We headed out to Dundas on Boxing Day for some turkey soup and games. The girls played a game of Rummoli with Grandma, Uncle Ken and Aunt Bev. Here is Uncle Ken trying to deal himself the 7-8-9.
Some of the pots started to pile up.
Aunt Bev winning a hand.
Claudia keeping an eye on Uncle Ken, making sure he wasn’t cheating.
Angela with her winnings.
Grandma winning the 7-8-9 sequence.
Grandma winning another pot.
We headed out to Hamilton for Christmas dinner at Lori and Dale’s place. It was our first time to meet baby Lily. Here is Angela holding her new first cousin once removed.
Claudia and Lily.
Gillian and Lily.
Lily and the girls.
Melissa discovering the Photo Booth filters on the iPad.
Angela showing Melissa how it’s done.
Brad playing Headbanz with the kids. “Do I have cheese on me?”
If you happen to fall asleep, Melissa was there with the iPad making a distorted picture.
Alex and Emi with their Wii.
Susan and Lily.
G-pa opening their iPad.
Shanna called from Rossland and I was able to set-up Skype on G-ma and G-pa’s iPad so we could Skype with her, Jesse and David.
After dinner Lily was up and another go round of pass the baby.
Lots of pictures of Susan and Lily.
There was a poker game going on with Claudia, Lisa, Brad, Danny, Gillian and Angela.
Brad pulled out his poker chips and eventually lured G-pa into the game.
Soon the stakes had risen.
I think this was before everyone discovered FaceTime.
Back to more Lily photos, diaper was changed and things are good.
Lily in her stocking.
Posing for multiple pictures.
Lily will be a month old on Boxing Day.
Sara and Lily.
Lily looking at the lights on the tree.
The girls taking one last turn with Lily.
How are we related? This question was raised by the girls, here is a chart to figure things out.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas from the Tanabe’s!
The girls were up early this morning.
Chloe opening the first present.
Angela giving her a hand, this is her third alligator and may be her last as it was marked down to $1.87 at PetSmart.
The excitement on Angela’s face.
Gillian with an iPod speaker.
Claudia was the first one through all her presents.
Angela with her giraffe hat and mitts.
Claudia trying on her ear muffs.
Gillian with a solar flower from Angela.
Susan with her Kobo e-reader.
Chloe with her stuffing-less fox.
We headed down to Dundas for an early Christmas dinner. Jeannette and Rachel are heading to Australia for a month and leave before Christmas, so we all got together before they left. When we got to Dundas, the girls wanted to go the the Sweetness Bakery. The bakery caters to the peanut/nut free consumer.
The peanut free sticker on the door.
Susan’s mom had catered the turkey dinner and we ate in the community room. There were 18 of us including Uncle Ken, Aunt Bev and Auntie Gert. A picture of Eric playing with the name card holders, probably before he broke one of them. Of course Eric being Eric, hides the broken evidence in his pocket only to have the pieces jab him in the leg later on.
Gillian laughing at her cousin.
Gillian pouring some milk for Uncle Ken.
The grandkids.
Grandma and Auntie Gert playing their ukuleles.
We bought Chloe some dessert at Bark & Fitz in Dundas. She had a cupcake.
The kids like to play poker when they get together.
The original Swan’s.
The Swan-Tanabe’s. Thanks to Auntie Gert for taking the picture.
It takes a few shots to get the one above.
Chloe jumped off before the final picture, but for a brief moment she was in Grandma’s lap.
Usually it is the younger generation with their heads buried in their phones and technology.
We headed out to Andrew and Jeannette’s last Saturday for a BBQ and some swimming for the kids (and big kids, as Steve went for a dip). Here is Angela underwater.
The girls started jumping in and doing fancy cannonballs.
Rachel and Angela.
Angela did a pretty good job of splashing me with this jump.
Eric causing a little water displacement.
A video of Claudia doing her cannonball.
On Saturday we headed out to Hamilton to Lori and Dale’s place. The girls were looking forward to swimming and seeing their cousins. Here is Alex using his muscles to pump up an inflatable.
Angela.
Claudia doing it the old fashion way.
Alex and Claudia
We recently bought a new camera, it is a Panasonic Lumix that is waterproof (to 40 ft) and shockproof (from 6 ft). Here are some pictures from it underwater.
Angela underwater.
Angela taking a picture of me from under the water.
The quality is pretty good.
Angela’s most recent project was to build a kite and fly it. She had the choice of making a Scott Sled kite or a Diamond kite. She was being marked not on the actual making of the kite, but the scientific journal documenting the building process and the test trials and her presentation. We started last night cutting out the shape and putting it together.
We used some vapour barrier plastic for the kite, some wooden dowels and some yellow duct tape.
Angela decorated it this afternoon with paint and Sharpies. After dinner we headed over to the test field (school yard) for our flight trials. Here is Angela with her decorated kite.
On the first trial, it got up in the air briefly.
But it needed some adjustments.
Claudia was flying a store bought kite that Susan picked up at Zellers today. It worked pretty well for $6.
After some tweaks, it was on to trial two.
It was staying up a little longer.
It was up in the air and going pretty good.
Angela discovered afterwards that our vent was upside down, the text book instructions were wrong, but I don’t think it would make much difference.
I don’t think it was as high in the sky as it looks in the picture.
A nice picture of Gillian.
Gillian and her friend Sarah jumping.
The girls looking pretty happy for an early morning photo. I took this one before we headed to church.
We had the Swan’s over for turkey dinner. Instead of the kids table we added a table at the end, making for one long table with 15 of us.
Patrick checking his phone for the bluetooth lady.
An update photo of the Swan-Tanabe cousins.
What a difference nine years make, or more like where has the nine years gone. I pulled this one out of the vault. This photo is from Claudia’s first birthday party in 2001.
Hope you got a chance to get out and enjoy the crazy temperatures, Mississauga reached 24.3 °C on Good Friday. Here is Claudia, her friend and Chloe hanging out on the front lawn.
Chloe is enjoying the good weather, she has been especially interested in the birds. It must be the Cocker Spaniel in her.
We headed out to Mom and Dad’s place on Good Friday. Chloe travels well in the car, her and Angela are ready to go.
Sara and Brent brought Pretzel with them, so Chloe had someone to play with.
Danny had the kids out at the park playing soccer. Claudia taking a break.
Alex.
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Things were going well until Danny stepped on Alex’s foot with his industrial soccer shoes.
Here is Chloe telling Pretzel to wait his turn to look out Grandma’s window.
Chloe telling Pretzel to hurry up and look out the window.
Hey wait a minute I think there is enough room on the stool for both of us.
Chloe doing her wet noodle with Melissa.
