2011 Christmas Card Photo Shoot

There is a beautiful trail near our house, and it has been really mild considering it was the end of November  (even still now moving into early December) so I decided that it would be the perfect spot to take a prop, put Loralai's Christmas outfit on, and head over there and take some photo's! 

I am not going to give away the photo we ended up using of course, but here are some of the other ones from that day! 

I can't wait for our Christmas card to be completed so that I post it on here! 

Family Christmas Party

Well my last post was done a while ago, and warning here come the excuses: we lost our camera cord, and my computer is super slow and old! Well my wonderful father bought me a computer for Christmas, and didn't make me wait to start using it! Woot woot, thanks Dad! My husband also found the camera transfer cord this today! I am so excited because tonight I could FINALLY order our Christmas card tonight, and of course BLOG!!

Last weekend we had our family (my Mom's side) Christmas party, I was too busy holding the baby Michael that I ended up only taking one photo the entire few hours we were there! This is a picture of Loralai holding baby Michael :)

Loralai actually didn't mind that I was holding Michael, except that she did stick to me like glue, and wanted me to sit so that she could play with him.

We had a cookie exchange, a yummy potluck, and lots of quality time catching up! 

Happy Halloween!

Loralai had such a great time trick or treating this year! Last year we likely went to about 10 homes, and this year we probably went to about 35! It was just Mommy and Loralai walking around since Daddy is still working in Edmonton; Grandma Brenda stayed at our house and handed out candy for us! Loralai and Mommy had made up 65 treat bags to hand out to the kids: 1. to make it easy to hand out the same amount of treats to each child, and 2. its easy to keep track of how many kiddies we had come by our house, and this year we had 61. 

So I told her that the houses that had lights on were the ones that were handing out candy. I let her take the lead in which direction she wanted to go, and she choose which houses she wanted to visit! I did not even have to walk up to the door with her, I waited down the drive way a bit, she went up and said trick or treat and thank you to each house, although I do have to say that I did have to prompt this a few times! Loralai just kept saying after each house "where do we go next?"...so we just kept going until she asked to go home. We then got into the car and drove over to Carrie's house and went trick or treating just at their house too! 

I am just glad that it was a nice night out! It was a little chilly but nothing that a sweater and mitts couldn't solve for me, and Loralai had a sweater, fall jacket and of course her firefighter costume! 

Here are some pictures of my brave firefighter! 

 Loralai at her first trick or treat house (our next door neighbour Dean and Holly's), she even got to pick her own candy out! 

 Loralai at the "spooky" house on our street! 

and last but not least a picture of the new awesome wreath that I got on sale at Canadian Tire on our front door! 

Hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween as well! 

Time to sneak some candy ;)

Playing in the leaves!

We took these pictures a couple of weekends ago when the weather was a little warmer and when Daddy was home (Todd has been travelling a lot for work over the last about 2.5 months with a return date of November 26th with just two days home in between), but my cameras battery was dead when I went to upload them right away, and well because I have been a busy working single mom I have not had the chance to sit down and download them. So I took the opportunity today! :)

We miss you Daddy!

Halloween is tomorrow night, and my beautiful little girl is going to be a firefighter (completely her choice!). At dancing yesterday morning the girls were allowed to wear their costumes, well all the little girls (and I mean all) were either little princess or fairies, there was one little witch but she also had a tutu! and then there was my little firefighter! lol.

Are they not all adorable?! :)

Fun with editing!

I found this cool little online photo editing tool that makes your photo's have that vintagy feel! So I just took a couple of family photo's and re-created them! Enjoy :) 

Happy Thanksgiving 2011!

We gobbled gobbled until we wobbled wobbled on Sunday! We went to Bonnie and Bills house for dinner, and spent a lot of the time outside since it ended up being a gorgeous long weekend. 

We pulled numbers for secret Santa this year. I came up with a game that will allow opening our gift cards to take longer than 20 seconds, so I am hoping that it turns out fun for everyone on Christmas day! I know it is only the middle of October, how can we be thinking about Christmas when Halloween has not even arrived yet? 

Anyway now onto some Thanksgiving day pictures...

Do you notice Loralai's fancy hat? She made it at daycare, I thought she did such an awesome job! 

We then decided to take some fun new family photo's on Bonnie and Bills beautiful backyard grass! 

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving as much as we did! 

Introducing...

Tara Betta Fish Baker! 

(I apologize for the gross looking chalk board, but it Loralai was late going to bed, and I wanted to take the picture quickly, so I did not wait for the board to dry before I wrote on it)

On Thursday, Loralai, Grandma, and I had gone out for a Sushi dinner with our Friends Maggie and Drake; 

I had been thinking for a while that I would really like to get Loralai a fish, and since Daddy is away (working away from home for several weeks now :(  thought that it would be fun to add in another member of the family! So we went to a local fish store, and snatched up a beautiful blue and purple Betta fish, you cannot tell from the photo but she sure is pretty! I asked Loralai what she wanted to name her new pet, and after thinking long and hard, she came up with Tara (not exactly sure where she got that name from, but it works)!  We got the tank, food, etc. on the Thursday, but we went out the next day to a local Petsmart and got some accessories for Tara, you can certainly tell who picked them out! ;)

This next picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, but it was too cute not to share!

Loralai with her friend Drake at the park. Just look at how she is looking at him, boy oh boy am I in trouble when she is a teenager! :)

Welcome Fall...

we are glad you are here!

It had started to get chilly, but we were lucky to get a gorgeous long Thanksgiving weekend and we got to take back out our shorts and sandals again. 

Today after Loralai's dance class, Mindy, Loralai, Todd, and I, went to Chappell Farms for a little pumpkin patch fun. We did not actually go into the farm on today's adventure, but Loralai did not notice at all as she ran around in the pumpkins, chased a rabbit, and looked at the baby chickens and goats. We got a perfect pumpkin today, but we will wait until a little closer to Halloween to paint it. 

We will be going to Rounds Ranch Farm in a couple of weeks to partake in all the pumpkin patch activities :)

Dance

"Dance like no one is watching" is one of my favourite quotes because if someone can dance without the risk of feeling embarrassment, it can be so freeing! 

But without further ado Loralai started her first dance class on September 17th! Now she has taken pre-dance classes before at Holly Community Centre that lasted for a 9 week period, but now she has started with an actual dance studio (Borden Dance), that will last for an entire dance season and end with a recital! The class lasts for 45 minutes, compared to 30 minutes with the community centre. Loralai has been taking this class for 3 weeks today and she loves it! She is so excited to go, and practices throughout the week! 

Ms. Susan Loralai's dance instructor is very nice but disciplined, she does not tolerate crying or whining in class; by no means is she mean to them, she has to keep 10 3-4 year old's attention and keep chaos from occurring, so you have to be structured! Ms. Susan has a great lesson plan, and she keeps every dance and songs age appropriate (funny little bunny, rock a by baby, the Wiggles monkey dance, etc), and the girls have fun! 

I am so proud of my little dancer because she listens very well, and has great coordination! 

Now I have to apologize because I did have the camera ready, but I did not grab it on my way out :( so all the photo's were taken with my cell phone. 

The parents were allowed to watch the first two classes, this is so that the girls can get adjusted to the new environment, etc. (although Loralai jumped right in with both feet and had no problems!) but this morning was week 3, and the parents had to wait outside the room, so now I have to wait until they allow a parents viewing day, but I cannot wait to see the difference from the first two classes!  

First Dentist Appointment!

So Loralai had her very first dentist appointment on Thursday September 1st at 2pm; and man oh man, I have to say that she was amazing beyond my wildest expectations. The hygienist Crystal was also fantastic with Loralai! She gave her sunglasses to protect her eyes from the brightness of the light, Crystal let Loralai try out each tool before she used it in her mouth, she asked her questions, and let her know what she was going to do next! 

So the dentist Dr. Lea came by after Crystal had finished cleaning her teeth. Dr. Lea counted her teeth and just took a general look around at everything. Loralai's teeth are great, but we did find out that she has a slight tongue tie. The dentist asked if she had any pronunciation problems or a lisp, and she does not at all...so he said that because it is slight, to just keep an eye on it, but that it will likely not result in anything. 

Here is a little video of the appointment...enjoy!