Christmas Eve at Granny's, nativity and pinata

See the kids up between the bars, waiting for their turn at the pinata. Austin and Nathan each drew a face on the pinata. Nathan drew a nice Wal-Mart happy face and Austin drew a cross-eyed deranged face.

The cast of the 2009 Christmas Eve nativity. Preston declined to be in it.

Christmas Eve at Granny's, blankets and cousin gift exchange

All the counsins in a circle after opening their cousin gifts.

Three boys. Three bionicles.

Would you believe that Mark liked his music card that came with his gift from Hemsleys? Well, he did, ...for a minute....

Alyssa and Kaylene with their matching blankets from the pinata. Thank you, Granny. So cute.

Nathan, Austin and Preston with their matching blankets. Thanks, Granny.

Alyssa posing with her jewelry from Kaylene from the cousin gift exchange. Thank you, Kaylene.

Christmas morning at the Doigs

It was nice to have Christmas morning at our own house this year. We even opened presents at a civilized hour; the kids were allowed out of bed at 7:30. That way Mark could be part of Christmas morning. As usual it was neat to see the wonder and excitement in the kids' eyes as they first saw the tree and their presents. Mark was pretty cute. He got a few new music toys and he got a strange look on his face when the new toy was played. Then he hit the button and made the music, then stuck out his tongue, as if to say, "This is weird. I don't know this toy." After a little while he lost it and started crying, but he was pretty intrigued for a while.

Let it snow, let it snow.....no, please, really MAKE IT STOP SNOWING!

and since there's no place we can go......

Check out the results of the blizzard we've been having here! It started Friday afternoon and its still snowing. Also winds of 50-70 clicks at times! Good day to stay home by the fire in your pajamas.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Rob likes us to wait until December 1 to put up the Christmas decorations. This year I decided to jump the gun in the smallest way and set up the tree for Family Home Evening on Monday, November 30th. That day the weather had been very windy, and somewhere around the time we started decorating, it began to snow outside. That snow marked a drastic change in weather from very mild fall-like weather to a massive blast of winter.

At least it's warm and cozy and festive in the house (which is now clean, mostly) with a toasty warm fire going in the fireplace....now if I can just find some time to sit in on the couch by that fireplace and read a good book!

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.