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.

White Trash...

Sorry if the title of this post offends anyone....but that is all I kept thinking about as I suggested to Spencer that he should do something different and special with the kids. I was going to be a daddy/son date, some good quality time with just Evan (aaron is too young to enjoy this) but when Megan heard what I was suggesting she said that she would also like to go.

Where you may ask.......to Rexall Place to the Monster Truck Jam of course. They went on the first Saturday of February. They got tickets at the door and we purchased ear plugs for them.

Motorcycle jumpers, crushing cars, races.....

After the show they told me that it was ok, really noisy. I asked them if they would like to go again next year they both said "no thanks" I wasn't constant entertainment. There would be lulls in the program and the noise was too much. Good....now we can start to refine our tastes on what we consider fun/worth while entertainment. As a family we perfer to be more active.

Here is some of what Spencer captured on video:

Lazy

If the truth be told I think that I'm a little bit lazy; especially when it comes to blogging. I have been enjoying reading everyone else's blog but have been to lazy to up load pictures to use for my blog. Really what is an entry with out pictures....nothing but boring. So keep scrolling down for catch up entries with pictures......