Merry, Happy, Xmas, New Year, Valentine, Easter etc. etc.

BIG time lapse in blogging. A multitude of reasons, none of which I will blog about. Happy New Year 2012! We had a relatively good Christmas, not without its difficult moments. Trini and Lorne came over for Christmas dinner (this year we bought a delicious organic turkey pie from Aphrodites to save on cooking). It was a fun day. River loved Christmas this year; the lights, the tree, all the decorations and, of course, the presents! This was the first year that he took an active role in opening his presents...and everyone elses. "Ohhh, I love it!" he exclaimed when he opened the sandwich toaster that my sister and her husband had got for Mark and I. The main thing for him was the actual opening of the wrapping paper! It was great to see him so involved. Bronwyn had fun too. She still believes in Santa, even though I have, in preparation for the inevitable, expressed some doubts. She has proof apparently; a rusty bell that she found by the Christmas tree last year. No one knows how it got there (true!). Some pics:

Christmas morning

What was left of Rudolph's carrot

Diva!

Beautiful boy!

With auntie Trini

Mi babbies

Christmas merriment!

You may not remember that we had offered a major bribe Bronwyn in order for her to take sedative and get tons of work done on her teeth, only to discover that she loves Demerol and was fine getting the work done. She had to have additional work the day before Christmas Eve. We hummed and hahhed about what to get, all the while cursing our hasty bribe. I discouraged a Wii player as I could see it would be yet another thing that would require ME to do something. I foresaw that I would be roped into playing a bunch of tedious games....no thanks. I'm aiming for a less-is-more style of parenting. Then we were trying to decide between gerbils and fish. For some reason Mark and I thought fish would be easier and look better. Wrong, wrong, WRONG. In ignorance, we went out and bought a starter tropical fish tank and all the accessories. Ka-ching!...$140! Then we discovered that the stand for the aquarium (which would weigh about 100lbs when full) would cost an additional $100! That is before we purchased any fish. Then there were ph balances, bacteria levels, algae build up, gravel cleaning, ratios of fish...we panicked. We have problems with 'pet commitment'.  "Let's cut our losses, sell the fish gear, and get gerbils!" I said. What were we thinking??? So if you're interested in starting a aquarium look no further than here. We will give you a good deal. So we now have two new resident gerbils; Scorpion and Cactus. Bronwyn adores them. More on them later.