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| Hanging with Faye! |
The big news this week was a visit from my sister Faye. This was a stop for her en route to an extended Christmas visit to Fredericton. After Fredericton, she was then planning to take off for a 4-6 week contract she had accepted in Mali, helping to determine strategic funding priorities for the ebola relief efforts in western Africa. She had slotted out a nice long time to be here -- just over a week, in fact, -- and we had lots of plans. Games, baking, shopping, maybe a nice date night in there somewhere... a whole slew of fun and relaxing things to balance out the intensity of her upcoming trip. Things started to go awry shortly after she got here, however, when she got an email from one of her two employers, stating that they needed her much sooner than they had originally indicated. Like, right now.
As you can imagine, chaos (and a whole lot of stress) ensued. For Faye to really and truly get to Mali as soon as possible, she needed to do about a million different things -- organize and get a whole bunch of vaccines, apply for and then get a visa, change all of her plans and rebook tickets, figure out what she needed to take with her ( mosquito net, malaria meds etc etc), bone up on her French, and get safety training. She also needed to sort out details of her contract, and figure out what exactly would be going on when she landed. And of course, she needed to get back to Toronto. This was confused by the fact that she was being contracted and sub-contracted by two different agencies, one of whom had a rep in Portland, Oregon and the other in Dubai. Therefore communication was (due to time zones, etc), very difficult and frustrating.
So, needless to say, this wasn't exactly the visit we had all envisioned. Also, we all (except for Faye, that is), ended up getting pretty sick with colds. But we persevered! I think everyone still had a pretty good time in and amongst the chaos and stress and sickness, and the shortened visit. Here were some of the highlights:
1. We procured and decorated our tree! I love this a little more each year, as the kids get ore and more excited, and I become more and more nostalgic about our great ornaments (and about our yearly new ones)
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| Linden was actually really serious about the tree decorating this year |
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Juniper created this 2 minutes after the event took place. She likes to stay current.
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2: Linden showed Faye the meaning of the word "ham". Here is a series of shots Faye took at dinner one evening:
3: A whole bunch of things I didn't manage to get pictures of: Faye, for instance, joined me as parent helper at the Child Centre the day after she got here. Juniper also skipped school and came along, so it was QUITE the event. (Faye said afterwards: "my god. I don't know how the teachers do this every day. I wouldn't survive"). We also had a games night with a game that Faye had gotten the kids for Christmas, poked around Falmouth a bit, went out for dinner, read a lot of books, and just generally hung out. Oh, and Faye also did a bunch of laundry, cleaned up dishes, and -here's the kicker - got up with the kids every single morning, and let me and Clark sleep in. Thank you Faye!
Finally, though Faye had already left by this point, we also made and decorated the gingerbread house this week. Here are the pics:
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| Juniper had to stand on the chair to get leverage |
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| The happy decorators |
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| The finished product (along with the two scary gingerbread people guarding the place) |
Merry Christmas!! I'll post lots of pictures (and maybe videos) from the big day next week.
2 comments:
Looks like Juniper is going to be a good blogger too!
Sounds as though all went well, inspire of the unexpected. I LOVE the gingerbread house! Looks as though all is ready for Santa's arrival! Merry Christmas to you all! Hugs all around!
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