Spring!!

We are watching the slow retreat of the snow. This pic was taken on Wednesday mid-morning.



The days are getting longer. Temperatures are staying closer to 0, even staying above 0 at night. The sun rises at 6:30 instead of 9:25. The sun feels warmer, instead of a cold ball of yellow in the sky. Brown grass peeks through the snow, dirt is everywhere. Dirt and sand get stuck on small feet, and there is much vacuuming, despite being told to "stay on the mat with your boots!" Children are undressed from outwear outside, to keep some of the sand outdoors. Mud is too hard to resist.






The back yard mid-morning on Saturday

Felicitations!

Isaac's class participated in the local Music Festival this week. They did two "Choral Speech" poems. Madame G's class placed first in their division! Nous sommes tres fier.

They have been invited back to perform at the award ceremony on Monday night. How exciting! Isaac handled the excitement with his usual style: "I guess it was fun" I would have taped the performances, but no recording devices were allowed.

Congratulations to

Leslie Fiest for your 5 Juno Awards. Those mean nothing, however, when compared with the love our Norah has for you. Norah loves "her songs" and will sing them during the day, or as she falls asleep. This particular song is a special hit with all three children since Mom pulled up the video on YouTube. A song they like, and fireworks too? Golden.

more ballet recital pics

Last minute practice with the girls


Norah and her buddy S - two preacher's kids


Norah and L from church afterwards. L was in a tap group, and they danced with their bears.


Before leaving the house

The ballet recital

Not a wonderful video, but a friend did it for me while Ruby and I watched. Norah is the third dancer from the right in the front row. The one who is a half beat ahead of the rest of the girls. :)

the reluctant ballerina

Tomorrow is Norah's ballet recital. All the kids from the "dance school" are performing. Today was the dress rehearsal and photographs.

As Rob will miss tomorrow's performance (conflicts with the afternoon service), he was elected to take Norah to the rehearsal.

Mom got her all dressed and ready to go. Hair done, 'makeup' on (beige eyeshadow and lip gloss). Bag for entertainment ready.

Word has it that the dance part went beautifully. Norah is right in front, smiling a big beautiful smile.

Then it was time for pictures.

Despite being told in advance that she would be doing photos, she did NOT want to take part. Arms crossed across her chest, lip in full on pout, she insisted that pictures were not going to happen. Rob was backed up by the other parents "I'll give you some cookies for her", "let's see if we can help make her smile". Nope. So the photographer let her stand where she was, and grouped the other girls around her for the group shot. Right in front, still displeased with the idea, Norah stood, cranky.

Let's just hope that tomorrow goes better, because mom is going with both girls, during nap time for the "real show".

If it's not one paper, it's another

We have two local papers here in town. One is the one we have a subscription to - mainly for the comic relief. There are often some really amusing slips and grammatical errors in there. Did you know that so-and-so from town was on a Mexican cruise to the Port of Varta and Matzaland? True example. It would be a fine paper, really, if the local "news ladies" allowed their submissions to be edited. In fact, nothing that is submitted by someone outside the paper staff is edited.

Then there is the other paper, the one with the new editor who has put Rob on the front cover, and then followed up with a full page interview. This family is turning into the town's media darlings.

As evidenced by this picture taken on Wednesday.



I'm pretty sure the photographer didn't plan to use this picture for the paper. However, despite using a digital camera, in an age where you don't have to print the bad photos, this staff member tends to only take one shot of a subject. The rest of the photos from that day at the library did not turn out very well. One more page for the family scrapbook!

Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Happy Easter to all. We had a lovely Easter here today - can you believe it is our fourth Easter here? A morning egg hunt, umbrellas and new toothbrushes for the kids, fresh hot cross buns from the oven for breakfast (with coffee, but that's a given). There were also some hard boiled eggs, decorated by the kids. Like their mother, all three kids turned up their noses at the eggs. They did want more chocolate. Um, no.

Nanny and the rest of us went to both services with Daddy. The girls had lovely new dresses, with matching ones for their 'babies', and new shoes. However, with a morning temperature of -7, we didn't wear the new white shoes until we got to church, and all three children went with rain boots and winter coats. It did warm up to 7 above 0 this afternoon, and the sun was beautifully warm.

Which made for lots of mud outside the church at the second service. Let's just say that the girls' tights are probably done. Muddy as it was, it's a good sign that the snow will eventually leave...right?

before church, watching Dora so Mommy can get dressed - a Sunday morning tradition


"Mom, the sun is in our eyes, do you have to do this? And no, we won't put our dress shoes back on. Can we just go eat more chocolate now?"

3 kids on a footstool

Isaac sat on the kitchen footstool. Norah sat on his lap, and they called Ruby to join them. This was a spontaneous event, not staged for the camera. They are as sweet as Easter chocolate.

Holy Week is almost upon us

One of the busiest weeks for a clergy family is almost here. Not only are there extra services, but the church Stew supper is this week. Dad also has a day trip to the cathedral for a renewal of ordination vows, then rushes home for a Maundy Thursday service.

To mark the upcoming week, there was baking.

Isaac

This past week was Isaac's second round of report cards. Which means now is as good a time as any for a review on our almost 6 year old.

- he's doing great in school. In a K/1 split, he is actually able to count the highest en francais...his teacher stopped him somewhere around 130 and determined that he was able to keep on going, and going. He loves math, and is working on figuring out multiplication on his own. He has all the French letter sound and sound combinations down - a grade 1 skill. I'm sure we have his six month of speech therapy to thank for an awareness of letter combination sounds. His biggest areas of opportunity include paying attention at storytime and knowing when to not share his ideas. That sounds like our son.

- He's signed up for the upcoming soccer season. He's also hoping to play baseball this year. Thanks to our Wii, he's quite the baseball and golf fan. He's turning his train tracks into golf courses now, and he's posting signs all over the house indicating the par level of each hole he dreams up.

- Isaac is apparently a rather popular little guy at school, but he seems to have no awareness of it. All the kids in his class seem to love him, and he's totally oblivious to it. I've heard from his classmates mothers how much the kids he's in school with enjoy him and have funny stories about him...but we can't get a word out of him about it. Typical, right?

one of his first photographic works. yellow balloon in the window


- It looks to us like he's growing taller, and more grown up looking every day. He's 44.5 inches, and 42 pounds, and size 12 shoes. He's not big, and unfortunately for him Norah is catching up to him quickly. His favorite colour is green, and he's not willing to part with a favorite green t-shirt that is now almost 2 sizes too small...it's in his "non-public" clothing drawer.

extremes

Thursday morning was a bit of a shock to the system. Mom was up and out early, anticipating a temperature of -15.


Not so much. It was -39, with a wind chill of -42. No wonder the road felt 'bumpy' - the van's tires were frozen.

By 1pm on Friday, it was 4 degrees above 0. (well, technically, according to our friend Melissa who works at the weather station it was 3.8...)

It's fun to play in the yard and hear the water running off the roof, and the cars driving by splashing through big puddles. Perhaps Spring will arrive one day!

happy sister mornings

Isaac went off to school today - especially excited because it was a fundraiser day for Telemiracle, and he got to pay $1 to wear pajamas to school. How fun is it to wake up, have breakfast, take of your pjs *then* put on pjs to go to school?

The girls had a typical morning home. First, they dressed up and spun around to music.



Then they hugged, which often turns into spinning and falling down.


Then they took turns being the baby and mom, feeding each other food they made in the play kitchen.


What a fun morning!

part way there

the girls room is on it's way. with some juggling of placement, we're almost finished. Rob is in the city for work stuff in the next 2 days, and is picking up (hopefully!) some shelves for the wall above the "tea table". There is some art-work to come for that vast expanse of wall...no re-doing our first apartment's blank walls here. Also, the blue chair will be sprayed lime green, when it finally is warm enough to get out to the garage to do it.

a happy 2 year old, on first viewing of her new bed




"I can touch the ceiling!"


The new beds, lights installed. Probably will never be this tidy again.



Moved the dresser and bookshelf.


The dress up and tea corner. Waiting for the last minute touches....

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men

to quote Robbie Burns....

Aaah, yes. Plans. What looks like a great plan on paper, isn't always so in reality.

The beds came. We had purchased a set of bunk beds that could either be stacked like bunks, or as two separate twin beds. Given the girls young age, we thought that up and down bunks may be a bit too grown up at this point. It's not easy to find bunks these days that are possible to be separated that are a) not too boyish or b) too expensive. We thought we had such a set.

then we assembled them. The space had been measured out, and made sense. We had not factored in the height of the headboards and footboards of the beds being just so tall and, well, present in the room. It's not a big bedroom to start with. Once we had the beds in there, it was obvious that we either needed to get rid of the girl's dresser, or knock out a wall in order to have enough space in the room for them to still be able to play in the room.

We took another approach, and stacked them as traditional bunks. It wasn't quite what we were going for, but it seems to work!

pictures to follow.

bye bye baby beds!

we took the big step this week, and moved the girls out of their little girl beds. Ruby was getting big for the crib mattress, and we had a friend going to Calgary who offered to get us stuff at Ikea. Ahh! A plan was hatched, and came together quickly. Big girl beds would be bought, little girl beds moved out and put into the yard sale pile. Here is one last look at the room as it was.

busy winter days

Time is going by so quickly here, despite the cold, house-bound days. We've been in a deep freeze for quite some time now, and are currently under yet another wind chill warning. This morning, it was -25C with a wind chill of -37C...and it's supposed to get colder. It hit -56C with the wind last week. The house is keeping us warm, and we're thankful for a good working furnace. See all the ice and frost on the basement door? Even the hinges are frosted up.


The kids have been making the birthday party circuit lately. We had a fantastic "Family Fun Day" the other week, including swimming, lunch out, a movie rental (Ratatouille, which they loved seeing on the big screen in Saskatoon), followed by tobogganing the next day. That was actually the last day we were able to play outside, it's been too cold since then. Ruby had a mini-getaway with mom to Saskatoon, while the bigger two went to a bowling birthday party. Isaac's Wii bowling skills served him well, although word is that he found a way to cheat. cheat at bowling...who knew!?

the girls at Aubrie's garden birthday party



We're dreaming about tropical vacations these days, and wondering if it's better to go away and have to come back to the cold, or to just wait out the winter. I think our next "big vacation" may just be a road trip to the Edmonton Ikea for new beds for the girls. How exotic!

in case anyone needs a brush-up on babies

this link has some handy tips. very handy, indeed

haircut!

After too many days of watching Ruby get food stuck in the front part of her hair, or pushing it out of her eyes while saying "can't see", measures were taken. A quick sit down on the kitchen counter, a couple of snips with the sharp scissors, and a smile later, voila! Bangs.

this photo kind of sums up 2008 so far

Ack. Influenza. We've all had it. Not fun when we all get sick at once. wheezing hacking coughs, fevers, chills, aches. Nice. Today seems to be better, and we're hopeful that tomorrow is good, since we're hosting our annual Epiphany open house!