Skiing!!

As I mentioned before, Bryon and I gave Kai ski boots for Christmas, to go with the $2 eighties skis I got him at a garage sale this summer.

We've already gotten out a couple of times and our little guy has proved himself to be an excellent skier!

We started by practicing inside, and he apparently thought the boots made better gloves :)

Then we moved on to the backyard.  Notice the styling ski outfit!  I was too lazy to take off his boots and put on his snowsuit after we'd been practicing inside, so I just threw on his jacket and tuque.  Sorry Kai!

Getting ready for their first father-son ski trip to Schweitzer!

Bryon said that Kai was a complete trooper on the mountain.  He kept his goggles on, road the chairlift like a champ (until they told Bryon that Kai was too little to be on the lift), skiied three runs with Bryon holding him under the armpits and even skiied a bit on his own!!  That's my boy!  So so proud :)

It was kind of hard for Bryon to take a picture of Kai skiing while still trying to help Kai stay on track, so this is the best we've got!  Too bad I was home sick.  Next time we'll get better pictures I promise.



Christmas Celebration #1

As usual, we're traveling to visit family at Christmas.  This year we're going to Aldergrove, BC to be with my family on the "Gamache commune" :)  We're excited to see family and are hoping that it may even get cold enough for my brother's traditional ice-rink. 

Because we're always somewhere else for Christmas, Bryon and I decided to start a little family Christmas tradition of our own.  As you may remember from last year, our early Christmas consisted of a nice meal, presents/stockings, a Christmas movie and finally a family sleepover under our Christmas tree.  This year we continued that, and Gramma and Papa Budensiek even got to participate by watching Kai open his presents from them via Skype.  It was so fun to have him understand more of what was going on this year and be able to actively participate!!  We did skip the family sleepover though.  Mommy wasn't feeling so good, and Kaibo was very very tired so we figured it might have been a very very long night.  Next year!  

Dinner - mandarin orange salad, cornish game hens, cranberry apple stuffing, yams with pecans, and pear crisp with ice-cream.

And yes, Kai is wearing a Thanksgiving bib :) 

New PJs from Gramma and Papa.

Gramma and Papa sent Kai a basketball and basketball hoop as well as this rocking horse.  Bryon and I think the rocking horse is much cooler, but all Kai wanted to do was play with his new basketball.  This boy has a one-track mind!

Vanilla-scented socks!

As per Gamache tradition, we made a treasure hunt for Bryon to find one of his presents.

And, the treasure-hunt included tasks such as push-ups.  We Gamaches make people work for their presents :)

Meanwhile, Kai enjoys a Starbucks.

Kai's gift from us....

Ski boots!! (Stay tuned for details of how this worked out!!)

So serious, all night long.

Kai's currently obsessed with fridge magnets, so I made him a set of felt ones, kind of like the fish mobile he loves so much.

I love my new tuque!!  Thanks Bryon.

Merry Christmas!!  I hope you all have a wonderful time of celebration with family and friends.   

Christmas Tree Hunt

I'd been debating in my head on what to do about a Christmas tree this year since I was afraid that Kai would absolutely demolish it!  Bryon suggested hanging one from the ceiling or putting one outside our window. I thought we should maybe put one up on a table.  But, in the end we decided that we NEEDED a real Christmas tree, inside our house, on the floor, and Kai was just going to have to deal with that :)

On top of that, we decided to be little more hardcore and a lot cheaper than usual (no "Land of Christmas" gazillion dollar farm tree for us this year!) and bought a $5 pass to cut down a tree on forestry land.  After tromping through piles of snow, and shaking snow off many a tree to see what it actually looked like, we found a winner!  It may be slightly "Charlie Brownish", but we love it.  And, amazingly enough, Kai has suddenly started to listen when we tell him "don't touch".  Perfect timing.  Not one ornament has been pulled off.  The presents haven't fared quite as well - one or two may have been used as a football and may need rewrapping!

We heard a lot of "wow"s when Kai saw the lights and decorations going onto the tree.

Winter

Winter arrived with a blast of wind and frigidly cold air (Bryon tells me this was from Canada), and A LOT of snow which almost sent me into a panic attack.  I love snow, but this being my first winter as a homeowner, I became very worried that our pipes would freeze or our roof would leak or cave in or blow off or....  But, none of these things happened and we survived a full 16 inches of snow with nothing more than sore backs from shoveling. (Why oh why did we buy a corner lot??  That only means that we have 3 times as many sidewalks to shovel as everybody else!)  Anyways, Kai loved his first major encounter with snow and stayed nice and cozy in his new down snowsuit.

Tuning up his skis for ski season.