beautiful late-winter weather, too. In Canada, we know that if you can't beat the weather, you might as well join it!

After we were all skated out, we came home for leftover pizza (and more coffee for the grownups). We had a nice family laze-around for the rest of the afternoon, then after a leisurely dinner, Joe headed out for his usual Sunday night hockey game, and I watched the Oscars while the boys amused themselves with Legos and DS's (Nathan joined me for the final 45 min or so of Oscar excitement).

All in all, it was one of those days you wish could go on forever.

Winter Wonderland

We finally have a serious amount of snow! It started falling late Saturday night, and by Sunday morning there was lots of shovelling to do. The boys put on their snowpants as soon as they woke up yesterday and ran outside to romp around in it with their friends.

They hit the toboggan hill with their dad later in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it had started to rain by then and everyone got really messy and wet. I took the dog for a nice hour long walk in the rainy sludge so we were both soaked too! I thought the snow was going to end up disappearing but thankfully the temperature dropped later in the day so there's still lots of white stuff on the ground.

After we came in and dried ourselves off, it was time for some hot chocolate. We go through a LOT of hot chocolate during the winter, so I'm thankful I know how to make it cheaply. I use skim milk powder, with a teaspoon of cocoa powder and 2 teaspoons of sugar for each mug. A pinch of cinnamon adds that little "extra". I top each mug off with a few mini-marshmallows if we happen to have some around.

We all snuggled under blankets and thawed out watching Back to the Future II - it's been quite a while since I'd watched the BttF movies so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. We took a break from the movie long enough to get some bread in the oven (thank goodness I had made up a batch of Refrigerator Bread Dough late last week) and a batch of lentil soup bubbling on the stove. Hot soup and bread fresh from the oven - the perfect meal after a day spend outside frolicking in the snow!

The boys burned off so much energy playing outside all day that they are still sleeping right now at 10:20 a.m.! I'm sure when they do finally wake up they'll be ready to head right back out to the toboggan hill.

Toboggans, Freezing Rain, and Blackouts

Today was one of those calm and peaceful winter days that make winter worth having! The snow finally showed up yesterday, which was fabulous; however, it changed to freezing rain overnight which left everything as slippery and crunchy as could be. The schools were all closed today, so the neighbourhood was much quieter than usual without the hustle and bustle of kids being picked up and dropped off from school. Once the freezing rain finally stopped after lunch, the local toboggan hill was booming though! We spent a good hour flying down the hill and clambering back up the slippery slope again and again.

Just as I was about to start making dinner, the power went off. We waited 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes. Nope, the power wasn't coming back on any time soon. We cooked and ate dinner by candlelight, which was kind of cool. Luckily for us, we have a gas stove, so we were able to cook on the burners, otherwise it would have been peanut butter sandwiches for dinner (not exactly satisfying after an afternoon on the toboggan hill!). After we cleared the dishes away, we decided to continue our game of "semi-perpetual Monopoly" by candlelight. We started the game a few days after Christmas, but because it takes *so* long to play the game to the end, we've just played for 1/2 hour or so at a time, and put the game aside until we're in the mood to play again. It's interesting how the darkness adds a totally different feel to routine, everyday activities. We hadn't gotten far with the Monopoly when the power magically returned - by then, the lights had been out for almost 2 hours and the house was starting to get noticeably chillier than usual. I wouldn't enjoy not having power on a regular basis, but it did add some interest to the day, and added to the quiet and calm feeling (no TV, computer, radio or lights for a couple of hours-ahh, peace!)

An Urban Wildlife Adventure

Earlier this week, our local paper ran a story about a beaver (possibly *2* beavers) having set up house in the Hamilton harbour. This is very exciting for our community as it signifies a major improvement in the water quality (the last 15 years has seen a lot of work done on restoring our once extremely industrially-polluted harbourfront area).It's also pretty darn cool to have a beaver build a lodge in such an urban location (right on the edge of one of our biggest city parks). As soon as we read about it, we were all super excited to go check it out, but our family schedule didn't give us a chance to do it during daylight hours up until today. So, we all bundled up early this afternoon, and off we went to the Harbourfront to track down the beaver lodge. We didn't have any trouble finding it, and were able to walk up very close to it to take a good look. We didn't actually have a beaver sighting (they usually only come out at night) but we pointed out to the boys where the beaver(s) had chewed down small trees to build the dam (as well as one that had been partially, but not totally, gnawed through). This resourceful urban beaver also scrounged up several used planks of wood to use in building his lodge! The city is considering planting some willow trees in the spring to help keep the beaver(s) from taking all the shade trees. Apparently, willow is a favourite of the beavers (something I didn't know before!) We've seen beaver lodges in zoos before, but this is the first time we've seen one "in the wild" (if the middle of a city of nearly 500,000 people can be classified as "wild"!)

[Here is where I had planned to insert a photo of the beaver lodge; apparently blogger has other ideas right now as I can't get it to upload-arrgh!]

While we were down by the harbour, we also had some fun observing the winter waterfowl. We actually "discovered" a new species that we'd never observed before. When we got back, we got out our bird books (while enjoying a round of hot chocolate to warm us back up!) and identified it as the American Coot. We found out that we'd never seen them before because they overwinter on the harbour, but leave in early spring, and we're usually not spending much time down there until late spring/early summer. Up until we hunted down that piece of the puzzle, I had been wondering how there could have been such a large number of them on the water when I'd never seen even *one* before!!