Holiday Decorating at Bookmonkey's

As with most families, we've got our own holiday decorating style.  It tends to go as follows:

1) All Decorations go up as soon as possible in December
1a) Decorating must be accompanied by Holiday Tunes and Eggnogg
1b) Decorations must be in such an amount as to slightly terrify
1c) The Nutcracker Army should be prepared for an attack at any time
2) All Decorations go down by noon on Christmas Day
2a) HEY! It may sound un-Christmas-like to you, but then we have all of the week before New Year's to relax, rather than spending it daring each other to take the ornaments down.

Happy December Everyone!
Bookmonkey

Things I've Noticed: It's My Daughter's Birthday tomorrow!

...and for me that means getting to take the day off today.

Here's how it goes - just before my oldest daughter (currently in Nova Scotia learning French the Immersion way), turned ten I decided I wanted to spend a day with my daughter while she was still nine. So on the Day before her birthday we went to West Edmonton Mall (as a local Edmontonian I tend to visit The Mall just this side of never - it's a tourist place) and hung out at the water-park. This went over so well, it became a tradition.

So today I'm taking my youngest daughter out for the last day of her thirteenth year - we'll eat tasty, yet terrible food, hit a couple book stores, a chocolate shop, maybe take in a movie, and I won't be messing up her actual birthday plans with friends.

Anyway, this entirely new tradition (not that new actually as I've been doing it for a decade now) is one of the highlights of my year - I'm out of work - she gets pulled out of school and we just have a pretty awesome day.

Happy Day before your birthday Kaia!