This Week

Since this winter has had a completely pitiful amount of snow thus far, when we got some snow on the weekend we wanted to take full advantage of it!  Mike and I took the kids tobogganing on Saturday afternoon.  It was about as successful as I thought it might be, and I suspect it was much less successful than Mike thought it would be.  I'm glad we went, but the youngest two were not very impressed - especially when Aaron did a full face-plant on his first time down the hill.  The hill we picked was also not a very suitable location, as when we arrived we found it to be extremely cold and windy with the wind coming in from off the lake.  Mike took Peter during Sunday afternoon nap-time and they had a lot more fun with the two of them, even cheerfully surviving a bloody nose incident.  On Monday I made a snowman with for the boys in the backyard, and he is currently melting into a slushy pile, as all snowmen are eventually destined to do.  This is a picture of Nate on our first tobogganing trip.

This picture serves as a warning to myself to pay attention to what is going on in other rooms while I am on the phone.  I was in the kitchen talking to Danielle on the phone the other day, and Peter came in to tell me that "we are only making a mess by the bookshelf".  I told him, "Ok, just don't make a big one because it's no fun to clean them up again" or something like that.  A few minutes later I walked into the living room and Danielle got to hear a big "Oh dear" on the receiving end of the phone.  That pile contains pretty much all the toys they could get a hold of from the shelf, their bedroom and the pack-and-play, all mixed together in a heterogeneous pile of stuff.  A barn, about 10 books and three plastic toys were the only things left on the shelf.  Too big and messy of a mess for them to figure out how to clean up on their own.  So yes, I did learn that "it's no fun to clean up big messes" because I got to do it.   

And then we got to Valentine's day.  It's not really a huge day in our house, but I think it's fun to drum things up a bit with the kids being a little older now.  I was treated in the mid-morning to a phone call from my dearly beloved, to let me know that there should be hot water brewing in the coffee pot and a cup of hot chocolate with a card hiding in the cupboard for me.  How sweet!  I greatly enjoyed my drink. 

 Peter cut out hearts for everyone in his class and wrote his name on them all. 

 It was a big job for him, but he did really well and was pleased with his task

 My three sweet little "be mines" sitting on the couch - a little distracted by the movie playing in the background

 Lunchtime!  Strawberry jam sandwiches with a twist

When Pete came home from school, I discovered (as I should have known) that home-made cards are quite out of fashion - his was the only one.  However, I also discovered that store-bought Valentines contain REALLY dumb messages that don't make sense, and I liked Peter's Valentines much better. 

 A delicious dinner of prime rib steak, oven roasted heart-shaped potatoes, and beets

 Dessert - it wasn't anywhere close to "gourmet" and doesn't look terribly appealing in this picture, but we had strawberries with whipped cream, topped with a heart-shaped jello jiggler.  The kids were fans!

Spell-checker

At very long last, I have finished formatting and editing the 2010-2011 version of the blog book.  Whew!  It was a lot of work - I'm looking forward to spending all those spare minutes doing other things while I wait for it to arrive load back up, so I can order it.  I was amused by the spell-checker that comes with the program, as it picked up a lot of words that are probably quite specific to my style of writing and what I tend to write about.  There were the standard problems that a spell-checker might have, with names of people or places.  There were other words it didn't like, such as:  ahhhh, aggggh, awwww, arg, ewww, verrrryy, hmmmm, hahahaha, looooong, and shhhh (all with varying quantities of letters of course, depending on the severity of the situation).  These came up a fair number of times.  Other words it didn't want to accept included:  disgustingness and the related "gusting" (Aaron), poopy, smushing, turd, bonked, napper, boogery, nerdy, dork, clomping, pukey, and pestiness, among others.  It seems that my blog must be full of quite scatalogical language!  Truth be told though, my days do involve a lot of that, plus I have three boys who think it's all quite hilarious.  They run into the bathroom so that they can say things like "poop" and "p*nis", because they have been told they may only say "poop" in the bathroom.  They also think it's hilarious to say "poop in the bathroom" when they are not in the bathroom, because I did in fact tell them they may only say "poop" in the bathroom.  The logic around here is a little bit skewed but we do have a lot of laughs even though as parents we end up having to hide it from them quite often.  There were two suggestions that it gave for words that I found a bit puzzling and awkward.  It wanted to change "personal bests" to "personal *reasts" (I bleeped out that letter to avoid nasty google searchers).  It also wanted to change "paddleboating" (as in, Mom and I went paddleboating at the cottage) to "adulterat*ng".  How are those in any way similar??
Anyways.  The book is finished, and I am quite relieved!  Now I guess I can start working on income taxes.  Fun fun!
 

Photos of the Month

Always easily entertained by any kind of machinery, the boys loved watching drywall for our basement being delivered. 

We visited a family dairy farm at the end of the holidays after a VD family reunion.  Everyone enjoyed seeing the work going on, touching the cows, and watching them being milked. 

 

 Imaginations in full gear, the boys had a few days after the dairy farm visit where they pretended they were cows.  You can guess what they are doing, lol.  Milking time! 

 Three boys on the couch!

A little home science experiment using red cabbage juice as an indicator for acids and bases. 

This little stinker closed himself in the bathroom and did some "cleaning".  Distracted by some child-related emergency that I no longer remember, I had left a spray bottle containing water and Mr. Clean on the counter while I went to deal with whatever was going on.  When I came back to finish my bathroom cleaning job, I discovered that Nate had been spraying EVERYTHING with the squirt bottle, including his hair and face.  You'd think after all that cleaning he wouldn't need a bath, but he sure got one.  Oh boy!

 They will never turn down a book, and Nate's really starting to get in on the action.  He can sit still through some pretty long books depending on his mood, and he'll spend a lot of time during the day going through books on his own.  He'll take one off the shelf, carefully leaf through it, abandon it and get another one.  We've got to work on the "putting books away" thing yet, but I LOVE watching him read!

 Every once in a while the bicycle helmets get rediscovered in the kids' closet, and Nate loves wearing them for whatever reason.  He'll walk around with his hands on his head like this to ensure no one tries to take his helmet off. 

 My sweet oldest son

 My goofy middle son

 My inquisitive youngest son.  He looks perhaps a little guilty in this photo, you think?  Yes he is.  In the time it took me to go downstairs, flip the wet laundry to the dryer and take the dry laundry upstairs, he dragged out a chair, climbed up to the table, pulled over the fruit bowl and started taking big bites out of a pear. 

 Enjoying a book in the sunshine under a table.

 Peter celebrated the 100th day of school this week Wednesday.  100 days already?  Wow.  He's looking so grown-up in this picture!

 Aaron was quite jealous of Peter's fruit loop necklace when he got home from school, so we made him a cheerio necklace and he was quite pleased with it. 

February Update

     How did it get to February already?  I thought we just had Christmas, and somehow we are past Groundhog Day.  Apparently, January has been a bit of a blur.  Well, what have we been busy with?  I know that today is the first Saturday in a long time that Mike and I have both been home and not booked with something or other - although Mike spent the morning at school and I spent the afternoon doing some long-neglected, long-avoided, yet necessary shopping.  So we didn't even spend the day together, unfortunately.  January has included a family reunion day, a funeral, an engagement party, extra events at school, practicing for the cadet snow derby, and the snow derby itself (which was more like a cold-mud derby, and they had to use backpacks instead of sleds.  What's with this winter, anyways?  Meteorologists are calling now for an early spring, and it seems that winter isn't really going to hit this year, much to Mike's disappointment as he is hoping for at least one snow day so he can build a fort with the kids.  I've been out in the snow with the boys a few times, but the youngest two don't last out there for very long, and I have to admit we haven't even built a snowman yet.  Sad story!
     So how have we been doing... let's see.  I'm hoping that we all have gained an immunity to this year's strain of the flu, as we had an absolutely miserable weekend in the middle of January dealing with flu.  Aaron started with it early on a Friday morning, throwing up in his bed.  He threw up again a few times Friday evening, and then that was the end of it for him.  But just the beginning for the rest of us... Mike started feeling ill in the afternoon while we were at an engagement celebration for Dave and Bethany in Oakville.  By the time we got home, he was feeling quite sick indeed, and went to bed after losing his supper.  Around 10:30 pm, Peter started throwing up, and continued to throw up about every half an hour for the entire night.  I think between 10:30 and 7 the next morning, he threw up at least 15 times.  Poor kid!  I spent the night comforting him and doing laundry and occasionally passing my poor hubby in the night on the way to the bathroom.  I guess it would have been hard to avoid it, so the flu caught up with me around ten in the morning.  Thankfully by then Peter was feeling a bit better, Aaron was all the way better and Nate never came down with it at all.  I went to bed for a bit, quite sleep deprived, and Mike dozed on the couch semi-watching countless episodes of Bob the Builder with the boys.  We tag-teamed it the rest of the day, and very thankfully started to feel a bit better by the evening.  That is not a weekend I would like to repeat any time soon.  Actually, let's not ever repeat it.  It wasn't much fun.
     And how are the kids doing now.  Peter is settling back into school again.  It took him a while to get back into routine again, and I had a hard week of him strongly resisting being dropped off at school.  I am glad that he's better with it now, and that as long as things remain consistent and he gets a hug and a kiss before he lines up to go into the classroom, he is happy to be attending school - or "work" as he likes to call it.  We've handed in his registration papers for next year at Heritage, and I am very curious to see what is going to happen with the class sizes.  It seems that there was a big boom of kids born in his year, and he's likely to have a very big Kindergarten class.  I'm glad that he's had a bit of a boost with his JK learning, as well as being able to develop some social skills and learning to be away from Mom for a time.  He's starting to spell out simple words - if he's in the mood for it that is - and occasionally asks me how to spell somewhat ridiculous words for a four year old, like "instrument" or "castanets".  Let's just start with "dog" and "top", and maybe "bum" as you seem to think that's a hilarious one.
     Aaron is doing well too.  He is getting so big!!  I have to measure him soon, but he's catching up with Peter.  When he plays with the other kids on the playground at Peter's school, it seems quite ridiculous that he won't even be old enough for JK for almost two more years.  He is looking forward to his birthday and insists that he is going to turn four, as he knows that when he is four he gets to go to school.  I do wonder sometimes if I've somehow missed a birthday for him or something, and that perhaps he is a year older than I think, but no, he is indeed only two years old.  His logic and reasoning abilities are very entertaining right now, and he keeps me constantly amused with his ponderings and the way that he talks.  The other day we read the story of Samuel and Eli in the temple at lunchtime, and after lunch he raced off to his room and jumped into bed.  He started calling out "Here I am!  You called me!  Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening!".  It was pretty funny!  He continues to love reading, and will always jump on the couch if a book is suggested.  This evening before bed, Mike started reading Fantastic Mr. Fox on the couch, and I was reading Big Red Barn with Nate on my lap.  Aaron couldn't decide which story he wanted to listen to, and kept running between the two of us to try and catch both stories, haha.  Aaron is coming down with something the last couple of days - he's had a fever off and on, his throat sounds quite sore and he's looking quite pale and miserable.  He's got a chest cough that sounds pretty phlegmy, and I'm a little worried it's going to turn into bronchitis or something worse, as I think it will be a weak point with him since he had pneumonia last year.  Let's hope for the best anyways, that it will clear up soon. I wouldn't mind attending church with Mike tomorrow instead of one of us having to stay home.  Last week was the first time in quite a while that we were able to be in our home church, and I miss it!
     Nate is growing up quickly.  His appetite for trouble is not diminishing, and he keeps me on my toes.  This morning, in the time it took me to go downstairs, empty the dryer, throw the wet load in and come back upstairs, he had dragged out a kitchen chair, climbed up, pulled the fruit bowl over and started munching on a pear.  Seriously?  I was gone for all of 53 seconds.  He is maybe starting to say a few words.  As in, he's said something like "gaggy" a few times when Mike has come home, and I think he's said "hi" a few times.  He is definitely trying to have conversations with us and making lots of interesting noises, but I'm still waiting for the most interesting one of all - that is "Mommy" of course!  Not for lack of trying to teach him!  He will point, mostly successfully, to our noses, ears, hair, and eyes but he won't point out specific people yet.  I think he knows it all - he's got this twinkle in his eye, and he thinks it's just hilarious to watch us trying to teach him things he knows already.  We continue to try to figure out the puzzle of his persistent cough.  He had a chest x-ray last Thursday, and the results of that showed that he has bronchitis.  It seems a little strange that he would have had bronchitis for more than a year, and the doctor thought so too, but we're treating it with antibiotics right now and see if the cough miraculously disappears in the next week or two with the amoxicillin.  The coughing, or bronchitis now it seems, doesn't seem to affect him very much as he is generally quite cheerful and well-tempered, and he hasn't been feverish or particularly ill at all.  It's a puzzle, anyways.
     Although it might appear that I have been neglecting my blog lately, I have in fact been working on it every spare moment for the last month or so.  I slurped the blog into Booksmart and I've been formatting it to publish the last two years worth of posts.  The first time I published my blog it covered posts from its beginning in 2005 until the end of 2009.  This next book will cover 2010-2011.  I was quite happy to finish all the formatting on Monday of this week, and was sitting down in the evening to give it all a close look over to find any mistakes when I realized something very disappointing.  When I started formatting the book, I got out my first book and carefully measured it, 8"x10", so that I could choose the right size for the second book.  Unfortunately, I chose 10"x8" and didn't think about it again until this past Monday.  This means I formatted the entire book, all 225 pages, in landscape orientation instead of in portrait orientation which is what I wanted in the first place.  NOT impressed with myself.  So, I could just publish it how it was and be annoyed forever that the 2010-11 version of the blog book is the wrong size, or redo the whole thing to be portrait orientation.  I decided to redo it, and I'm now almost done formatting to the end of 2010.  Hopefully I'll be done (again) in two or three weeks, and I can order it and have it within another few weeks after that.  Interesting how one silly decision can cause so much frustration!  Well, I think I'm just going to post this blog now instead of loading up pictures today.  Pictures will have to wait for another day.  Hope you're all doing well!