We've moved

Hey everyone, in case you're wondering what happened to this blog, I've switched things up a bit and moved here:  http://dado3girls.blogspot.ca/
Later.

2014 wrap up

December has passed us by and we are now into the new year.  Hard to believe.  Here are some of the highlights of the month.

CeCe with Santa at her preschool Christmas concert:

Ginny all dressed up and ready to perform for her concert:

Jorja dressed up for her concert:

Time to make some cookies:

Decorating cookies with Poppa:

Nanny mixing up some icing:

The girls reading the Christmas story:

Julie taking her parents for a sleigh ride:

Julie and her Dad hanging out in the shop:

As you can see, it was a busy month.  The girls each had their own concert for school (grade 1-3 on one night and grade 4-7 on the next) and CeCe had her preschool one.  We traveled to Tofield and Golden Prairie to spend time with family.  And we had our own first Christmas here in Lloydminster.  

The year has definitely had it's ups and downs and major changes.  We packed up and moved to Lloydminster from Saskatoon.  Julie left her job of 11 years and I left mine of nine.  The girls switched schools and piano teachers.  We switched churches.  We left behind dear friends which we miss and still keep in close contact with.  Julie is enjoying work at her new clinic.  I am enjoying my time at home with the girls.  The girls have all settled into their new schools and classes and are excelling here.  They've all taken swimming lessons here.  CeCe is taking skating lessons.  I kept my Movember mustache and it is now long enough to wax the ends.  I started playing hockey again.  Ginny made a commitment to follow the Lord and accepted Jesus as her savior.  And both my Dad and Julie's continue to battle and fight cancer with all they're worth.  The treatment has turned Julie's Dad's hair white and taken my Dad's hair altogether.  They have both aged this year, but continue to be an example to us of how to live and always keep God first.  He is in control and we have to trust Him.  

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and wish everyone the best in 2015.  Check out my new look and new start for the new year.   Later.

Spies like us and word combinations

Perhaps the first rule of spying should be to not leave your spying rules laying around.  Or maybe 'the first rule of spy club is don't talk about spy club.'  

While putting something away in Ginny's room the other day, I stumbled upon her note pad.  I probably wouldn't have payed it much attention, but the top line caught my attention.  It said 'don't talk to our family.'  This piqued my curiosity enough to look a little closer.  I flipped  back one page and then it all made sense.  Ginny and CeCe like to play a spy game where they sneak around the house totally undetected and spy on people.  I use the term 'totally undetected' fairly loosely.  So here are the 10 rules for spying.  (ignore some of the phonetic spelling): 

(I'm also not sure what 'follow the blue light' refers to.)

I while back I talked about combining words to form new words, specifically coughing and farting to make foughing.  Well, this practice is kind of catching on in the house.  The other day Ginny came into the kitchen and said she was farting as she walked.  She was giggling pretty good too.  Then she paused for a minute and said, 'I was falking!'  After I suppressed my initial look of shock and awe, I told her we probably shouldn't say that one.  Perhaps warting would be better.  She preferred falking.  I thought it best to not push the point too much or she would really dig in her heels and we'd all be falked.

This practice of combining words has also spilled over to other children in the house.  We were in a store the other day looking at some toques, scarves and mittens and they had some that were combinations.  Scarves with little mitt pockets at the end became scittens.  They also had toques that had mitts attached.  Jorja declared that these were tittens.  Again, perhaps not the best way to combine those two words.  Oh well, what's a person to do?  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  Grab your tittens, we're going falking.  Later.

Skating, coloring, sledding, new toques and Christmas fun

We received some big news this week.  Huge really.  The phone rang Sunday evening and it was CeCe's skating instructor.  She told us that registration for the after Christmas session was opening this week and if we were going to register CeCe to register her in level 2.  Level 2!  How awesome and crazy is that.  All the parents got the same call and we were all equally surprised.  But the kids are all doing great and have all improved a lot since that fateful first lesson.  

Here's our little star this week:

  

CeCe and I were doing some coloring yesterday.  She decided that she was going to color Sophia's eyes.  Her marker had a bit of a wide tip to it though, and it kind of looked like Sophia was in a fight when she was done.  CeCe was not happy with the result and was ready to scrap the picture.  But we had colored quite a bit already and I didn't really want to start another one.  So I did the next best thing - I turned Sophia into a rock star.  Dark sunglasses.  That did the trick and everyone was happy.  As it turns out, CeCe likes the idea so much that she has done a couple more pictures with sunglasses now.  Who's the real rock star here?  Anyway, here is our completed picture:

During one point of our coloring, CeCe was having a hard time deciding between two shades of purple.  So I put both of them in my hand and did eenie meenie minie mo.  I ended up picking the very best one which was light purple.  CeCe was apparently not happy with the result and asked me to do it again.  I just gave her the dark purple.  She was not happy with that and still wanted me to do it again.  (There were only the two choices.)  So I did another round of eenie meenie minie mo and magically selected the dark purple.  She then accepted the marker and was happy.  I guess it's all about presentation.

Yesterday afternoon we took the sled out to the little hill behind our house.  CeCe had a blast as you can see:

Julie has been learning to crochet and finished the third toque this week.  They all had to wear their new creations for breakfast.  They all love them, but Ginny would live in hers if we let her.

Last night there was a family Christmas party/program at church.  There was half an hour of carnival type games followed by a program.  It was really well put on and the girls had a blast.  Here is a little game of snowball race:

And here is some giant tic tac toe:

That's it for now.  CeCe has a field trip this afternoon to a local radio station, so that should be fun.  Later.

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.

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.