Christmas Traditions

Merry Christmas to all our beloved friends and family! We are definitely enjoying the Christmas season this year. As new parents, Jason and I could not be more thrilled to celebrate our first Christmas with our baby girl Maya. Christmas has always been our favorite holiday and having a child to share that with has been a wonderful blessing. Our plans were to spend Christmas in Saskatchewan with our families. However we have one Calgary family who we celebrated with before we left. My best friend Lorrie, her husband Tom and their two children, Cody and Kaitlyn have been our local family for as long as we've lived in Calgary. We don't know what we'd do without them in our life and we are fortunate that any holidays we don't spend in Saskatchewan, we get to celebrate with the Madores. So as per our tradition we had Christmas dinner and gift exchange with them in Calgary. It was a lot of fun! Maya was SPOILED and we suspect that it is only the beginning of Auntie Lorrie's plans to spoil her rotton. Kaitlyn just loved holding and cuddling Maya and never let her out of her sight. We have our future babysitter if Lorrie will give up Maya to her. After dinner, Cody and Kaitlyn watched movies upstairs while us "big kids" had some wine and martinis and had some fun with the Wii. Needless to say, it was a bit of a crazy night but got our Christmas celebrating off to a great start.



On December 21st, Maya and I flew out to Saskatchewan. Jason tackled the long drive to bring the gifts along with all of Maya's toys. He would do anything for his little girl including driving 8 hours in the cold and snow just so Maya had all the toys she likes to play with. She has him wrapped around her little finger already. Our flight was not as smooth as the many others that we have taken already (Maya has been on a plane almost 10 times already). I think she cut tooth number 8 on that flight because when we left it was not through yet but later that day, I could feel it!! So she was fussy for the flight already but we were delayed one hour before we were able to leave and were stuck on the plane the whole time so it was a loooong flight but the lady beside us was very kind and helpful and we finally made it to Saskatoon. My mom picked us up at the airport, we visited with uncle Dax and auntie Tanya for an hour and then drove the final leg to Prince Albert. Jason made it safely to PA on the 23rd.

We spent Christmas Eve with Jason's family. It was the first time that all the cousins were together since Maya was born. Jason's sister has 3 boys and his brother has 1 boy so Maya was the first girl. It was fun to watch them all play together and we finally got the long awaited snapshot of all the cousins together. After the Christmas meal, we opened gifts and visited.

Cole thought this book was pretty cool. It's a book for DANGEROUS boys. Fun!

Kaleb is working on his gift while Joseph and Linken play in the background.

Photo of all the cousins.

Christmas Day we woke early with excitement. I anticipated that it would be busier than usual and I was right. Maya had a great night's sleep and awoke happy and playful. My uncle Fred, Marilyn, cousin Darcie and her fiance, Chris, joined us for Christmas morning along with my brother Dax and his wife Tanya, my mom and grandma. It was a full house!! Total chaos as we unwrapped and ate and laughed but it was warm and cozy and wonderful. Marilyn made Maya a Christmas morning nightgown that was long, beautiful and white - she was our Christmas angel. What a sweetheart.

I know we will look back on these pictures and smile. So sweet and innocent. Christmas is a time to make memories and remember times past. My great-grandmother (my baba) started a tradition of cross-stitching Christmas stockings for all her great grandchildren and managed to get most of them finished by the time she passed away. She was almost blind as she did her final ones. However, my auntie Myrna took up that torch and has since continued to ensure all new additions to our family have a "baba" stocking. This year, she was able to find time to make a beautiful stocking for Maya for her first Christmas and it is a treasure. It reminds us that Christmas is not about expensive gifts but about family and togetherness, tradition and new memories and being thankful for the blessings in our life. We are thankful for all of you and wish you a joyful 2009.