Watchful Elves

Every year at our house in December one of Santa's Elves comes to watch over the kids to make sure they are being good up until Christmas.  He comes each morning and watches from a different place in the house, and each evening he goes back to the North Pole to tell Santa about any good or bad deeds from the day.  Some mornings he will supprise the kids with a treat.  Kirby is the elf that usually comes to visit, however this year, Kirby had some 'troubles' (possibly due to the move), so a british elf friend of his, "Kipper"took over duties while we are overseas.  Tonight is Christmas eve and it will be Kipper's last time visiting until next December!  He always finds some ingenious places to sit and every morning the kids have fun trying to find him.

Putting Up The Christmas Tree: Take 2

We picked up our tree yesterday (Sunday), but after decorating it once we had a bit of an incident involving Noah, his intense interest to take things apart, and a quick-release lever on the tree base which resulted in the tree on the floor with lights not working, broken ornaments, and pine needles everywhere.
We replaced the lights and re-decorated this evening-take 2!

Short days

Still 20 days until the winter solstice but the days are already short, but not surprising given that we are about 51.5 degrees latitude. I stopped on my way to work this morning and snapped this shot with my phone at about 7:50 am.

Roving Dinner & Rain

Last night we participated in a local 'roving dinner' with the 10 homes in the Clemenstone farm area where we live. It was great fun! We started at a single house for drinks and then split up spending different courses with different groups until we all met up again around midnight for drinks and music again. It had been raining hard all day and the roads were flooded - a lot of water even for here! Below are a couple of pics from this morning where the water has dropped. The videos give you an idea of the water levels on the road last night!