How will Santa get in?

In all the years that Stephannie and Brendan have been married they only had one place without a fireplace, but that Christmas they were at families to Santa had a way to get to them. With it being Aria's first Christmas how were the stockings going to be hung by the fire with care if there was no fireplace?

What happens when you have a bunch of boxes from baby furniture, Amazon orders and moving and you add a teacher/artist and engineer? You  get a home made fireplace!

Aria was checking that Daddy was measuring twice and cutting once.

"Where is the end of the tape?"

End result....drum roll please....

   

New fireplace, decked out for Christmas and sporting our Lego winter village (new family tradition, added to each year). Aria dreaming of sugarplums???

  

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM CAMBRIDGE!

(Looks like it will be a green one)

Happy Birthday Brendan

Aria was a big help making breakfast in bed for Brendan's birthday, she cuddled Stephannie as hung out in the baby carrier, and watched the pancake spell out messages.

Stephannie kept her baking simple as a new mum, but still fun, check out Brendan's cake!

Funny thing...Brendan took  the cupcakes to the office and people started to "play" PAC MAN  with the cupcakes just staking the one right in front of Pac Man. What fun!

Thankful that pizza is a one-handed food

Brendan and Aria hanging out with some of the other new parents and babies at Pizza Hut.

Trick or Treat?

We sure did have a treat, with little Aria dressed up like a cute butterfly. Though when we were not looking she got into some of the candy for the tricker-treaters.
 

I want to be a Canadian Eh?!

Well we tried to travel into London yesterday however the weather had other plans...with hurricane-force winds the trains stopped running, lines were taken out by fallen trees, you can just guess what a mess things were.  We were told that the trains would be up and running in the morning but we got all three of us to the train station only to see that all the trains were not running to London that we needed. Many people that had to go into London were taking taxis or just staying put, so we went back home.

So we tried again today to take Aria to the Canadian High Commission, the train was so packed leaving Cambridge that we were thankful we were travelling with Aria as she got us a set of seats, what a good little girl.

So we got to London King's Cross to get the tube and this is what we saw...

After a long long wait we did make it onto the tube and then to Canadian High Commission, now we just have to wait and hope all the papers we need to arrive in time for our trip home for Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Our first family thanksgiving we were blessed to have Stephannie's parents here to cook a ***** (5 star) meal, which we shared with our friend Parousia, who is studying here in Cambridge. We have so many things to be thankful for this fall, most of all the safe and healthy arrival of our sweet daughter Aria, that family could come and help us out, and for all our new friends we are making in the village.

She is here!

Our sweet daughter arrived today! We are looking forward to getting to know her and spending time as a family, before Stephannie's parents (Nana and Gramps) come to visit.