June Month in Review

Busy Busy Busy....

The end of....June is such a busy month. If you have children involved in any extra curricular things this is the month most of them end. So that is some of what we have been experiencing.

Both the kids finished gymnastics. They both really enjoyed themselves and learned that they can do alot of things with persistence, effort and a "can do" attitude. The gym was close to where we live and both of thier classes ran at the same time, so I only had to watch and entertain Aaron for an hour. This is Megan going into a cartwheel.

Evan showing us his "sticky bug" abilities.

As part of Megan's gym circulum the grade 3 went for swimming lessons. She was able to finish off the last few requirements need to pass off her Level 2 in the Red Cross swimming program. Way to go Megan.

Megan also finished her first year of piano. I think that I can safely say that she is thoroughly enjoying learning to play the piano. However she doesn't enjoy me standing behind her ,while she is practicing, counting outloud. She has progressed very nicely and is currently into her second level book. She breezed through the Primer and Level One book this year.

Now I look forward to the break from all the organized activites that we participate in. I do enjoy being able to have my kids do all these things and develop thier talents. The summer is unstructured for us for the most part. We do lots of outside/festival/holiday trips and try to enjoy any and all warm summer days that lay ahead. Resting up for the on slaught of what is to come in the fall again.

Mid June

We saw these little cuties at the Strathcona Farmers Market and I thought that it would be fun to make with Megan and it was and they are fun and tasty. Recipe: 2 Nilla Waffers, 1 peppermint pattie, Green dyed coconut for the lettuce, Icing -- red for ketchup, yellow for mustard and just a dab of icing on the bottom of the pattie to hold in place. It is definately a sweet treat.

June 17

Father's Day....due to the mail strike our own father's didn't recieve anything but phone calls this year....however after a long day I managed to drag myself out and pick up some gifts for Spencer at Wally World. (I'll never do that again, it was so busy, ugh maybe next year I'll be better prepared).

He recieved this snake pencil/pen holder from Evan. This was an in school field trip that they did. They had a someone with a clay company come and teach the kids how to make them. Spencer was excited about all his homemade gifts, he currently has them on this desk at work.

We love Spencer and he is such a wonderful father to our children. They literally run to greet him at the door at the end of the day. He guides and directs our family, reads, plays, dances, takes us on outings and helps us all stay active and busy. We think that he is super. Just like his new Superman/Super Spencer shirt. He is my "Hot Lips" and got his favorite...Dad's Oatmeal cookies along with the Little Critter book, Just Me and My Dad.

Megan made him a collage of sorts that she made at school this was one of her art projects. She loves to be crafty and loves art.

June 24

We celebrated Evan's 5th Birthday and had a pirate party! Arrr! Ahoy Mattes' We had a swashbuckling good time. So much fun you can have with that theme. Since he was turing 5 he got to invite 5 friends. Good fortune for him....all were able to attend. (We even had to move the day and time, due to my Grandmothers funeral, which we had to travel to later that same day).

We have been starting out each kids birthday with a box of a new sugary cereal that I don't usually buy. So of course he recieved a box of Captain Crunch. Which he did share so we all enjoyed a taste of the sweet goodness.

It felt like I drove all around town looking for predone invitations (trying to lighten my birthday planning load by buying somethings)...could I find any...No. So I gave in and made our own. They turned out really good. I had fun trying to make them look authentic by burning the edges. Those little pirate boys are some stickers that we found at Micheals.

I found this excellent and very doable pirate cake on the internet that I copied and this is what I came up with. The kids were all ohhh and ahhh when the cake came out all lit up. That was the best part.

All the kids played really well together and a two hour party is enough fun for this mom.

Some kids even came dressed up as pirates....we dressed up to a bit.

We played:

• Pop up pirate....where you stick the swords into the barrel and the pirate in the top pops up...


• Hallway bowling


• Hot Wheels


• Sword fighting (each pirate that came got their own foam sword)


• Un-wrap the present game (wrap a small gift in mulitple layers of wrapping/paper, then the kids have to roll a 5 with a die, if they do then they get to use two wooden spoons to try and unwrap the gift, before someone else rolls a five...etc.)
  

• Pinata treasure chest. The kids had a blast each taking a few wacks at that. It lasted for quite a long time....we finally just took it inside and I broke the rest of it open and the kids scrambled for the treasure.
  

Of course opening the presents is always the highlight. He got some great new toys to play with and to add to his collection. A book, puzzle, hotwheels and a track, K'nex, and transformers galore. He specifically asked me for some gum...which against my better judgement I gave him...at 5 he doesn't get the concept of gum....he chew, chew, chew, swallows or throws it away then gets out another piece.(I've already given him the lecture about me finding gum where it should not be...namely on the carpet!)

He has some really good friends and they helped him celebrate.

Some things about Evan...

• He finished preschool and is so excited for Kindergarten (to go to Megan's school)


• He can write the letters of the alphabet


• He is learning some of the 100 sight words


• Likes to be outside running/playing at any park (must be a boy thing)


• He can joke and tease his siblings.


• When he needs to be he can whisper and be super gentle.


• He has a big heart and sensitive feelings


• He loves his older boy cousins, he use to call them his brothers


• Still has ultra blonde hair and bright blue eyes


• He loves snacks and sweets


• Is a bit of a picky eater and has a strong will


• We love him and are so glad that he is part of our family.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY EVAN!!!

We are still here....

Things always get busy so blogging gets neglected...here goes a little about what's been keeping us busy.

Another school year is almost finished. Evan will be done this Friday. Megan not until the end of this month. So of course it is only polite to thank the teachers who have made a positive impact on my children's lives and had to entertain them, sorry I mean had the privilege to teach them this year. I think that teachers have one tough job....right behind being a parent.

I have this crazy obsession with teachers and apples...last year apple smelling candles...this year irresistible apple hand soap and fresh apple had sanitizer with a thank you card. (big sale on at Bath and Body Works. I got the soap for 1.34 and the sanitizer for .50 with the rubber carrying case for .50; I already had the cards. Total for this gift including card...$2.50) Awesome!



Here it is all wrapped up. Ready to go.

At the end of May I threw a baby shower for my sister and it turned out really great. She has a lot of great friends and a loving ward family to support her not to mention an awesome family. Megan and I travelled down to throw this shower for her. It was too quick of a trip. Megan said upon leaving Airdrie (after visiting with my brother and sister in law and family) that she didn't want to leave...why not I asked? Because this is where all my cousins are that are my age....that one pulled at my heart strings. I'm glad that she had a good time.

Parties are always fun to plan, but executing them is another story. Always so much work and you don't want to forget anything and you want it to be a fabulous party. Consider this the start of many party planning days ahead. June is the start of our family birthdays not to mention Canada day and a RS Mid-week picnic that is going on.....ahhhh. Sorry kids for neglecting you and sorry for a messy house....things will slow down soon I hope.

Our New Table

If anyone has been to my house to eat you'll know that my old kitchen table had seen better days. We got it as a wedding presents from Spencer's parents. It served us well but in the end it just couldn't make it much longer. All of the original wooden chairs had broken but one. So I had been on the hunt for a new one.

We checked out some stores but didn't really see anything that we liked....and the one that I did like was much too expensive (darn you pottery barn) or they didn't fit all our criteria.

I wanted a table that could expand to seat more people and had matching chairs. I started to look on kijiji and I found one for a sweet deal and an even better price. It is a maple table with a leaf (not shown in picture) and 6 chairs complete with buffet and hutch. Hooray for some nicer stuff and more storage space. It took us three trips to get all the pieces to our new dinning set.

I have since begun to polish it and have added a nice linen table runner that is blue and we now eat with placemats in hopes of prolonging our tables life. What do you think? Anyone want to come over for dinner?

We quickly snached it up on Saturday afternoon and even better was the fact that someone saw our old table outside and asked if they could have it. It was still a solid table it just didn't look very nice anymore. So we didn't even have to haul the old one to our dumpster.

April in Review

I better get this information documented so I don't forget what we did this April.

In hopes of being more engaged with my kids; I decided that we needed to do something....so one day we went to the Provincial Museum. The boys had a good time. We spend about 3 hours there. We went to every exhibit. The boys loved seeing the wild animals that are found in Alberta, we saw an illegal trade exhibit and were present for the opening and start of a Robert Bateman art contest. Bugs, fossils, butterflys, Native Americans, a gift shop and rocks of all kinds helped to keep our interest.

On Good Friday the kids made a suggestion that we go to WEM to Galaxyland. Twist our rubber arm. We spent the afternoon there going on the rides. A bit pricey but we all had a good time and were very tired at the end of that day. Megan went on the newer roller coaster called the galaxy orbitor. Aaron and Evan loved the train. The swinging boat is always a good one. Evan particularily loved the little bumper cars.

We have been having our Easter egg hunt on Saturday mornings in an effort to keep Christ in Easter and focus on Christ on the Sunday. We also don't go hog wild with candy but try to include other gifts as well. Last year we did a lot more, but I really enjoyed it this year. The kids all got a good amount of candy and I didn't have to police it too much. Evan ate his in about 2 days flat and Aaron eventually forgot about most of his. The kids each received a book as a gift. On Sunday we are able to focus on our church services and continue celebrating by having a lovely Easter ham dinner, then we went out for a family walk. I very much enjoyed all that we did this Easter.

Our Easter celebrations included making and weeklong easter count down. We did something easter/christ related everyday. I purchased a new book from Generations Bookstore called "The Easter Walk" it has a good suggestion for applying the book in the back. I think I will use that more next year. We had fun decorating Easter eggs. It seemed that Aaron remember from last year; he did better this year as his hands were all dyed a purple color like last year. Our only trouble this year was not making enough eggs to decorate. Next year for sure I'll do two and a half dozen. Aaron just loves to eat eggs and he couldn't wait until we finished, so since there was a cracked one he got to eat it.

Getting outside was a big thing this month. Since the weather has started to cooperate a bit more. Every nice day we could we went outside to visit the many parks and to let my kids (especially my boys) burn off their energy. On Easter Monday Spencer was back to work, so I took the kids outside, since it was so windy and we flew a kite, kicked around a ball and threw a frisbee for awhile, before going to play on the playground equipment.

Mother's Day

Another Mother's Day has come and gone.

One of my treats today was to have Spencer home for a few hours this morning. One of his early meetings was cancelled due to Mother's Day. So he whipped up some toasty pancakes...yum!

While he was working away in the kitchen, I had a peaceful shower and had time to paint my toe nails before church.

We also opened presents...Evan made me a clay butterfly that I will frame and hang up in my gallery, Megan gave me a painted pot and plant and Spencer hit up his favorite store on one of his work breaks...the body shop for a lovely smelling lemony scented bath gift box. At church we all recieved a candle.

We had good talks and a wonderful primary musical number and a brunch/VT lesson with all the sisters in our ward.

After a lovely dinner of Spighetti and veggies we decided that the kids needed some time outside to burn off all of their....I'm bored Sunday routine. (That may have been true this Sunday as I took a delightful nap for a few hours).

The sun was shining and it was still day light. So we enjoyed spending the day together.

A very special Happy Mother's Day wish to all of those mothers out there and other wonderful women who have helped me along the way.

Lucky

So I've recieved a complaint from my fan club that I don't update my blog enough, so I thought that I would finally post about our St. Patrick's Day festivities.

We always do something...

Thanks to the dollar store for being able to get some cheap accessories and decorations.

I bought some green necklaces, a pack of buttons (Kiss me I'm Irish...etc...), 2 shamrock mugs for the ladies I VT, some sparklie window clings (put on my mirror in my 1/2 bath for all to enjoy!), tattoos and lucky hair clips.

I then ran off to the bulk store to find lucky candy...anything that was green and of course the gold coins at the end of everyone's rainbow. I filled the cups for my VT ladies, and packaged the snack sized ziploc bags for my kids and hubby. They were so excited to recieve a candy bag in the morning...

I also stopped my Sally's beauty supply store for some green hair coloring and fingernail polish.

I was going to have some green pancakes...but I didn't wake up early enough for that...I did fill Megan's lunch up with green veggies and some nice artwork on her paper lunch bag.

Megan was the most dressed up; green hair streaks, nails, sweater, some green on her pants, hair clips, button and necklaces and a lucky tattoo on her cheek. Aaron also had on some green on his clothes, had his nails painted, and green in his hair and a tattoo on his hand. Evan eventually agreed to have some green hair and wear a button he also had a tattoo on his cheek (it eventually came off too in about a week) . Spencer opted to not have green hair (not very professional), but did wear a green shirt and put on a button and a green tattoo on his hand as well. I'm now just realizing that I got everyone else green and read and didn't opt for any of the fun things to wear, except my green shirt. Oh well next year.

Evan the day before in preschool made a green magnifying glass that he loved to look through...

Chronicles of Narina

So our latest escapades took us to see the Chronicles of Narina exhibit at the Telus World of Science(TWOS) (of all places). They tied in the themes of global warming; which is associated with the "white witch".

Any ways the exhibit was interesting. We read the entire series with Megan as her reading time with mom or dad before bed. She really loved the series and so did we. We are slowly making our way through the movies that have been done about it as well.

There were pieces of C.S. lewis' things and different props from the different movies. There was even a craft of making your own shield to take home. The boys were far to into the hands- on catapult to be bothered much with a craft.

We enjoyed this on a teachers convention day so Megan had no school. We've been to the TWOS a couple of times as a family and it is quite pricey for the whole family to go. I also happened to see that there were a few more exhibits that I know my kids would enjoy so I ended up buying a family pass. (Thanks Jen for the coupon book for my b-day; cause there was a coupon for 10% off an annual admission).

Megan and Evan love to go to the demonstration area and learn how "pop" is made. Megan got selected to go up on stage to give the finally product a try, to see if they followed the recipe right. Yup, they did. Everyone is allowed to try the results. This time they tried peach, lime and orange flavored pop. They both gave it two thumbs up!

We also spent some time in the kids area, building with big blocks, standing in front of the funny mirrors, dancing on a big piano, and playing at water tables. We also managed to fit in a star show that they kids enjoyed. It sure was a busy day.