Happy New Year!!

We hope you had a Happy New Year's Eve, and that you will experience God's blessing in your life in 2009!

Santa Claus visits the Marshwiggles!

How many towns can you think of where Santa Claus still comes house to house? He does here in Port Robinson! The volunteer firefighters come around dressed as Santa, handing out bags of candy, on Christmas Eve. Usually we can guesss which firefighter lurks under the beard! This year, the arrival of Santa was a big hit - although Pip was still a little apprehensive of this large, jolly fellow and wouldn't have his picture taken with him.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

For there is born to you this day, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord!

Gingerbread House 2008

One of our family traditions at Christmas is to build a gingerbread house. Once it is finished, it sits on top of the piano in the schoolroom, and lets off a lovely gingery smell through the Christmas season. Then, we break it up and eat it at New Year's Eve.

Here is the happy crew of gingerbread house decorators:

Christmas Concert

Last week was the Christmas concert for our Jubal Cottage School (which is our homeschooling arts co-op), and it went very well! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera! So there are no pictures of this fine event, but if you were there and have one, please email it to me!!

I direct the Junior Choir (ages 5-9) and we sung two pieces. The choir did an amazing job! The Senior Choir also did a great job, and most of the children were involved in some dramatic work or other. We have about 46 children in our group (24 are in the Junior Choir) and there were about 100 people there - so the sanctuary had a nice, full feel to it.

Thanks to all the parents who help out with Jubal, and of course, the children for their hard work!

The day after we had to take off school, because we were so tired from the concert (and lead up to it!) and as a group we were quite ill with head-colds. However, we are all feeling better now!

Marshwiggles at the Orchestra

As part of the homeschool arts group we are with, we were able to take a trip to the Orchestra recently! We had to drive to a nearby city (Hamilton), drive through the downtown, find a parking spot, figure out the parking ticket machine, buy a ticket and display it appropriately - all of this was quite a change of pace for us and an education in itself! Then we walked a short distance to the concert hall. Here is the group in front of the hall (we left Pip with friends).



Our seats were the front row of the second balcony - quite a fantastic view! It felt like we could drop things on the heads of the orchestra! The concert was great, it was aimed at children, and taught them a lot about the orchestra, as well as being very entertaining. All of us Marshwiggles gave it two thumbs up! Hopefully we'll be back next year.

Christmas Baking

We are enjoying the beginning of the Christmas season! It is a great feeling to be working on some Christmas baking, with all its wonderful smells, when there is snow outside. It is also nice to have some helpers!

The boys job was to put a nut on top of each cookie. Quite a few nuts didn't make it to the cookies!!