And Let the New Year Begin...

Well the hustle and bustle of the holidays are done, gifts have all been opened, way too much food has been consumed, the decorations are all tucked safely away and once again I have vowed that I will start earlier to avoid that crazy desperate rush next December...I'll let you know how that works out for me.

As I said before, we decided to do an old-fashioned "homemade" Christmas this year on our little farm and I am proud to say it was a complete success!  The kids got right into the swing of it and we had so much fun opening new knitting bags, 2 very gorgeous oil paintings, hand knit socks, sweaters, mitts and bookmarks, plaques, little decorative pillows, Christmas decorations, hand painted treasure boxes, handcrafted notepads, and one "Stress Kit for the Toronto Maple Leaf Fan".

The first pair of hunting socks I made were a success!!

And you can always count on Grandma for cozy mitts!!

Of course, there were those few store bought gifts and a few items from Santa.  Poor Sydney has been asking for a telescope...and when I say asking, I mean begging....for about five years now.  This year, we were thrilled to finally fill that request...and we think it took her about ten minutes to have it out of the box and assembled...this must be a new record somewhere in the world...

And another 20 minutes to convince Andy to load up the astronomy software that came with it.....

However, this is where the poor kid lost the battle and had to wait until daylight before she could drag Andy outside to brave the -21 windchill and get him to sight it for her...

Did I mention, the telescope we purchased has these little, itsy, bitsy, tiny screws that need to be adjusted in order to sight it?  You know, the ones that are so small that there is no way physically possible to wear winter gloves while doing it.  Did I also mention that Andy is a wonderful, patient man and we love him very much?  Of course, after waiting five years for this gift, we have had nothing but cloudy skies every night since.  But being the ingenious little trooper she is, she has gotten a lot of use of it and we now know what every neighbour on the next concession road keep in their backyards.

There were also those....well....unusual Christmas gifts.  For anyone who knows our kids, they love their meat!!  One of their absolute favourites is bacon....yes that's right...B-A-C-O-N.  Now at this point I know you are all sitting staring at your monitors, trying to figure out what bacon has to do with Christmas presents.  Forget the obvious, yes we live on a farm, NO....none of us got a pig for Christmas.  My youngest, Logan, is no different than the rest of the kids, she loves her bacon....only difference is, she asks for it a little more often than the rest of the kids.  By often, I mean pretty much constantly!  So, after a few weeks of consuming Grandma's bacon supply and pretty much making it impossible for the poor woman to keep up with the demand....yep, you guessed it....our Logie Bear got a pound of bacon for Christmas from Grandma...of course along with cozy mitts and other more traditional gifts.   But between you and me, I could be wrong but I think the bacon was her favourite!!!

I have to say, Christmas was a complete success this year and one of the most enjoyable ones I have ever had.  We had tons of family time, playing outside, relaxing and just plain being together!

Logan & Sydney playing outside with their Snowart Paint

Even Smokey, our little barn cat made it up to the house to get her dinner....as you can see, she even got to meet Levi.

Well, off to start the new year....Happy 2011 to all!!