I can’t believe the twins turned 4 today. Not sure where the time is disappearing, but they are having an absolute blast today playing with all of their new toys.

We hosted 18 people for a huge breakfast feast this morning, and now I’m cleaning up and watching my Dolphins slowly lose to the *cough* Bills. Soon, it is out for Chinese food–the girls most favourite meal in the world (and one of my top choices as well).

Anyways, here is a quick pic taken today as they unwrapped a pair of Rapunzel plushies. They LOVE anything Disney.

The weekend:

Friday night was spent watching Coraline in digital. And it was awesome. Kudos to Henry Selick and his talented team at LAIKA. The level of detail in this stop-motion production was truly breathtaking. And Henry Selick did a superb job of adapting and tweaking Neil Gaiman’s source material. I can’t wait for Coraline to come out on DVD so I can watch, watch, and re-watch a film that will surely become a modern day classic similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Saturday was spent running around on errands, making homemade lasagna, and cleaning the house. Later that night we had friends come over for a visit and dinner. Wow, was there a lot of food. I can’t believe how fast our friends’ (and our own) kids are growing up. Liz and Jay have a 14-month-old boy who I thought was born a few months ago. Crazy, that thing called time.

Which brings us to Sunday. First we had my Dad come over for a visit and breakfast, and then when he left, we got ready to head to a birthday party–a 1st birthday no less. And again, I thought Julie and Brent’s boy was born month’s ago, but nope, he’s turning 1 and running around their home like a whirling dervish. Good times were had by all, with lots of food, conversation, and of course, a grand assortment of alcoholic beverages. Yum!

After getting home and putting the kiddies to bed, I finished reading a chapter of a friend’s WIP in order to get ready for our crit group meeting later that night.

The entire weekend was a blur. I’m sitting here at the day job wondering where it went. But spirits are high (today anyway), and I’m eager to dive back into the WIP, if only to distract me from other projects, like FEVER and its sequels.

No, that isn’t the title of a new YA novel I’m working on, but the highlights of my very busy weekend. Really, I must stop calling every weekend busy, or crazy, or insane, as they all are. I should instead mention a weekend’s theme when it is in fact not any of the latter. Mental note taken.

But yes, this weekend consisted of a Saturday filled with tromping through a Christmas Tree farm, saw-in-hand, trying to find “the” tree for this year. After numerous “this could be it!” episodes, we finally found one worthy of my blade — and livingroom window. Saw, saw, saw, and timber. And then, after much muttering under steamy breath (it was very cold and icy outside), I fastened said tree to the roof of the minivan. It was a glorious site to behold.

After I trimmed the tree and got it safely fastened in the house and strung with a multitude of lights, Erika and the kids helped decorate the tree. There were many cases of “watch out!” and “don’t drop that glass ornament!”, but all-in-all, the girls had a great time putting all of the ornaments on the lowest of low branches. The tree looked like it was wearing a square dancing dress made of gold, silver, and red baubles. After the kids went to bed, we properly adjusted the placement of the ornaments and there was much rejoicing.

And so I present our “real” Christmas Tree 2008 (not to be confused with the “not so real” Christmas Tree 2008 which is all plasticy and in another room looking somewhat depressed):

After the tree was taken care of, I started work on cleaning the house as we had over 20 people coming for a Birthday Brunch on the Sunday morning. You see, Claire and Madeleine, the twins, are turning 2 later this week so with Christmas around the corner, we decided to have something earlier rather than later. Anyway, Erika busied herself with icing cakes I had baked earlier in the day and I, well, cleaned. Until nearly 1AM. Not so much fun.

Sunday was nuts. 21 people showed up at 10AM for brunch and cake and gifts which went well. The food was a hit (and there was lots of it). After people cleared out from the brunch, we packed up and headed to another fantastic Christmas party my cousin throws annually, with Santa and food and drinks and much merriment. When we got back home from the party the lot of us started work on our Gingerbread House. Although not quite as architecturally sound as last year’s model (this one was constructed by a pair of 2-year-olds and their older sister), it still looks tasty.