Pre-Christmas, Christmas!

Since my folks decided they’d rather cruise through the Panama Canal over Christmas than spend it in -20 below Edmonton, we had an early Tousignant-Armstrong Christmas this year! The day started off with a visit from Santa at the Glenora Indoor Playground Christmas party (notice Elodie’s lack of enthusiasm about going anywhere near the jolly old elf… ), some cookie making/eating, and as always, being spoiled rotten by grand-maman and grand-papa!

Last night Ginger and Kasey were having fun with one of my favourite things (shoes!), so we felt it was only fair that tonight they steal one of Pat’s favourites: the camera

Shoemakers or shoe-”breakers”?

The girls are often getting in trouble by finding my favourite shoes and trying to walk around the house in them so I guess it’s not too surprising that their elves, chosen for them by Santa, would have the same shoe affinity! Interestingly enough, Elodie left alone with all the shoes, skips the FLuevogs and goes directly for the Louboutins!

Yesterday was also our Tousignant-Armstrong Christmas turkey dinner and mom and Pat did an AMAZING job!

Day 4 of Elfcapades

Elf Mischief

Well, the magic elves have been a success! The only drawback is rather than creating one day of excitement where the kids wake up really early and rush into the living room; I think we’ve now created 25 such days in the month of December! Isabelle woke up at 5:30am yesterday to find out what her elves had gotten up to during the night. This morning was a much more ‘reasonable’ 6am… Yesterday, the girls were also given their annual Christmas dresses from grand-maman and they love them so much I think that is all they will be wearing for the rest of the month!

Decking the Halls

The girls were pretty excited to discover their two magic elves, Ginger and Kasey this morning! This, followed by the arrival of grand-maman and grand-papa and putting up the Christmas tree, made for a fantastic day! Isabelle actually requested to go to bed, since once we all fall asleep, her magic elf will come to life! Scroll through the pictures to see the ‘adventure’ the elves had overnight, eating the advent calendar chocolate and reading the Christmas books.

The Magic Elves have Arrived

Inspired by a recent article I saw about a family ‘bringing to life’ their kids’ toy dinosaurs with various night time adventures (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/refe-tuma/dinovember_b_4270164.html) we’ve decided to try to add some non-present-focussed holiday magic to the girls Christmas this year. Two magic elves have just arrived from the North Pole to visit with the girls until Dec 24th, when they have to return to help Santa load the sleigh. We plan to have the girls tuck them in at night and then set up various night time ‘adventures’ to have Isabelle and Elodie discover in the morning!

Who says Christmas is just for kids? I’m so excited to get started!!!

Snowgirls

Since the temperature had finally risen from -25 to a more reasonable -4, while Michelle went for a run, I took the girls out for a play in the snow. Here are the resulting antics in the yard.

Oh the weather outside is frightful…

If you don’t live in Edmonton you probably aren’t aware of the fact that the last few days have been cold in Edmonton. I mean COLD!! So despite beautiful blue sky days and an incredible amount of fresh snow outside, the Armstrong family has been trying to keep entertained indoors. In a household that’s 75% female, that’s meant doing some baking (for Belle that means in high heels and a pink dresses), watching movies, and for the two younger members of the household, a non-stop parade of new outfits, tutus and clothing and accessory combinations… Some of the photos come from our phones so aren’t the best quality, but it gives you a sense of the silliness around our house these days!

Running, running, running!

Since Spring, Michelle and I have been training to run the Shawnigan Lake Half-Marathon, which just happened to take place earlier today. It was the first time I’d ever run in a proper half-marathon, and since my longest training run was 20km, it was also the furthest I had ever run in my life. It was Michelle’s third half-marathon, and I let her set a pace that was probably a bit faster than I might have chosen for myself, but apparently she knows me better than I do, and we had a fantastic race, finishing more or less in the middle of the pack at a time of 2:04:08.

The Shawnigan course was beautiful and the weather was perfect (sunny, but cool), and we finished up the morning with an amazing brunch at the Merridale Cidery with our good friend Shanna, who is so awesome that she drove up from Victoria to take pictures for us, insisting that we needed finish line shots. All in all, it was a fantastic and very tolerably gruelling morning, and it definitely won’t be our last half-marathon together.

Beach and Park

Here are some pics we took today at Ross Bay and Beacon Hill Park. We’re here in Victoria for a few reasons, starting with the Shawnigan Lake half-marathon tomorrow, and ending with us leaving our children with my folks while we head off to San Francisco for an emergency medicine conference. We’re excited about both, but for pretty different reasons. I think we’ll definitely feel like we earned our relaxation time in California.