Concerts, parades and SNOW!

For some reason, December equates to very busy! And here in the USA, it's no different! There's so much happening! And much of it is the lead up to Christmas.

Shantel had a birthday party with one of her classmates, Ally. The girls were asked to dress-up and they all came as little princesses! Very cute! In fact, I only remembered they had to come dressed up 10 minutes before we had to leave so it was a frantic rush to get all dressed up again!!

Our little princesses

A wonderful parcel of goodies arrived from Aus! Special thanks to Bernice V of Aldergrove for the main transportation and Jan and Veronica H for taking into the US! We're loving it! Chippy salt on the chips, delicious yoghurt, chili sauce on the chicken nuggets. Well worth the hassle. And of course, thanks to my mum for doing my shopping and organising it all!

With the lead up to Christmas, comes the concerts and the Messiah. The Lynden Choral Society performed the Messiah right here in Lynden and so we went to listen on Friday night. Not like your professional performances but they did a very good job!

And on Saturday night, Lynden put on the Christmas parade. Now, for two days prior we had the northwesterlies with chill factors of -20! It was freezing cold! Thankfully, the wind stopped on Saturday morning but the temperature was still around -8 degrees. And apparently the chill factor that night was around the -30 degrees. And so us Aussies, donned on our coats, jackets, scarves and blankets headed downtown to watch the parade.

I think we lasted about 40-45 minutes before we couldn't feel our toes anymore! Since we hadn't had dinner yet, we headed off to Maccas to defrost and have a bite to eat!

Our car gives a reading of the outdoor temperature, and this was the temp on Saturday night coming home! PS the E stands for east as we were heading in that direction

On Sunday night, the Aldergrove and Cloverdale church choirs performed a Christmas concert which Steve and myself also attended. It was packed to the rafters and was a nice mix of piano, solos, strings and choir.

That day the air was so static that Shantel's hair went straight out! Looked very funny!

And on Monday morning it started snowing! It was really something seeing the flurries coming down and everything gradually getting whiter and whiter. The girls wasted no time in bundling up and getting out there. They had a great time. They made snow angles, they rolled around in it; it was very cute to see.

Taken from Stefan's room (upstairs)

Shantel's snow angel

Front of the house

 By 3pm the snow had stopped. It looked so pretty with a blanket of white on everything! Being below zero degrees, the snow stayed for the most of  Tuesday. In Lynden it was already melting but in Sumas the snow stayed till Wednesday but by afternoon it had all melted.

Tuesday

Wednesday

Tuesday morning we had women's study again and in the evening we had our social. It was well attended and we had a fun evening. We had good food, guessing Christmas songs and carols when given only 3 notes and the gift exchange, or rather trade and steal! We played one game where each table got a pair of stockings (pantyhose) and a bunch of balloons and we had to blow the balloons and stuff the stocking legs to make a pair of antlers. Our table laughed so hard we almost cried!

Steve received a lovely hamper from the school board showing appreciation for his work. Yum!

One more week of school and then we have a two week Christmas break.

How you know if you're Australian, American or Canadian.

Silverware: American
Cutlery: Canadian or Australian

Sem-eye: American
Sem-ee: Canadian or Australian

Kiosk/canteen: Australian
Concession stand: American


That's it for today. Thanks for visiting!