Welcome 2013

I can't believe the holidays have come and gone. Where has the time flown. Clearly looking back maybe my New Years resolution should have been to update this blog more often but alas more time spent with Ceilidh then updating the blog sounds more reasonable. I think last year I posted 12 times compared to the first year of her life. And this blog will wind down as I will be printing it and making it into her baby book when she turns two. April 1st is not that far away and this year it falls on Easter Monday so that will probably tie in to her birthday activities. What kid does not like chocolate.
Ceilidh certainly loves it after having one chocolate each day during the holidays as we bought her an advent calendar that counts down the days to Christmas with a chocolate for each day. Technically we have had one for her last year and even the year before that when she was in my belly but this is the first time she actually gets to eat her own chocolate and not watch her parents eat it for her. Although I guess she ate some that first year since she was in my belly consuming what I ate. She looked forward to that piece of chocolate every day and would sometimes have a hard time understanding why she would only get one piece once a day, especially as the calendars where staring at her in the face all the time. Lesson learned don't hang your advent calendar in clear view.  I thought I would have a hard time on day 26 when there were no more chocolates but with most kids out of sight out of mind. Plus she did get a few chocolate treats throughout the whole holidays. She loves mini rolos. Just the right size for a kid. She also enjoyed ginger bread cookies, she got a chance to decorate a ginger bread house which is a Smith Christmas time tradition for the kids. Matt has pictures of when he was a kid decorating ginger bread houses with cousins and friends. And now we have the next generation partaking in the same tradition. Amazingly at that point she didn't realize the candy was edible, I think all that will all change next year.

Decorating her first ginger bread house.

Moving on to Christmas. I realized as I was looking back at the blog that last year I didn't even post any pictures of Christmas. Probably because I was so exciting about our pending trip to Florida last year. So today, better late then never, I will rectify the matter. It is also interesting to see how much she has changed from last year to this year.

Christmas day 2011 opening her stocking

Christmas day 2011 handing mom her bag of coal

While last year she had no concept of presents this year she understood them more. At least after opening a few. So much so that she got really excited post Christmas when she saw a gift bag, sadly the gift had already been opened a while back. One of her favourite gifts was a maid set from her Aunt & Uncle C. It included a broom, two mops and other cleaning paraphernalia. She loves pretending to clean. Just the other night we used some of the stuff to pretend to give bath's to her toys. A mop works really handy when cleaning Noah's ark.

Opening her gift with Aunt C

Aunt C showing her some of the new props

 Other gifts she liked was a tent filled with balls. And one silly thing I caught her playing with that wasn't her gift (we bought one for ourselves and one for her Aunt) was this plastic contraption that helps you fold shirts uniformly. I guess she saw us demonstrating it to her Aunt C and she devised her own version of folding things. She spent a solid 30 minutes coming up with things that she thought she could fold.

Opening the tent with balls of Christmas morning

Having fun folding.

Lastly I will leave my sharing with our rediscovered passion for sledding. We had been dumped with a lot of snow right before Christmas and then again a week after. I think it accumulated to about 70 cm from those two storms. Despite having to remove the stuff from our drive way it makes for lots of fun if you don't have to drive in it. We have been taking advantage of it by pulling Ceilidh around in the sled and also taking her tobogganing in it. Loads of fun for us too because we can go down the hill with her. This is the same sled we used last year to walk around the local trails.

Sledding with her BFF Miss B.

On her sled in our front yard