ALPA Christmas Party

Raffle items we won!

Austin with his best little person friend, Andrew, who lives in Edmonton and also happens to be LDS.

Chinese gift exchange.

Chinese gift exchange gifts.

Austin and Andrew

Today was the Association of Little People of Alberta Christmas Party in Calgary & we were lucky enough to attend. It was a fun day. When we got there we realized that though I had brought the camera, I had forgotten to put the memory card back in. Rob went and bought one, but Santa came while he was gone. Did you know Santa is a little person. Speaking of which can anyone tell me how to get pictures off my phone? Because it has some cute Santa pics, but I don't know how to get them on the computer.

In addition to Santa's visit, we did a Chinese gift exchange among the adults. I included above a terrible picture of me so that you could see in the background some of the little people and their families at the party. We also had a potluck dinner and a raffle. Our family cleaned house on the raffle. There were about 20-25 items and a few were extremely popular (itunes card, etc) but I put tickets in items that no one else seemed to want. We also got lucky on a couple of popular items and ended up winning 6 different things!

Austin and Andrew did several running races, arm wrestling competitions and in this video a pushup contest. Andrew is by far the more athletic of the two boys, but hopefully the friendly competition with someone his own size will help motivate Austin to get out there and be active!

Bread, Buns, Cinnamon Rolls and "Dough" for the Pool

Recently a certain sister-in-law, not to name names, Sherylee, told me how hurt she was that I haven't posted more on my blog recently. I told her that's because nothing interesting has been happening. I decided that I'd better try to assuage her hurt feelings with more posts. But, I warned you....it doesn't mean I have anything interesting to post about.

I have to thank another sister-in-law, Haylee, for teaching me how to make fabulous 100% whole (white) wheat bread as seen above. The bread pictured above turned out like a dream, don't you think? I don't know how it tasted though, because I sold it.

Which brings me to the other aspect of this post which is that I've been doing a lot of fundraising lately for the Pals of the Pool, trying to raise money and awareness for an improved pool in Magrath. Our group has done 3 concessions so far at the Rodeo grounds. On the day the above pictures were taken, there was a craft/bake sale at the agriplex along with team sorting rodeo. We did both the concession and a bakesale and sold my cinnamon buns both individually and in fours and the bread among other things. Profit on the evening$450.

The following weekend (last weekend) we did a concession for the Chinook Rodeo, which is as big a rodeo as comes to our little town.We did concessions during the day for the slack and again in the evening for the performance. We also had people man the doors and got 1/3 of the gate money. Total profit on the day $1200.

We've done some other events too, and are selling punch and cookies at the town Christmas program next Friday. So far our total funds are about $5500.

So, we are nickel and diming our way toward a contribution to the pool. I just hope the town is also inching its way toward a plan.

Better Late then Never: The Doig Family 2009 Halloween

Preston as Snake eyes from GI JOE
Our Halloween Ghost pumpkin( well oone of them anyways)

The whole crew. MArk as a Bear Austin as Bumblebee Alyssa as Sleeping Beauty( I didn't want to wear a dress so hey why not wear PJ's)

Bumblebee and Snake eys reporting for duty!!

The Cute bear munching on his costume

Sorry my Mother is a little slow on the draw. So here are my family pictures at Halloween. Alyssa was too OLD to go trick or treating so I handed out candy. Austin and preston went out for half an hour and were done so that's about it.

Everybody's favorite principal?

One of the things you fear when you are the principal of a school, is that someone will take out his or her wrath for a disciplinary measure, or unpopular decision on you or your family personally. One time in Rocky Mountain House, when we were living in a row of grey townhouses, our next door neighbour got egged. Since she was a single mom working at an oil company with one daughter, I couldn't help wondering if the egging was meant for us.

On Friday, October 30th, when I came out of the school after the elementary costume parade, this is what I saw--Rob's car covered in toilet paper. I thought it was pretty funny. Rob was too busy to be amused, but not particularly upset, either. Still, he was interested to know who the culprits were.

Later, a teacher came in Rob's office looking a little guilty and wanting to make sure Rob didn't have anywhere important to go...this sparked a confession that the teacher and three Gr. 7 girls were responsible for the toilet papering....and I won't say if one of those girls was in our very own family... Looks like the jr. high dance taking place at the same time wasn't holding these girls' attention...but I'm sure they didn't really want to t.p. the principal's car, but what are they to do when the week before basketball tryouts, their basketball coach asks them to do it?

Too close to call

We've reached that moment I knew would eventually come when Preston and Austin are the same height! If Mark could stand up next to them, you'd see that his height is also very similar, although I believe he's a bit shorter.