Getting Ready for Christmas

We had a great Advent time. On December 6th my mother arrived to spend Christmas with us. I already posted the pictures from St. Lucia, but we did a lot of other things, too. Marlene's school had the annual Singalong. Marlene is participating in Music Club so she was one of the singers on stage. We made our own gingerbread house this year. Other years we had bought the kit from Trader Joe's but they decided not to carry it this year. We started from scratch with making gingerbread, cutting the walls and roof and later decorating it. It turned out pretty good and we learnt a lot. I think next year we will be able to go fancy with it.

We made it downtown to the teddy bear suite at the Fairmont. We wanted to see the gingerbread houses at the Sheraton, but skipped that to experience the (fake) snow at Pacific place. Another day we went to Swanson's to see the reindeer. They have two beautiful examples there and the kids were excited to see a camel and a donkey, as well. Another day when the sun came out we took a drive north to visit La Connor.

The last picture is of Amelia at her first official visit to the dentist. She did a great job and had a good time chatting with everyone.