#tbt: Glow Gardens

I had originally intended to write this post in the week before Christmas but, as we've already discussed, not much blogging happened that week. Ooops. We decided to kick off our holidays by going to Glow Gardens in Toronto. Basically it is a big indoor light extravaganza. According to the website, there were over half a million lights used. It was so pretty. This year there were about seven locations in Canada and two in the US. So Google Glow Gardens next year and see if there might be one near you.

We hit major traffic on the highway. It was because there had been a big accident on the other side the night before. Traffic was so backed up that people were pulling U-turns on a major highway to exit. I’ve never seen that on the 401 before!

The first thing we did was ride bouncy moose. The kids had a blast here, and honestly, so did the grown ups!!!

 

There were fun swings to go on and they were constantly changing colours. I found them very relaxing.

We went with friends of ours and the kids had a great time playing.

I LOVED the Icicle Forest. It was so fun!

 
They had fun photo frames to take pictures with. We enjoyed that!

    I loved seeing all the different light displays.
Did I mention there were over half a million lights?

Our whole family enjoyed the Cinderella carriage!!!

One thing that was really fun was that they had a pile of HUGE stuffed bears. The kids (and grownups) had a lot of fun being buried in, or snuggling with, the bears. 

 
 
There were a ton of opportunities for family pictures
and we took advantage of most of them!

I loved the Glow Tunnel.

We really enjoyed our time at Glow. It was a fun way to kick off the holidays. And it was a photographer’s dream!

PS. Due to some unusual circumstances, I mostly wrote this post on Dave’s phone. This also explains the weird picture sizing. This is not my favourite method of blogging. 

Three Things Thursday (On A Tuesday)

One of the things I love about blogging is when I get fun ideas from other bloggers. This is a post I found through the What's Up Wednesday link up I participated in September. (I meant to publish this earlier but you know...life!) Thank you Morgan at Once Upon a Time... for the idea. You can find her original post here.

Songs that make me think of high school

Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi

I totally remember dancing to this in the high school gym with my Grade 10 crush.

 

Don't Worry, Be Happy -- Bobby McFerrin
I hated this song but one of the girls in my class sang it ALL THE TIME. Ugh. (That's probably why I hated it.)

Kokomo -- The Beach Boys
I loved the movie Cocktail. And Tom Cruise. And... sigh.

Things I like to give

Flowers

 

Baked goods, especially buns

Recommendations of what to read - ha!

Things I like to receive

Flowers
Recommendations of what to read
Something that demonstrates one of my passions.

My friend Janice is especially good at finding things that are uniquely me. I love and adore all of her gifts, like the mug pictured above which says, "You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me" by C.S. Lewis.

Things I hate that many people like

Dogs -- sorry people

Make up (and really, any beauty product)

Texting. Ugh. Although I have a new phone now so maybe I'll get better at it???

Clothes I find uncomfortable

High heels -- shopping for shoes for our wedding was a nightmare.

Me wearing heels. You can read about the dressing up ordeal (as it were) here. It's at about the middle of the post. And I am getting used to a new phone and I can confirm, I still hate change and technology. Gah.

 

Sports bras

Socks, although I do wear them once winter hits.

Things I love seeing other people post

Book review posts -- I really need to post more of these.

Day In the Life/Currently posts

Posts that make me think about serious issues in a different way

So there are some "three things" about me that you may, or may not, have known.

January Goals

I wasn't going to do monthly goals this year, because as you will see from previous years, I always give up on them about halfway through the year. (You can see all my goals posts by clicking on my "Resolved" label.) However, my friend Bekah started out her year with a list of monthly goals and I couldn't help myself. Before I knew it, I had a few goals set out for January. Yikes.

Since we're headed out on vacation with my parents for a week and a half this month (YAY! YAY! YAY!!!), I decided to keep my January goals short and simple :)

1) Finish reading Harry Potter to Rachel.

We've been reading Book 2 since this past spring, I think, and it's time to get it finished.

2) Alternate reading library books with my TBR pile of non-library books.

I wrote about this in my "how I read this year" post which you can read here if you missed. I mentioned that the pile in the back is my pile of books I own, or which friends have lent me, or which I've picked up from little libraries. I'm realizing it's getting out of control so I need to make those books a priority too, even if they don't have due dates :)

Thus far in 2020, I've read three books on my Kobo (e-reader) and no other books so this goal is going well. Or not.

3) Get outside for 30 minutes a day.

I find it so hard to get outside in January. Blah. So I've made a concrete goal to get outside for 30 minutes a day. So far, of the five days in January, I've only not met this goal once so I have some hope. Plus for quite a few of our days, we'll be in a much warmer part of the world so getting outside should be easier :)

Our normal January weather isn't really all that pleasant.

4) Pick December pictures for next year's calendar.

Every year I make two calendars through Shutterfly -- one for us and one for my parents. Every year I spend a few stressful hours going through all the photos from our year trying to pick calendar pictures. This would be much easier if I just spent a bit of time every month doing this instead of doing it all in one chunk, right? Maybe this will be the year I learn that lesson :)

5) Drink more water. And thus, less caffeine.

This is really my version of "get healthier." But seriously, I've been drinking way too much caffeine these past few months and not enough water. I have a goal of 2250ml (which is about nine cups) of water a day. It's really not that much. I'm also trying to cut down on my caffeine intake. Wahhh :(

And I may throw this goal out the window on our vacation -- I'll try to keep up the water intake but I may be less strict about the caffeine intake :)

So those are my goals for January. They're short and sweet and we'll see how I do.

Do you have any January goals? I'd love to hear them. Please, inspire me for February!

In Which We Ate Our Way Through Christmas

I had hoped to post this earlier in the week but it looks like I'm going to be playing catch up on the blog in these first weeks of 2019 2020. Next week I'll talk about Chanukah but today I'm sharing our Christmas celebrations with you.

My parents came to celebrate Christmas with us this year and it was so much fun! We did have bits and pieces of illness throughout the holidays but we still managed to fit everything in, or re-schedule. so I'm thankful for that.

On Christmas Eve we went to our church's Christmas Eve service. It was so beautiful. Afterwards Rachel wanted a picture with two of her older friends. I love both these girls so much and have known them since they were nine months old. They will both turn nineteen in the spring. Yikes!

After the service, we went home, changed into pajamas and got out all the meats, cheeses, crackers, chips, and chocolate for our special Christmas Eve post-church party.

There was A LOT of food :)

Dave and I gave everyone new books and then we participated in the Icelandic tradition of Jólabókaflóð, which our family started last year. I think my parents enjoyed it and hopefully this will be a new tradition which continues for years to come. The kids call it the Christmas-athon which I love :) And we all read until we fall asleep. Rachel read until almost 11pm and the rest of us went to bed soon after that.

 

Christmas morning started with pictures in front of the tree.

The kids exchanged their gifts. Sam was so excited to get his sock moose and Rachel was thrilled about her Frozen sled.

My parents gave Sam a Kobo e-reader. He's read about six books on it and I think he loves it. I used Christmas money from my parents to order myself one. I plan on using it for vacations or to read books that my library only carries in e-format.

 

Last year my parents gave Rachel a Maplelea doll (similar to American Girl dolls) for Christmas. Unfortunately, Leonie got left on a plane this summer and we never got her back. Boo :( Mom and Dad replaced Leonie for Rachel for Christmas and she was shocked. I love the picture of her on the left -- she froze for about five second and then shrieked!
We lit the Christ candle in our Advent wreath and Dave fried bacon for breakfast!

That night, Tim, Janice, and their family joined us for turkey dinner. Janice brought Christmas crackers and each cracker had a whistle so there was even music - ha!

 

Rachel taking a turn at conducting the whistle choir.

  

All twelve of us eating dessert. This was such a fun way to end Christmas. Thanks for capturing a great twelve person selfie, Tessa!

Daily Photo: December 17 - 31, 2019

This is the last post for my Daily Photo 2019. I love that I managed to take photos almost every day this past year. I loved documenting my year this way. I meant to post half of these photos on Christmas Eve but with everything going on last week, I didn't blog at all. Yikes. So here is my catch up post with two weeks of photo fun!

December 17, 2019 -- About an hour after we set it up, our Christmas tree fell over. One of the ornaments which broke was Sam's hot dog -- representing all the baseball games we went to in 2017. I managed to find a replacement for it on this day.

December 18, 2019 -- The kids had a day off school because our high school teachers' union is doing rotating strikes. Unfortunately, the elementary school secretaries, custodians, and support workers are a part of this union so those schools close too because it's potentially unsafe for students to be at school on those days. So the kids and I made cookies, among other things.

December 19, 2019 -- Rachel needed to make a gift for her Secret Snowman at school this day so we needlefelted a cat. Hahaha!!!

December 20, 2019 -- I worked two days in a row this week so spent the first night of my holidays catching up on all the laundry folding and going to bed early :)

December 21, 2019 -- We joined good friends of ours to explore Christmas Glow in Toronto this day. I want to write more about this (and will hopefully have a post next week) because it was beautiful and they have Glow Experiences all across North America.

December 22, 2019 -- It was a big game of Tetris in our fridge after we'd done our big holiday grocery shop but before we'd eaten much of the food.

December 23, 2019 -- Dave's aunt is so great about finding Chanukah crafts and sending them to our kids. They were up by 6:30 on the first official morning of their school break to work on these mosaic menorahs. Crazy kids!

December 24, 2019 -- After the Christmas Eve service we had our traditional meats, cheeses, crackers, chocolates, and chips "meal/snack/pig out" before enjoying Jólabókaflóð.

December 25, 2019 -- The traditional "Sam and Rachel in front of the tree on Christmas morning" picture.

December 26, 2019 -- Last year on Hallowe'en my friend made bourbon apple cider. I loved it so much she shared the recipe with me. I might have drank most of three batches on my own this holiday season. YUM!!!

December 27, 2019 -- I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It was so good.

December 28, 2019 -- The seventh night of Chanukah didn't look like we had anticipated -- Dave came down with the flu and we had to postpone our church's small group Chanukah party. (Yes, you read that right!) We lit the candles though and my dad and I made latkes!

December 29, 2019 -- The eighth, and technically final, night of Chanukah. Due to the flu we still have a couple of Chanukah celebrations left this week.

December 30, 2019 -- Here are all the books on my dresser at the end of the year. My goal is to reduce the pile in the back in 2020. Those are all the books I've borrowed from other people/picked up from little libraries so there is no pressure (read "due date") to read them.

December 31, 2019 -- The very last of the 208 books I read in 2019. I ended on a good one.