Saturday, March 16, 2013

Ginny turns five

Ginny turned 5 on March 7th.  She is a pretty amazing kid.  She is smart, funny, sensitive and independent.  She has a wicked sense of humor and one of the most infectious laughs you will ever hear.  She definitely marches to her own beat.  Her fashion sense is in a word - monochromatic.  Her top has to match the bottom.  She loves to play with Jorja, but is also starting to enjoy her little sister's company as well.  The three of them all play fairly well together most days.
 
Leading up to her birthday, there was a lot of discussion about what she wanted for a gift.  When we looked in stores, it pretty much boiled down to she wanted everything.  Obviously, this wasn't going to happen.  After doing some Internet research, she decided she would like some Lego.  That works for me - I love Lego.  We got her a couple of sets, and nine days later, she is still playing with it.  That's a good sign.  Today, she built something with no instructions.  Awesome!  That's what Lego is supposed to be about.  Sets are nice, but we got most of our enjoyment just building stuff ourselves.  Here she is with some of her stuff.
Her birthday fell on a Thursday, so we didn't do much that day.  We asked what she wanted for her birthday supper and she said Montana's.  That sounded good, so we headed there after work.  We asked her beforehand if she wanted the waiters and waitresses to sing to her and she said yes, but she didn't wan to wear 'the hat'.  For those of you not familiar with Montana's, they have a big Moose antler hat they make the 'lucky' person wear.  Personally, it grosses me out.  How do I know the sanitary state of the scalp that was in there before mine.  So I was glad she didn't want the hat.  We conveyed this wish to our hostess, but the message got lost along the way.  When the group of servers came out to sing, they had the hat with them.  Ginny went into ugly cry.  "I don't want to wear the hat!"  They apologized of course, but to say the moment wasn't the same after that would be a bit of an understatement.  She did manage to quiet her sobs while they chanted out their version of happy birthday, but the sparkler in her ice cream had long gone out.  The video is not exactly happy.

Fast forward to the Sunday after her actual birthday to her party.  She invited 7 friends from preschool to a gymnastics party.  They all had a blast and we had some tired, sweaty girls when we were done.


Parachutes, relay races, and trampolines filled the better part of two hours.  I took a lot of pictures, but realized that all I had were a lot of blurry kids.  I guess the iPhone doesn't capture the action trampoline shots that well.  The relay race was quite amusing.  When they finally got the hang of passing the baton, they waited till the competition was back before the next person would go.  Whatever lead one team had was gone as they waited politely for their competitor to come back.
Then came cake and presents.
It was a Barbie theme and Julie did an awesome job on the cake.

Everyone was really thirsty by the time we headed home.
Another great party in the books (and not in our house).  Later.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Parent of the year

I had one of those 'parent of the year' moments today.  We were outside in the backyard for a good portion of the afternoon.  It started with me on the roof shovelling some snow off, then doing some snowblowing and shovelling off the trampoline (which we didn't get taken down before the snow fell last fall.  When I was on the roof I realised how much snow was on it and figured that probably wasn't good).  Julie was doing some chipping and trying to find the driveway under layers of packed snow and ice.  Eventually we were all outside and the kids were playing. 

I'm not sure if anyone has seen the show 'Idiot Abroad', but Julie and I have been watching it lately.  The basic premise is that Ricky Gervais sends his friend (the idiot) around the world to see magnificent sights.  There are some bumps in the road along the way to make for some more entertaining TV.  One show, Carl (the idiot) was going to Alaska to watch whales.  Part of the experience meant visiting an Inuit village and going on a pleasure hike with a guide through waist-high snow all day.  He was not impressed.  Anyway, as Jorja was leading Ginny through the mountains of snow in our backyard today, I couldn't help but think of this show.  We have an area for RV parking (which loosely translates to weed-growth area) between the garage and the neighbour's yard.  They went exploring back there and they were both up to their waists in snow.  It was rather slow going.  I was supervising CeCe on the play center and watching them. 

It was fairly mild today, so I thought I would see if a snowman was in the cards.  I picked up and handful and it wasn't quite warm enough.  I'm not sure what the Inuit word for this type of snow is, but I think it would translate as 'not quite soft enough to make a snowman, but if you pack it hard enough, you can make a snowball.'  So I made a snowball, which was packed pretty hard.  I looked over at the two explorers by the garage and thought I would lob the snowball in their general direction.  I thought maybe they would look up and get a kick out of it or wonder where it came from.  That's how I had things played out in my head.  What actually happened was a little different.

I lobbed the snowball toward them, Jorja looked up and it hit her square in the face.  She went down like she had been shot and started howling.  I ran over to her through the really deep snow, filled my boots, but kept on.  I got to her and wiped the snow from her poor shocked and wounded face.  She was still crying pretty good and said it hurt to open her eye.  I got her into the house and calmed down and explained myself to Julie who wondered what all the commotion was about.  It was quite the ordeal.  But this evening, she had no lasting damage and had forgiven me for my error in judgement.  Sheesh.  Who is the idiot now?  Later.