Christmas begins

Happy Thanksgiving 🌽🏈🐕 to all my American friends and family! 

Here in Canada there is really no good marker (like Thanksgiving is in the US) to indicate when the Christmas season should begin. Because of that, people have been putting up Christmas lights since Halloween. Around here you never know when it might be bitterly cold, so in a lot of ways it is smart to put up your lights early. Several of our neighbours have had lights up for a few weeks already. But I just can’t be okay with starting Christmas so early. 

Fortunately we lucked out today and had a warm day – a few degrees above freezing – so we were able to put up our lights at a reasonable time and do it without frostbite. 

Now Christmas can officially begin 🎄

Winter fall

 Although it will still officially be fall for quite some time yet, winter started a couple of weeks ago here. It snowed, and we have already had a bout of extreme cold (although today was very mild). 

That means it’s sled weather, and the kids are loving it: 

Halloween continued

 In the days leading up to Halloween we were very busy and didn’t have a chance to bake Halloween cookies, which has become somewhat of a tradition in this household. So we allowed Halloween to continue just a bit and baked our cookies on Friday.

Trick or treat

 

Halloween started out the way it should - Jeff totally enjoying himself. 

The kiddos had fun going all around the neighborhood trick-or-treating with Jeff,

while I stayed home and handed out candy. By the time we took Maren and Linden up to bed, we had given out candy to a record ~275 kids. Exhausting but fun 🎃

Halloween preparation

 Our pumpkins are carved:

Trick-or-treating is on the brain:

(In this picture Linden on the left is a ghost and Jeff on the right is Frankenstein.)

Decorations are up:

We have plenty of candy, the snow has melted and the weather is predicted to be quite mild tomorrow. I think we are ready for Halloween!