Sunday, November 30, 2014

Recitals, Movember, cooking and what did I just say?

November is certainly leaving with a lot more snow than normal and crazy cold temperatures.  Yesterday we braved the cold to go to the girls' piano recital.  It was held at an extended care home, and I think it was enjoyed by all.  Here's Jorja:


And Ginny:


And Ginny with her duet partner Mom:


Today is also the last day of Movember.  Once again, I grew the stache and raised a bit of money for prostate cancer research.  Here is the daily progress throughout the month:


Yesterday I was making some banana chocolate chip muffins.  Jorja was helping, as she likes to do.  I find most of my recipes online and one website I like is Mennonite Girls can Cook.  Jorja knows this already, so as we were getting ready to make the muffins, I asked her where we were getting the recipe from.  'Mennonite girls can cook!' she replied.  And then she said, 'But so can Mennonite Dads.'  Aw, what a kid.

Do you ever have one of those experiences where you think to yourself, 'gee, I never imagined I would ever say that'?  I had one of those this afternoon.  The girls were playing polly pockets.  We have an assortment of different sets all the same size - some Barbie, some Disney princess and some Disney fairy ones.  All was going well for a while, but then there was some sort of disagreement.  I wasn't really paying attention, but as it escalated, Ginny came to find me.  She said Jorja wasn't letting her use a dress that had originally been designed for a fairy unless she put it on Tinkerbell.  So then I went in there and said, 'The dresses are for everyone.  Anyone can use any dress.  It doesn't matter if you're human or fairy.'  Then I left.  Then I thought, 'what the heck did I just say?'  Then I chuckled.  What has life become?  Later.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Ogres, don't say hi and foughing

CeCe has some new lip gloss that smells like some sort of fruit.  I'm not really sure which one.  She put some on the other day and wanted me to smell her lips.  You'd think that may be a strange request, but I've been asked to do that on many occasions over the past several years.  So I bent down to her face level and took a deep breath and said how nice they smelled.  She took a step back and wrinkled up her nose.  'That was too close!' she said.  'That was kind of like an ogre.  Eww.'  I guess next time I won't be so enthusiastic.

We were driving home from school today and were stopped waiting for a school bus.  Ginny saw a friend of hers out the window and pointed him out.  He was talking away to himself and then started climbing a little snow bank, got down on his knees and started punching holes into it.  His mouth never stopped moving.  He was very into whatever he was imagining.  I asked Ginny if she wanted to say hi and started rolling down her window.  She said no and then she and Jorja started this whole giggling fit about how it would be so weird to say hi.  (They've always been weird about seeing friends outside of school or wherever they normally see them.  We'll get home from somewhere and they'll say that they saw someone.  Did you say hi?  Well, no, of course not.  Weird.)  He was pretty into whatever he was doing though - it may have been weird to say hi in this case.

The girls all had a run of bad colds which we are pretty much over now.  The one day Ginny was coughing and then she started to giggle.  I asked her what was so funny.  She said that as she was coughing, she squeezed out a fart.  Ahh, the ever funny fart.  It never gets old.  We chuckled and then came up with a new word - fough.  It's the fart/cough combination.  She thought that was pretty hilarious.  Jorja walked into the room.  'Jorja, I foughed!'  More laughter from Ginny and a confused look from Jorja.  I don't think they're quite ready for the shart yet.  Later.

Christmas is coming

Maybe it's all the snow and the cold weather, but it seems like we were into the Christmas spirit early this year.  And our yard shows it.  In Saskatoon we were on a corner lot with a huge front yard, so things seemed a bit more spread out.  Here we have our double driveway and a little bit of grass in front of the house.  So we filled it up.  

Here's my helper posing with the 10 foot long snowman:

Here's everything lit up at night:

This picture was pre-decorating.  The other two girls were sick and it was freezing cold, but Ginny wanted to play in the snow.  Kids and winter:

Here's Jorja enjoying a nice cup of hot chocolate.  It was mostly about the marshmallows:

And here's the new prelit tree we bought this year.  That was awesome setting up:
Later.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Ninjas, tire pressure and a tangled mess

Here we are into the middle of November already.  It is crazy how time flies.  Looking back over things, I realized I didn't even put up any Halloween pictures of the kids.  So here are my ninjas in action:



And my princess out getting candy and hanging with creepy statues on porches (both ninjas were too afraid of it.  How does that work?):


It appears winter is here to stay.  We started off with a couple of nice soft and melty snow falls, but those days are gone.  Now it's cold and miserable.  CeCe and I did get in a bit of fun before things got too nasty.  Here we are with our #Movember inspired snowman.  The spring from our old trampoline proved to be the perfect accessory.  At least I thought so.  CeCe took it off as soon as the pictures were taken.  Apparently snowmen shouldn't have mustaches.


CeCe's preschool class had a field trip to a car dealership last week.  I know - it seemed a bit strange to me too.  But it turned out pretty good.  They got to have tire races, check out the garage and check the air pressure on a tire.  They each got to keep a tire gauge too, so they were pretty pumped about that.  (No pun intended.)  It was my turn to be the parent helper so I got to enjoy the experience as well.  Here is CeCe getting ready to check the tire:


The girls had this whole week off school from Nov 10-14 which was something we had never heard of before.  But I guess they haven't had any days off yet this year, so it must all work out.  They don't have any more days off until Christmas break now either.  With the holiday being Tuesday, Julie took Monday off work and we went on a little get-away to Saskatoon.  We visited some friends, did some shopping and plenty of swimming and water sliding.  The girls were good and tired by the time we came home.  Julie and I also celebrated our 13th anniversary while we were there.  Nothing says romance like a hotel room full of kids.  

The thing about shopping with three children (especially CeCe) is that you have to realize you have about a two hour window.  After that, it all goes for a wreck and nobody is happy.  And they are much better shoppers when they are being shopped for.  We happened to be in Bootlegger and Julie and I were both looking at things and wanting to try stuff on.  The sales person told me that the jewelry the girls were looking at was on sale.  It all started out between $15 and $20 each but some was marked down to $2.99.  It turned out the $2.99 stuff was further marked down to 5 for $5.  So I bought us some time by letting the girls pick out cheap necklaces.  It worked like a charm.  (Again, no pun intended.)

One necklace CeCe bought had 5 individual chains on it of varying lengths so that it looked like 5 necklaces when it was on.  Well, it didn't really survive the trip home.  To say it got a little tangled would be an understatement.  Julie and I each took a turn trying to untangle it, but it wasn't happening.  Then Ginny came along and looked at it.  In the heat of the moment, I told her I would give her $10 if she was able to get it.  Then Jorja came alone and thought this sounded like a pretty good deal.  Being off school, she had plenty of time to devote to it.  And she devoted a lot of time to it.  She would think she made some progress and come show me and I thought for a while that my money may be in jeopardy.  But then she would have more trouble and it would look like a big ball again.  I asked her once how she was making out and she said, 'Good.  I'm getting there.  It's like Mom's tattoo says - without struggle there is no progress.'  Well, in this case, it turns out there was a lot of struggle and not much progress.  I think my money is safe:


The kids have all had colds the past few days.  That coupled with the cold weather and no school have made for some interesting days.  I'm ready for school tomorrow anyway.  Later.