The Lee-Young Christmas

It was so fun to finally have the space to host Christmas dinner this year for my family. It was a smaller gathering since it's too far for my brother and sister to come home for the holidays with young kids in tow. We'll have another 'Christmas in June' when traveling is easier then. For now we had a great time with my parents, my Auntie Phylis and Joanne's family. Maddy always loves it when her older cousins Frances and Pippa come. It's so great to see them together and I love how the girls really take good care of Maddy. Maddy sure does look up to them.

To make things easier, everyone brought different parts for dinner. Since we already did a turkey this year. I tried a ham recipe. It was super tasty and really easy to do. The nice thing about ham is that it's already cooked, so cooking time is really short (and the added benefit of not having to worry so much about food poisoning!) After some yummy cheese and crackers, we sat around the tree to open presents. It's always so fun to see the kids open their gifts. Then it was on to the main event. Since our dining table is small, we decided to have a 'kids' table this year. I almost got a little teary eyed seeing Maddy all 'grown up' sitting with her cousins and not in her high chair. For dessert, Auntie Phylis made her famous flan and I'll tell you, Maddy is hooked. She gobbled hers quickly and then went to Papa to get some of his!


The dishes are done, the linens washed, even the ham and split pea soup is in the freezer. It's a lot of work to host dinner, but I loved every minute of it. I'm definitely feeling all grown up myself!

Here are some pictures for now. I will get some more uploaded as soon as we have time to get them off the camera.

We hope all of you are enjoying your holiday dinners with friends and family. We'll have the Blommestein Christmas blog entry in the new year. Merry Christmas everyone and all the best in the new year.

Here are those pictures as promised:

Oma the author!

We are so excited for Oma, Josh's mom, as she just recently published her first book. The title of the book is The Tale of Miss Spider Who Spun Her Web. It tells a tale of a spider who is torn between eating a fly that is trapped in her web and letting it go free. Mieke has been busy traveling to craft shows and book stores in the interior to sell her book and she has had great success with it so far. She has also been to many elementary schools in Revelstoke to read the students and the kids get a real lesson out of it. Maddy loves the book and has been known to quote parts of the book out of the blue. Maddy already loves to read books, but it's that much more special when the author is your Oma. We are so proud of you Oma!

Binkie (Part II)

Some of you may remember my post about the competition that Josh and I hand when Maddy was a baby. We were both trying to get Maddy to take to the comfort item that we were each sleeping with. In the end the comfort that she chose wasn't even in the race! She has really taken to the Binkie. Even our play date friends know not to touch Binkie. It's the one thing she doesn't have to share. It's just a square cloth with ribbons sewn around it. I love it because I made them, so they can easily be replaced if lost, we have tons of them and they are small enough to take everywhere. This time around, with Ethan, there is no competition. I've been madly trying to get him to fall in love with the binkie too. So far it's seems to be working. He sucks on them the same way that Maddy did when she was small. Keeping my fingers crossed that we won't have to lug a giant comfort item around for him.

Busy, busy holidays

We've been super busy enjoying the holiday season. We started things off with hosting a Christmas play date with a few families. It was quite a feat to get 5 couples, 3 toddlers, 1 baby and 2 infants all sitting at the table at the same time. Somehow we did, but in all the hullabaloo, we forgot to capture the moment on camera! We all helped out with putting together the turkey dinner and everything came together well. I was very happy that my first turkey turned out and I'm even surprised with how easy it was. (I'll have to come back and post a picture of the turkey, it's on the other camera). The girls played really well together and the adults had moments here and there to chat. It was a really fun evening and we're already looking forward to next year.

During the week, Josh's mom and dad came down from Revelstoke. Uncle Joe and Aunt Maria also made the trip up from Portland to join us for a little pre-holiday visit. Maddy always loves when Oma and Opa come to visit and she knew for sure they were coming when she saw the box of croissants ("pa-ssants") on the table.

On Tuesday night Josh went out to get our first real Christmas tree. We waited until Maddy went to bed so that she could see the whole thing already put together. I'm really excited to have a real tree and one that smells so good. The year that Maddy was born, we decided to start a family tradition where we each go to pick a new ornament for the tree that year. It was really fun to finally pull these ornaments out and hang them on a tree.



On Wednesday we took advantage of the dry weather and went to the Stanley Park Bright Nights Train. This is the first time we've gone with kids. The park was beautifully decorated and Maddy really enjoyed the train ride. It was super cold so we quickly went on the train, ran around to see the lights and packed back into the car. After that we stopped at the White Spot for a yummy dinner. It seems the whole restaurant was packed with other families who just went on the train too.



Last weekend we went to see Santa. Maddy was excited to see him this year and we had been rehearsing what she was going to say to him. In the line waiting to see him, she kept peering over at him and waving her little hand. It was priceless. When it was our turn she did very well talking to Santa. She asked him for a ball and some new stickers. I thought we were going to get lucky and that she'd sit for the photo with him. I guess talking with him is different from getting up on his lap. So again, Josh and I squeezed into the photo too. Looking at the picture from last year, it's really amazing to see how much she has change.



We hope everyone is enjoying the season so far.