Time keeps moving by so fast. Each day we are amazed how quickly Claire & Rhys are growing. We sure have a lot of fun 🙂

Claire & Rhys were gifted swimming lessons from their Nana & Papa for Christmas!

Our monkeys have always enjoyed swimming. We did toddler lessons with them when we lived in North Vancouver. We swam lots in South Africa as our building had a pool. However, they became certified water babies when we visited Aunt Christine and Uncle Mike in Perth, Australia. They have a wonderful heated pool so we swam every day maybe twice a day! We bought them swim shirts, flippers and goggles and they swam around the pool with pool noodles under their arms. It was super fun.

We started big kid lessons in January and Claire & Rhys love it! They cannot swim on their own yet but with more lessons to come I am sure it will happen soon. There are 5 kids in their class with their swim instructor, Oliver. In a few short weeks it is amazing how far they have come. Having the kids learn to swim is very important to us & fun for Claire and Rhys.

Thanks Nana & Papa!

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We had a wonderful Christmas this year! We had two weeks vacation from school and work. My Mom, Nana Tricia, came to visit us for a week as well 🙂

We did lots of fun activities, outdoor adventures, ate delicious food, and drank lots of wine after kid bedtime 😉 The kids enjoyed Christmas day with new toys, books etc. It was so nice having my Mom stay with us for awhile and we had a fantastic time out at Wendy & Chris’ for their west-coast dinner party. Such yummy food!

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St. Anne’s Academy visit:

Christmas eve…new PJ’s are a tradition:Sprinkling reindeer food outside for Santa’s visit:Bedtime stories with Nana:

Christmas morning mayhem!

Christmas brunch/day visit with Auntie Debbie:

All the Christmas excitement and neighborhood walk certainly pooped Auntie Debbie out:
Christmas dinner at Wendy & Chris’ home in Sooke:

Cousins:

Nana Nic’s musical Christmas ornaments:Miller siblings:

Over the holidays we enrolled the kids into a holiday baking class at a local cooking school- The London Chef. It is an amazing cooking studio to take cooking classes at…something I will look into for myself 🙂

Jimmy was very sick with the flu so it was a solo parent adventure with our terrific twins. Claire & Rhys bake with me weekly so they are not new to the kitchen. When we arrived all the kids sat at a long table and did some crafts, then they rolled out gingerbread cookie dough and used cookie cutters in Christmas shapes. While those were baking they made candy cane chocolate bark which was fun. All the kids were asked to take turns breaking the candy canes into small pieces with a large rolling pin. Rhys was the star of the show when he hit the candy cane bag repeatedly & would not hand the rolling pin onto the next kid 😉

The kids made peppermint hot chocolate as well. While drinking the hot coco the gingerbread cookies cooled down and as the grand finale they decorated the gingerbread cookies with icing and lots of different types of candy. It was so much fun for me to watch Claire & Rhys enjoy themselves and they had a hoot! We will definitely do this again…maybe an Easter class next.

 

It’s safe to say Victoria, BC is known for its moderate climate. Canada’s westernmost provincial capital is typically light on temperature woes and if it does get “bad” it usually blows through in a day or so. This said, we recently experienced a rare snow day and we definitely made the time to celebrate and get out and play.

 

Recently, Jimmy was at a first aid course that spanned the entire weekend. We had some great weather so I took the kids on a fall adventure to Elk Lake. We packed along some binoculars to look around and have a nature walk. Rhys particularly enjoyed playing in a swampy area with his dinos. It was really fun and after the long walk we played on the beach with a bunch of dinosaur toys. A great day 🙂