A Star is Born

Well, Olivia had a weekend full of performances.
On Sunday, Olivia participated in the Christmas Pageant at church where she was a little angel. I have to say she did pretty well, although her behavior was not always angelic!
In this picture, Olivia is the one reaching over to pet the little deer.

Here, she has decided to get up and walk away from the other angels, just to see what was going on elsewhere. She was more of a wondering angel.And in this one, she got right back in the middle. I am not sure how that happened. But she did make a really cute angel!

Sunday afternoon, Olivia`s daycare had a Christmas party. It was lots of fun for Olivia to see all her school friends at a party.

There was a visit from Santa and everyone got a present. There were also lots of yummy snacks too. Olivia especially enjoyed the chocolate balls with coconut. She ate 3!

But the highlight was yet to come. Once the party was winding down and people were starting to leave, the kids were playing on the stage. Ian went up to get Olivia and then I heard her little voice on the microphone. This is what she said... I am Olivia Hart. I am from Canada. There is my mommy and my daddy. Then she proceeded to sing: the ABC song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Jingle Bells, and Do Re Mi (yes, from the Sound of Music). What a repertoire!

Enjoy the pics, wish you could have seen the show!

Olivia's 3rd Birthday

Where has the time gone? First it has been hard to get this blog updated as usual as Ian has been busy with his final for the project management course. We can all happily say that the 25 page paper has been handed in and Ian is quite relieved!

Other than that, we have been enjoying celebrating Olivia's 3rd birthday! We can't believe how fast and how wonderful these last 3 years have been. Olivia is such a joy and so much fun. She was counting down the days, well marking on the calendar with me, until her birthday.

So, Wednesday morning the first thing she said was, "Mommy is today my birthday?" We took chocolate cupcake with pink icing to her "school" for her friends to help her celebrate.When we got home from work, Olivia opened her presents from Mommy and Daddy and from Grandmama Cheryl and Auntie Ewelina and Ricky. She got 2 games from Grandmama, and really cool play-doh set from Ewelina and Ricky and the Mrs. Goodbee Dollhouse from Mommy and Daddy. They have all been a hit! We have played both games, and made play-doh stuff already. And of course the dollhouse is in constant play.Finally the big day of the party was here. Saturday morning Olivia woke up and asked if her friends were here!:) It is really hard to be patient when you are 3!

Our friends Mark and Charlotte came over before the party with a life size picture of Olivia and Dora that Mark made! It was terrific and Olivia loved it.The party was great!!!! We had 8 of Olivia's little friends, all her favorite foods, a Dora theme AND a face painter! Ian, Olivia and I even dressed in our Mexican digs for the Dora theme. It was a blast.

I made the cake to look like "The Map" from Dora..."first you go over the bridge, then you go through the forest and then you go to Olivia's house for the party!" So much fun.We all had a great time, it was exhausting though. I forget that the kids parties are over in 2 hours but its 2 full hours of non-stop go go go!!!

Happy Halloween!!!

Here are some pictures of the last few days leading up to Halloween. We carved pumpkins, painted pumpkins (most of the paint ended up on Olivia), made cupcakes, had a party at daycare and of course went trick or treating. Olivia was exhausted tonight and fell asleep in seconds!

Olivia and Ian got the pumpkins ready to carve, they were really dirty!

There were also some little mini pumpkins to carve, those were way cute.
Olivia loved painting, as usual, and lots or well most of the paint was on her!
My favorite pumpkin face! I love using the stem for the nose!:)Time to clean up those hands.

OOOOh, look at all the pumpkins! "Can I blow out all the candles now, Daddy?"

Then Olivia and I had a project to do some snacks for her daycare party...we made cupcake monsters. Olivia was a great little helper, she taste tested everything! The marshmallows were her particular favorite!
Finished product...
Almost ready to go out trick or treating. We were blessed with beautiful weather and Olivia was so ready to go, she didn't even want pizza for dinner! Here she is posing with the pumpkins.And finally...home with the loot. What a great time!

Sun Maze

This weekend was a great weekend for a fall outing. The weather has still been great and so we opted to drive north of Calgary to the Bowden Sun Maze. Now, I was thinking that this place would have a pumpkin patch seeing as how I searched "you pick pumpkin patches" in the area and this is what I came up with. In the end it did not have a pumpkin patch but it was a lot of fun. There were you pick flowers and you pick potatoes, we did get a few flowers, I was not about the pick out potatoes!

Look at how silly we are! And then this one of Olivia is the best... So, into the maze we go, Olivia ran ahead, at times I was thinking we would NEVER get out of it. It didn't seem to bother anyone but me. I wondered, would anyone come to get us at the end of the day if we still weren't out? Alas, we got out and all was ok. Like I said, no one else seemed to be worried... There were also some donkey's at the little farm and a little calf named, Lil Orphan Annie. Olivia unlike her mother, really enjoys petting all there animals, which is great, and it is an event she can do with daddy. Olivia got her face painted like a little kitty cat and then off she went to the mini maze for kids where she had a great time running around and jumping off the bales of hay.

When we were leaving, our little kitty cat found a kitty of her own to pet and rub its belly, the cat liked Olivia too, he jumped into the car when we opened the doors! So, it was a great day, the drive was a little long but we survived. I just wish there had been a pumpkin patch, maybe we can find one for next weekend!

We have had some great weather the last few weeks - Indian Summer - as you would call it. It was warm and we got outside as much as possible. Unfortunatly, this week it has started to cool off and be a bit rainy.

But, Olivia had fun outside in the sunny evenings on the slide while supporting her favorite team...GO HOGS!It has been nice enough to have dinner on the deck too. After dinner, Olivia decided to build a "hopscotch" with her chalk crayons. It was so neatly lined up! Also please note, the cute little panties, we are officially potty trained and doing great!We also had a day at the zoo. It was a bit rainy, but it was still fun. There is a new baby giraffe and lots of other baby animals. Olivia had a great time with her friend Isabel, looking at the animals and running after each other.And lets not forget that..."Mommy, hippos DO bite!"