The Talens' Tales

I love my people and they did a great job showing their love to me on Sunday.  Breakfast in bed. I forgot to take a picture until I was mostly finished with my cereal. Gifts that were made in school and my requests of a new cookbook and mesh produce bags. And Mataya also did a little questionnaire and drew a picture of me at school. It is pretty fantastic!

We had a wonderful holiday season this year. The winter weather has been rather crazy, but that made for great time at our house with family. We had a nice looking tree. Made Cut-out Sugar Cookies...with all hands on deck for decorating. Joash and Mataya decorated gingerbread houses. Once they were assembled, they were both able to indepently put on the icing and candies! We opened gifts with our family, with a scavenger hunt for the kids to find their final gifts. Christmas day found us with a turkey and lots of lovely company. Boxing day was a great day for our almost annual Boxing Day walk on the beach. Wilbert's brother and family were here for the week following Christmas. That means lots of music... Cousin time (all of the kids LOVED Nieko)... More presents (including the gift that has been circling the family since at least 2010)... And a family swim followed by an early supper at Boston Pizza. The kids sure changed a lot in that week...

My parents came for a week long visit and we had a wonderful time with them.  We spent a morning at That Fun Place.  We also went mini-golfing one morning, but we forgot to take pictures. Another day we went the Greenwich Beach, which has very interesting interpretive center, trails to walk and lovely, quiet beach. Exploring the map of eastern PEI a the interpretive center  Walking the trails at Greenwich Beach  They have nice lookout tower at the beach.  Playing on the beach with Grandpa and Grandma.  We also spent sometime downtown Charlottetown. We stopped a the library, had Cows Ice Cream and did the Fox Story Walk together. It was a fun day. We are so happy that Grandpa and Grandma could come to visit and we look forward to the next time we see them.

A few weeks ago we had a great visit from Emil, Karisa and Zeke. There was lots of cousin love...  Oom Emil love....  And Oom Wilbert and tractor magazine love...  There were lots of walks with Oma...  And trips to the beach...  They were here over Canada, so there was the annual Church Picnic, of course...  It was a cool day, but no rain.  But yes, I did wear my sweater on the beach.  We also took a family morning and visited The Butterfly House  It was lovely and peaceful and most of the family enjoyed it. Zeke was a little nervous the whole time, but over all did well. We also had a picnic lunch and saw the Young Company Show at the Confederation Center. We had a great time and were sad to see them go. Hopefully the time will just fly by until our next visit.

So I have been really bad at blogging lately. Anyway, here are some highlights from the last little bit. We are pirates with a treasure map. Everyone likes to colour. "Let's pile on top of the cow named Hazel." And the biggest news is that Joash's other front tooth fell out. He was pretty excited about this and now has a pretty big hole in his mouth.

Well, we are nearing the end of Christmas break. And overall we had a pretty great Christmas. Gideon got sick during the night on Christmas Eve, so I didn't make it to church on Christmas Day. But, no one else got sick, so it was okay and we still enjoyed Christmas together and with extended family. The kids decorated a gingerbread house before Christmas  We also Skyped with my parents on the Saturday before Christmas and the kids opened the gifts from Grandpa and Grandma. They really enjoyed the craft kits they recieved and spent the rest of the day working hard on them.  New PJ's from Great Grandma!  We did a lunch of appetizers and finger foods on Christmas day.  Gideon really got the whole idea of gift opening down.  We a nice afternoon of opening and then playing with gifts.  On New Year's Eve, we celebrated Christmas with the Talen family that was here.  Joash had to run around the house 5 times before he could open o...