The Beattie Gang

This is how hockey is meant to be played … a cleared off patch of ice on a lake surrounded by mountains!

Thankfully this year it hasn’t been too cold yet. We definitely need the time to thicken up our blood and adjust back into these low temperatures after being spoiled for so long in the Philippines. Even though I appreciate the mild winter we’ve had so far I do miss the snow, especially the ‘white’ Christmas part of it. Brown Christmas with the dead grass, leaf less trees, and wind just is not pretty, just bland. After Christmas we went to Invermere for a few days to get out of town and a change of scenery. The moment I got excited and new it was going to be a great few days was when the scenery changed from brown to white!

Lots and lots of amazing white snow. The drive went smoothly with a few pit stops to get out and move our legs. At one spot there was a creek with a path packed down from cross country ski tracks up into the mountains. The snow was a few feet deep, more snow then we’ve seen all season in Lethbridge. The kids jumped out of the van and ran up and down the snow piles, threw some snow balls at each other (or more like Ryan threw snow balls at them) and when it was time to pile back into the van we had to brush the snow off their pants clinging up to their knees. While the kids ran around the parking lot happy with the amount of snow there I ran through piles of my own snow to find the bridge crossing the creek to take some pictures of the amazing untouched white white stuff surrounded by the snow topped trees. Maybe I was just a little excited because it’s been a while since I’ve seen that much snow BUT it really was beautiful I couldn’t resist! Usually the best views are off the beaten path but totally worth the extra few steps to get there, such a beautiful place.

The drive went smooth, the kids were distracted enough that it seemed relatively painless for them and we arrived with enough time to let them run for a little bit before getting them settle and into bed with promises of swimming and skating on the lake in the next few days. Yay!

We have one neighbour thanks to our corner lot and paved alley and she’s amazing. She’s always bringing over treats for the kids and Sage (the cat). Halloween she packs each of my kids a special bag of treats with a toy or two in there for them, she gave Brayden a big cardboard box of all the old LEGO she was getting rid of and since she’s on her own she LOVES to chat. You need to give yourself a good half hour if you are going over to say hello but her stories are interesting and she has a lot of history to share growing up in Germany. Two brothers died in WWII and the third was lost for a few years until the end of the war in a concentration camp. This year before Christmas she brought over a poinsettia, chocolates, her daughter brought us a Christmas tray filled with home made treats and she got the kids a gingerbread house. In return we shovel her sidewalk and keep an eye out on her since she’s getting up there in years and her husband is in a care home. The arrangement seems to work out for everyone.
So thanks Mrs. Hunter, the kids loved decorating this:

I think it’s amazing the time and effort people put into the kids school Christmas Concert this year. They had two performances, a matinee and an evening performance which made for a very long day for the kids and it was perfect. The whole student body stayed on stage (except for the two kindergarten classes who left to put on their little angel costumes) and they all sat patiently waiting for their turn to get up to sing. It was a short program that went smoothly, the perfect length, with great songs. I think what I thought was great was that they didn’t forget why we have Christmas. It seems that so many of the stores don’t wish you a Merry Christmas, just a happy holidays to make things politically correct, and it takes the whole Christmas Spirit out of it for me. There is something magical about so many people uniting for the same occasion together. If someone were to wish me a Happy Hanukkah it would in no way offend me so what’s the big deal!? Spread the cheer people. Anyway – side rant over …
The kids Christmas concert still had a nativity and even though they had fun songs they also had some great Christmas songs reminding us the real reason we have Christmas. There were some songs that made me laugh, Brayden had a one liner into the microphone to say in front of everyone and he was loud and clear (I’m a proud mom) and Sydney almost brought me to tears when the kindergarteners came out glowing in their angel costumes during the nativity scene because really, when you are that young you are pretty innocent and pure like an angel.

When it was over and the kids were getting ready for bed Brayden turns to me and says “mom, I’m SO tired of singing.”
I don’t blame the poor guy! But, they were awesome.

Different cultures have different taste preferences. India tends to go spicy, North Americans like salty, South Pacific Islands love their root veg and the Philippines adds sugar to everything. The Philippines has a fast food restaurant named Jollibee that I would say is McDonalds main competition or the other way around. They serve lots of deep fried meals with rice, sweet style spaghetti, meat on a stick, fast food steak in gravy, and burgers that just don’t taste quite like what we’re used to. They have THE best spicy chicken joy hands down. Deep fried KFC style chicken with rice. It is so spicy and delicious picked apart with your hands and mixed with their cooked to perfection ball of rice wrapped in paper. YUM.
Aside from the mouth watering Chicken Joy the Jollibee mascot, The Jollibee, can not compare to Ronald McDonald, Wendy or the Burger King crown. It is SHUT THE FRONT DOOR awe-mazing. To prove it I am sharing this video of the Jollibee dancing at a birthday party. This is no joke. Although I have never seen the Jollibee perform this exact dance number I have seen him dance, and it’s just as draw dropping good as this is so please enjoy!!!
PS It only gets better and better.

I love the smell of a real Christmas tree, there is just something magical about it. Memories maybe, that pine scent that screams mountain air, I just love it. We had a real tree every Christmas growing up and I even remember going up into the mountains to cut our own tree down one year. So do I feel guilty about robbing my children of those same real tree experiences by purchasing our ‘fake’ tree this year? Not one bit.
Real tree’s that I saw this year are $45. To spend that every year just wasn’t seeming like the best financial plan especially when I got a 7′ tree that is so thick and full for that same amount! Yay to used items.
We don’t have a lot of Christmas decorations. Brayden has been bummed out this year at the lack of Christmas in the house but I’ll just blame being gone for the last 5 years and slowly start building up the decorations from this Christmas on. We set up our 5 nativities, put up the lights, decorated the tree and that’s about it. I ended up buying a wreath for the front door and that’s pretty impressive for us…. our very first wreath. So the tree, lights and nativities are all up on one wall. 1/3 of the room. It’s the Christmas wall and it looks fabulous and it’s just enough Christmas for me.
The cat is pretty excited about the tree, almost as excited the kids. It’s her playground. She climbs up the trunk and swats at the decorations trying to get them off the tree. Thankfully all our decoration are hand made or hand me downs from the 60′s and so nothing too valuable to worry about and so far nothing broken.
So cheers. I hope Christmas comes quick because we’re ready for it!

Our girls have come down with a croup sounding cough. It really sucks to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of a dog barking only to realize it’s your kid. Sydney was so scared when she woke up coughing that she starting crying not understanding why that awful noise was coming out of her. Hearing it makes my chest hurt, my poor girls.
We had a very lazy day of sitting around and training Madison how to properly use the tissue box for her nose. The thing that sucks the most about these kinds of colds is you can still kind of do ‘stuff’ but you can’t really do ‘stuff’ either. They were really lethargic but had a little more energy then sitting on the couch doing nothing kind of thing.
So what do you do? You go on pinterest and steal other peoples creativity. I know I’ve blogged about Pinterest before but it really has a lot of great easy idea’s for days like yesterday. I have a craft shelf on the top and almost out of reach parts of our book shelf that was stocked with paper and paints so those were the type of crafts I was going for. We did some pretty generic stuff, Brayden brought up a huge cardboard box from the basement cutting arm and head holes out of it and made himself a robot shell and Sydney did her thing along side him. Maddy napped.
So here are some of the cute things we made thanks to pinterest which was how I got through the entire day inside my house. Today …. it’s 10am and I’m already going crazy BUT I’ve got a list that can’t wait so outside world, here I come!

Ryan had heard on the radio that Santa would be arriving at the Park Place Mall Saturday night with his reindeer! I guess this is an annual thing but it was the first we’d ever heard of it and we were not going to pass on the chance to see Santa’s real live reindeer, especially after watching the old Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie a few weeks ago. To be honest I was way more excited then the kids were because they had no idea what was going to happen and I think they were expecting to see little cartoons like the ones from the movie.
We set up camp right beside the pen for the reindeer because honestly … we could see Santa any other day but the reindeer were a “one night only” kind of big deal. It was perfect. They announced Santa was in the building and all these hyper children and their exhausted parents stood there waiting and watching and then the cheering started. We couldn’t see him but we knew he was there! Finally Santa was in our sites as he lead his reindeer into the pen and went and took his seat at the Santa display with one of his Reindeer (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer? I have no idea who the lucky reindeer was) and hunkered in for a long night of pictures and kids listing off their greedy idea’s of what they want for Christmas.
Brayden had a melt down when we said it was time to leave. I guess we didn’t state clearly enough all day long that we were going for the reindeer only and that talking to Santa would be saved for a different day. Not his best moment but I guess I did take a little pleasure in the fact that he was upset enough to obviously still believe in the magic of Santa.
As we were walking back to the Van one of the Reindeer was out for a walk and posing for pictures for some lucky kids. We totally were all over that action!

It was totally worth the late night. We only had to stand around for 30 minutes before Santa arrived and we ran into some friends which made the wait shorter and the kids burned off quite the amount of energy playing tag during that wait.
I am SO excited to plop the kids on Santa’s lap and see what kind of picture we get this year!!!

We took the kids mini golfing on Friday to celebrate Ryan finishing up his work day in the early afternoon. I had decided that it was going to go one of two ways. Madison would freak out and get frustrated with the whole thing or she’d love it and not really care what was going on and be happy just to have a club of her own. She went with the latter which was the route I was hoping for. Her club was just her size and she would just plop her golf ball down wherever she felt like it and tap it into the hole. She stayed out of the way when she needed to and did an amazing job fetching my ball out of the hole and bringing it to me, and of course it helps that she’s just so dang cute.
Brayden just seemed to be an all star. I don’t think it ever took him more then three shots putts to get it into the hole and at the end hole he plopped it right into the middle slot winning himself a free round. As quickly as he picked it up it was a little annoying to hear him brag for the rest of the night and flaunt that free ticket around with him. Maybe i’m just jealous he beat me?
Sydney seemed to prefer to take a Happy Gilmore approach to golf and attack the ball like a slap shot at the puck. Since Friday’s we do a movie as a way to end off the school/work week and the movie this day was “Tooth Fiary” which stars Dwayne Johnson as a hockey player, I’m pretty sure that’s where she picked up that swing of hers. At least she had no problems getting the golf ball down the green towards the hole, it was the lightly tapping in that seemed to be a challenge.
Other then it being the coldest day to date for us Filipino’s in a long long time, it was a good day! Lots of fun to get out of the house together as a family and just relax and have a good time. The bonus, we have to go back at some point to redeem Brayden’s free coupon. Hopefully the next time it will be just as fun.

Our first Christmas in the Philippines, which we thought would be our only, we stumbled across this great nativity. We loved it mostly because it had a Lechon (pig on a spit) which is totally Filipino. The characters were also wearing traditional Filipino costume and one man was carrying a rooster. It was very much Filipino and we loved that. It was huge though and super expensive so we couldn’t justify the purchase. Every year after that around Christmas time we would bring up the nativity and contemplate purchasing it with the possibility of it being our last Christmas in the Philippines. Each year we couldn’t bring ourselves to justify the cost of the purchase and so we just coveted it from a distance.
Ryan’s very last trip to the Philippines was a few weeks ago and he mentioned that maybe we could get that nativitiy with the Lechon. This time it wasn’t just the cost on my mind but the problem of getting it home. They recently went and slashed luggage allowance and we knew with excess things he had picked up for friends of ours we were already well over the allowance. Ryan decided to go to the store and see what good fortune his negotiating skills could provide for us. I have to admit he did all right. I think the amount that he saved was the amount it cost us to get our excess luggage home which every peso saved helps.
Sadly a few pieces didn’t make it home as in tact as we’d hoped. The angels wings busted off, the pig on the spit was broken into at least 3 pieces and the caribow’s horns were no longer sharp BUT with Ryan’s amazing hands he glued it all perfectly and we got some good touch up paint and now it’s like new.
It’s huge, it’s busy with colours and animals but it’s Filipino and wouldn’t be Filipino any other way. The different styles of clothing worn are beautiful and a part of their history. The pig, the man cuddling his rooster, the ducks and caribow are something we saw everyday and wouldn’t ever think twice about seeing. It has been the last 5 amazing years of our lives and the memories and warm fuzzies it brings me every time I look at it were worth the money spent. It sits on reeds in the corner next to some sands from the Phiippine waters and our Philippines outdoor broom next to the fireplace. We are SO proudly Filipino/Canadian!