Category: 4 Years

Daddy turned Ryan’s Thomas the Train table into a Lego table for his birthday last year.  Lately, Ryan has really been getting into Lego more and more.  For Christmas Ryan asked for a Lego City Garage from Grace’s Dad.  It was a real challenge to build but he did a great job.  There were a few spots where we had to step in but I would say 98% of the work he did himself.  Check it out!

Christmas is always such a special time.  It was extra special for us because if was the first one for us in Vancouver.  Ryan was super excited for Santa Claus to come.  He had written a letter to Santa to ask for some Lego and promised to be a good boy.  Ryan even received a personalized video message from Santa.

When Christmas finally arrived Ryan had to wait for his sister to wake up.  Madeline had decided to wake up for about three hours on Christmas eve and was very tired.  She wanted to sleep in – not Ryan!  All he wanted was to get up and see what Santa had brought him and open all of his gifts.  After some convincing Ryan said he would wait and decided to watch the movie Rudolph while he waited for his sister to wake up.

Ryan and his lego set from Harabogie	Posing in front of Ryan’s frame for mommy and daddy
Ryan loved his new pjs from Hero	A new lunch bag from Grandpa and Lynn
Mommy also got her own pair of PJs from Ryan	A set of books from Baba
Opening the stockings!	Ryan also loved helping Madeline open gifts

I’ve been wanting to take Ryan up to the top of Grouse Mountain during skiing season for quite some time.  Grouse mountain has some special Christmas activities with Santa, real reindeer, skating, sleigh rides, skiing, hot chocolate and lots of snow!!  This was Ryan’s real first ‘snow’ adventure.  He has seen snow before when it was coming down in Vancouver but that’s just not the same as snow coming down at the top of a mountain.  It was cold and stormy for the first hour or so and pretty exciting.  Some of the photos almost don’t look real.

I think sooner or later I am going to have to get a season’s ski lift pass to really introduce Ryan to skiing.  We are just about to introduce him to hockey so it’s just a bit of a balancing act for now.

Here are some photos from Grouse mountain.

A real reindeer?	Ryan the red nose reindeer
The snow almost doesn’t look real	Another smile in the snow
Ryan’s first outdoor skating experience	Do you see Santa’s workshop in the back?
Climbing a snowy mountain can be tough!	Silly boys!

An awesome photo with Santa on top of a mountain!

Ryan’s really good friend Ella’s dad owns a bar called ‘Displace’.  Peter (Ella’s dad) invited us to his staff party.  It was a great party with turkey and all of the side dishes.  Fantastic food!  The kids had a blast and were dancing up a storm while the adults were drinking like it was going out of style.

We have a cute photo of all of the kids together.

On our way to Hawaii we stopped over for 5 days to visit Grace’s family.  It had been a year since all of us had visited so it was quite a special occasion.  Part of the reason for the visit was to celebrate Harabogie and Halmonie’s 40th wedding anniversary.  We have some great photos from the ceremony but we also spent a lot of time just visiting.

Daddy lost his memory card from our trip in LA so we did lose a lot of photos of the kids visiting the grand parents but at least for the wedding ceremony we hired a professional photographer.

Posing at the country club	The kids being kids
Ryan and Tyler having a blast at the circus	Mommy posing with Ryan all dressed up

..this is one of my favorite photos of all time that I caught at the right moment on my phone!