And it's that time of the year already

You know you have a 21 month old in your house when you put up and decorate the Christmas tree and then carefully move the couches in front of the tree so that your 21 month old cannot get to the tree to play with the decorations / try to eat the decorations / pull the tree down / try to climb the tree or whatever (we'll see how long before she figures out how to climb over the couches). But our tree is up and it is starting to feel like Christmas is coming. We won't be putting any presents under the tree until closer to the time because... can you just imagine if we put our presents out now and with a 21 month old in the house?

Today (Sunday) was a wonderful day. Today we had the Child Cancer Foundation Christmas party and it was held at Rainbow's End. We haven't been there for years now and so it was really cool to go today. Of course the nice thing is that Bianca is old enough now and so she had a fantastic time. They have all these really cool rides and Bianca is old / tall enough to try out a lot of these rides and her favourites (by far) were the Dodgems where she had the best time ever trying to bump into Terence and her other favourite was the log ride. She could tell me in detail what to do, how it works, what to expect and so on. Terence, Jody and Bianca went off and did all the bigger people rides and Caitlyn and I spent most of our day in the section for smaller kids. Caitlyn went from the bouncy castle to the Merry-go-round to the Dragon (a sort-of-mini, toddler friendly rollercoaster) and back to the bouncy castle, the Merry-go-round, the Dragon and so on. I have to say that the Dragon was by far Caitlyn's favourite and she must have gone on this one a good couple of times. Of course the empty stage in the barn was pretty cool too (the barn is like a big inside picnic area that they must use for events sometimes, but it was empty and open today and so we sat there for a while and Caitlyn had the best time eaver running across the stage).

Of course being surrounded by all this excitement and eating some picnic type of food that we packed, but mostly junk food (because you how can you go to a theme park and not eat some junk food?), I was surprised that Caitlyn had virtually no temper tantrums. She doesn't always understand why she's not allowed in certain places, why she has to leave a particular thing that she enjoys doing and so on and so I was pleasantly surprised when she coped well with everything. Even sitting in her stroller went down well (since she discovered that she is able to walk places, she's not so keen on the stroller and would voice her disapproval very loudly if you try and put her in the stroller) and when Terence and Bianca went off doing something she called out "te-whe" (Terence), Bakie (Bianca), but no tears.

At 3pm we went to the Chalets where the kids got to meet Santa and they each got a really big present. Caitlyn was a bit upset at first because as Santa arrived she went to sit on the chair next to him and was not impressed when Terence took her from the chair and put her on the floor next to him, but the kids got called fairly quickly anyway, so it didn't really matter. I have to say that this part is always a highlight in Bianca's book, seeing Santa and when he gives her presents, well you can't get much better than that :-).

The girls were incredibly spoiled and as a family we had the best day ever. We would like to say a big, big thank you to CCF and all the volunteers who made this day possible and special for us. Thank you so very much!

Shortly after meeting Santa we decided it was time to go home. Caitlyn was well-overdue for her nap and when we got home we realised that we were quite exhausted too and so we all had an afternoon nap (and woke up at 6pm!). Of course that just messed up our routine because Caitlyn would usually go to bed by around 6:30pm or 7pm and of course having just woken up at 6pm means that there was no way she would go to bed by 7pm, and so she went to bed rather late tonight. I suspect she will be a bit tired tomorrow morning, but that will just mean an early nap and in bed tomorrow night slightly earlier than usual. We suspect Caitlyn might be teething again which is why she would not have slept very well the past couple of nights.

And then before I finish - thank you very much to the Howell family for sponsoring me for Funrazor, it is much appreciated! I've had some really positive comments on the way I look now with my new hair "style" and a big thank you to all who helped me participate!