MEESKA MOUSKA MICKEY MOUSE

HAPPY Wednesday everyone!

These are what we are looking at today, a lovely surprise from my hubby on Sunday!  They are so pretty!

TURNING 3, MICKEY MOUSE STYLE!

We had a little boy who turned 3 on Feb 18 this past month!  And as precedent has proven this momma loves throwing parties!

This year Mickey Mouse came and helped us celebrate a very excited little boy's birthday.  He had been talking about his birthday since Christmas.  And although he tried to convince me several times in January that it was his birthday he finally got to celebrate it on the FAMILY DAY long weekend with some of his favorite people!

Friday night we had his friends over for a Mickey dinner party!

We served HOTDOGS (of course!)

And Mickey Mouse Cupcakes (super duper easy!)

The Kids did a Scavenger hunt with "TOODLES" and "cracked open" a Mickey Pinata both were BIG hits!  I wish I had pictures of them doing these, maybe my mom does! 

The Scavenger hunt I wasn't sure how it would go as the kids were ages from 2.5-3.5yrs.  However they were great! 

I had 4 clues that led the kids from the kitchen to basement, I made a TOODLES out of cardboard and painted it (my husband's job was to 'control' toodles)  the kids had to use 4 'tools' along the way to help find the next clues.  I totally wish I took a picture of what the clues looked like because they were pretty cute!  But this is what the clues said!

Toodles has 4 tools for you!  A pair of safety scissors, A key, a garbage bag and the MYSTERY MOUSE-KA-Tool!

Mommy has lost the cake!  And she doesn’t know where to find it!  Follow the clues and help mommy find the cake!

Clue #1

Running around is lots of fun!  Where do we keep our running shoes?  Front closet! Right!  But that clue is all tied up!  We need a Mouse-ka tool to get it down!

(use the safety scissors to cut down clue2)

Clue#2

Down the stairs and thru the door!  OH NO! A whole bunch of garbage!!!  We have to clean this up!  But we need something to hold the garbage!

(Use the garbage bag to clean up!)

Clue#3

Under the stairs, you will find the next clue!  Why it is all locked up!  How can we get it unlocked?

(use the key to open the door!)

Clue #4

Your almost there!  I hid William’s birthday cake upstairs in the MOUSEKA-Kitchen!

(Found the cake but need some candles!  Try the Mystery Mouse-ka Tool!)

(The Font I downloaded for free off the Internet.)

It was a pretty awesome day! And the little guy was tired!  Thanks to Grammy and Grandpa for helping out!

The next day we had the Family over to celebrate the birthday boy!  My parents, Clays parents, grandparents, and siblings with there significant others all came up for an afternoon of birthday celebrations!

William the Center of attention!

The cake!!!!!!  How awesome is that cake!!! My 2nd attempt at  fondant and it went WAY WAY better then first time!  Special thanks to my cousin TEAL for her encouragement and recommendations!  I even made the marshmallow fondant my self!  And people ate it, sweet but tasted good!

Present opening!  This was actually the best part of the party!  (Quick back story.  Williams BABA brought him a whole bunch of candy when she arrived, and together they filled his pockets with it, for easy sweets sneaking through out the day).

ANYWAY, William opened all his gifts and preceded to stand up and say (WITH NO PROMPTING!)  "THANK YOU, You all get a TREAT!"  and gave everyone one a candy from his pocket!  SO awesome!  I cried!

Playing with his toys.  Grandpa Rick taught him a great game "Pussy cat hunting" with a toy ball thrower gun he got as a gift... Once again, thanks Grandpa.

Had a great couple days with family! My mom and dad left Sunday morning and the RUSSELL clan headed out on to the lake for some fishing!

Grandpa Alan and William inspecting a fishing hole.

Love this Fishing tent Clay has, kept us out of the wind!

No screaming done by this kid! (Something his mommy cant claim) He was right in there picking the fish up and putting it in the hole, showing it to everyone etc. 

The Birthday went great! And I cant wait to do another one next year!  LOL actually I can wait... but it will be fun:)  I wish I had a couple more good pictures from the weekend, so mom when you read this maybe you can send me some?

A couple extra photos from the weekend....

Tessa loves her Grandpa... You should see her FREAK OUT with they pull in!

This is last weekend, we got a dump of snow!  William 'helping'

We finished the rest of the parking pad and this is what William had 'completed'; not bad for a 3yr old :)

"WE HAVE BEEN SO BUSY" the Cliche

Its been a while since I have blogged...  The old cliche "WE HAVE BEEN SO BUSY!" can pretty much sum up our life right now.

Clayton has been working away doing 4 days on and 3 days off since the beginning of the new year.  Luckily he is home Friday, Saturday, Sunday each week which has been lovely!  The Monday-Thursday part has not been as nice, but we are attempting to trudge through! 

William has been good, I guess ;)  his "spirited" side has been giving me a little bit of grief this past week, and in all honesty I am pretty burnt out this weekend.  He turns 3 next weekend, so look for an upcoming post on his birthday craziness!

I have been working 2-4 days a week over the past month as well.  Orientating to a new position in Public health, which is a WHOLE new ball game for me!  Its been good but I still have a lot to learn!

Other then that we are just trying to survive the winter which is starting to feel long, even though its been pretty "mild".

As some of you may remember last new years we started doing a FAMILY MOTTO.  http://lyntonrussell.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=13

This year we came up with " Building A Better Life".  It sounds kinda like we hate our life, and although it has been a really tough 6months with Clayton working away a lot and William expressing his "spirited" side frequently, that's not what we were are going for.  we are using this motto to help us focus on some personal, economic and situational goals we have planned for the upcoming year.

As you can see we have it next to our family calendar in our bedroom, the hub of our little house.

Well that's about it for now.   I leave you with a picture of our Ice chipping adventures in January.  Gotta love snow, rain, and sun!  They make such a nice driveway ice-rink!

Post Holiday Decompression!

Welcome to 2012!!! Thanks to all my loyal followers!  I appreciate you reading and commenting on my blog through out the past year.  I hope that you are enjoying the story of our life! 

As the first blog entry of 2012, I'm going to use this time to decompress from the past few weeks of HOLIDAY MERRIMENT, and catch you all up on how the RUSSELL'S Celebrated this year. 

We both had the opportunity this year to have the week between Christmas and New years off from work.  And it was AWESOME!!!

 

Our Christmas started the week prior to Christmas when we headed down to My parents house near Airdrie to see my side of the family.  We had a really nice time visiting with my parents and my brother and his family.   It was a pretty nice uneventful weekend and we had nice time relaxing and visiting.

Craft time with Grammy... Gingerbread house construction.  This is a FOAM craft as William's allergies prevented me from buying a real Gingerbread house kit.  This kit was super fun and easy!  William loved it and did a GREAT job decorating it!

Present opening time!  Thanks to everyone who got William a gift!  They were great!  He loves playing with his new toys and especially the PLAY DOUGH!

Grandpa and Grammy with the Kids!  Cant believe all the kids are smiling!  If only my Dad's eyes weren't closed!

William and Mac, horsing around!

Airdrie Festival of Lights.  This is a PRESTON family tradition.  Every year we go together for a walk around.  Its a little disappointing this year as they haven't been able to add much to the light displays over the past few years.  Its a great family friendly activity that is all volunteer and I hope that they can continue to grow this Festival!

After a quick week at work, we prepared for Christmas with Clayton's side of the Family. 

Busy Busy!

Thanks Grammy and Grandpa... Ya he's Great... (Insert Eye Roll here).  Who doesn't Need a 7 ft Frosty on there back deck! And yes William LOVES LOVE LOVES him.

   We had Clayton's brother, one of his sisters with her husband and Clay's parents here for Christmas this year.  Christmas eve we headed out to Baba's house for dinner.  Then everyone came back to our place.

Cookies William decorated for Santa, along with a letter for Santa...  I think it said "DEAR SANTA"  and that was about it ;)

Tradition prevails!  Our Christmas Eve in front of the Tree Shot.

Christmas morning.  SANTA CAME!!! oh man did he ever!!!  It took about 12hrs for William to finish opening his gifts!  But in all fairness he was not feeling well.  He slept most of the afternoon and finally perked up in the evening and finished his gifts around 8pm.

Quick costume change first thing thanks to a leaky diaper!

SANTA DID COME!!

In the mists of the chaos

Baba, Gedo, Anna and Nadia joined us for Dinner.  Thanks to everyone who brought a dish.  Here is the dinner spread.  Not bad for my 2nd ever Christmas Dinner!

The Table... Not too fancy but not too bad either!

Don't worry Clay there is PLENTY of FOOD! 

My FAVORITE picture of Gedo EVER!  HE HE

Christmas was great.  Everyone left boxing day, and we got a whole week of NOTHING as a family!  Much of it was in front of our new 47" TV that was purchased Boxing day.

 I do have to admit its pretty nice... A huge upgrade from our 27" old style TV, Which I did manage to sell, however it took 2 of us to move it upstairs and out of the house!  MAN that thing was HEAVY!!!

New Years found our trifecta in JASPER.  We had never been before, so we mostly just looked around.  Its beautiful!  We tobogganed and went swimming at the hotel a couple times.  New Years Eve we went to a "fancy" restaurant, where Clayton chased William around and found him under a table of 6 people hiding... Thankfully most people find William Cute and are pretty understanding when his spirited personality shines through.  We were in bed by 1000pm and couldn't quite convince William it was New Years,  according to him it was too "Snowy and Cold" to be a New year.

Little Traffic detour on our way in to Jasper

This picture turned out creepy, but its the toboggan hill.

Jasper Lodge... So nice!!! And I would totally recommend Jasper if you have to take your dog.  Very pet Friendly!  As you can See Tessa got to chill out inside the Lodge in front of the Christmas tree.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

All dressed up and No where to go.   Slightly disappointing but that didn't stop us from donning our good clothes. :)

Well that was our last few weeks.  We have removed all the decorations from the house and they are all safely packed away for another year.  William has asked everyday for the past 1.5 weeks where Frosty is... remember my Halloween hell?  Well now its FROSTY hell!  I'm trying to explain to him that it will be next year when all the decorations come out again, but the concept of time is tricky for an almost 3 year old.

 Time to pack up!

****Its been a little over a week since the Christmas stuff was taken down.  I have not yet put out the "regular" house decor stuff that I usually have out through out the year.  I love this time of year, because my house is so bare.  But I love the contrast after having the clutter-y glow of Christmas stuff up for a month!  I think I will start putting stuff back up this week.  Do you enjoy the bare look your house has after Christmas?****

DECK THE HALLS

DECK THE HALLS

Its that time of year again!!!  Merry Christmas everyone!  We have started spreading the cheer!  Christmas decorations have been put out, cookie exchange completed, Christmas movies running, Christmas shopping... Well I'm almost done! 

Check out us Decking our Halls!

Its Time!!!

Looking good babe!

Success!

Tessa helps too!

TAAA DAAA!

My Christmas Village

New addition include a train around the tree... Yep its loud and annoying!

Angel window

William as most of you know loves decorating (not sure where he got that from) so he did a great job helping!

After a week of sickness... we are getting back on track to celebrate holidays this year with family.  Hosting a big family dinner at our place on Christmas day is going to be the climax of our holiday season this year!  And our little boy is super excited about Christmas, and although he has been flirting with being naughty or nice, I'm pretty sure he will end up on the nice list and get spoiled rotten this year. 

Hope you all enjoy this special time of year!  We are glowing in the warm light of our Christmas tree, enjoying long hours of cuddling on the couch watching Christmas movies and smiling (and tearing up too) when William bursts in to tears during Mickey's Christmas when Pluto knocks the Christmas tree over and ruins Christmas.

Happy Holiday's from our family to yours! 

Enjoy your celebrations safely!

And Remember what this season is really about!