Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Hallowe'en Fun!

This morning started out with some extra Hallowe'en fun as I was awakened out of a sound sleep by the piercing sound of our smoke detector going off. I raced downstairs to see Dave's toast burning in the toaster oven. After some hurried conversation, we tried to smother the fire with a towel. Once the towel started smoldering we abandoned that plan and tossed water at the flames, hopeful that would do the trick. Thankfully it did. Then we had the awesome process of airing out the house. That process, by the way, is still IN progress. Urgks :(

Fortunately the rest of the day was smoother. Since Sam had missed preschool on Friday, I wasn't sure if his class was allowed to wear costumes today or not. I knew that they weren't having a Hallowe'en party but I just couldn't imagine a preschool class not wearing their costumes on Hallowe'en so I brought his costume along just in case. Thankfully I did because the kids were allowed to wear their costumes and Sam would have been the only kid without one. Sam and his classmates were all so cute! Here is Sam with some of his friends:
After school was over it was time to head to Dave's work. Kids of employees were invited to trick or treat in the office from 4 until 5, which I just thought was such a cool idea! And since it was raining outside, it was the driest and most relaxed trick or treating of the day.
After a quick supper at McDonald's we headed over to the Hedricks to check out each other's costumes. Tessa was a unique spider witch and Willem was a spider.
Sam was standing off to the side when we took this picture, but you can see him below in the mob of kids about to go trick or treating together. They are all friends of Willem and Tessa's from school. We would have joined them for a few houses but we had to get to our next engagement.
We were excited to join Caleb, Nathan, Karen and Andrew for some trick or treating in their neighbourhood. We went to about ten or fifteen houses and that was good enough for all of us.
Caleb was Bob the Builder and Sam was Piglet and they kept calling each other "Bob" and "Piglet" all night. "Bob, I want to hold your hand." "Piglet I don't feel like holding your hand right now." It was so sweet and funny! After that we went to Wes and Shirley's on our way home and that was it for trick or treating. We now have a smelly house, lots of candy, and two sleeping, happy kids. Now I'm off to eat some chocolate!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Still Here And A Change Of Plans

So you may have noticed I haven't posted in a few days. It is not because there has been nothing going on my life, au contraire! However some of what has been going on is a severe headache, a little nausea and very interrupted sleep due to nightmares (from the three year old) and in a bad habit of waking up from being sick (the one year old). So I have just felt pretty awful when we haven't been busy. Yesterday I was tempted to blog but Dave wanted me to wash dishes instead, so he could dry them. Considering it took us an hour and a half to do dishes after church, before Dave's family came for supper, I completely understand why Dave wanted help.

Anyways, I am also not feeling like this is a good week to continue the "Day in the Life" series. I still want to do it because I want to remember what my days are like but I also want a week that is (more or less) normal and not us staying home a lot because Sam and/or Rachel is sick, like last week, or because I'm not feeling great. So look for that to come back in mid-November. Or maybe I'll try again on Friday, depending on how this week has been.

And now, I am off to bed because I am too exhausted to blog anymore or even do my reading for my Bible Study tomorrow morning, which I haven't been to in five weeks. I'm nervous about going back but also looking forward to it. And hopefully, if I can get a good night's sleep, then I will feel much better tomorrow.

Thanks for hanging in there and for being flexible blog readers! And just so this post isn't too boring here are a few random pictures from this past weekend.

 My favourite breakfast -- toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with butter, strawberry yogurt and a coffee/hot chocolate. Yum!
 Our two kids ready to go to the synagogue. Sorry that Sam is displaying awful manners and showing off his chewed challah.
 Sam and Marika baking a "Container Cake" for our church potluck on Saturday night.
 Dave and Donny cooking the main course for our Saturday night potluck. And we even brought enough home to feed to Dave's family on Sunday night.
 Dave reading a book to Sam and Rachel, who are still dressed in their church clothes. Sam had just spilled apple juice on his sweater. Awesome.
Rachel playing with a ball at Old Navy tonight while I fruitlessly tried on a million dresses. What good is having all your dresses on sale for $19 if I can't find one I like?!?!?!
Sam and Rachel playing on the car rides (We don't put money in, they enjoy being on them anyways) while I bought some exercise bras. NOW I don't have an excuse to not go to the gym! Ha!

And that is the end of my randomness for tonight. Good night!

Friday, October 26, 2012

Day In The Life -- Friday

Today did not turn out as planned. I was supposed to go to my aunt's and visit with my cousin Katherine and her daughter Clara but Sam woke up coughing and Rachel had a runny nose, so we cancelled. And with Sam's coughing I decided sending him to school this afternoon might not be the best idea so instead of having an out-and-about Friday, we had a stay-at-home day instead.

I woke up at 8 to Sam's coughing. He woke up Rachel, as I still thought we might be going to my aunt's and then we all had breakfast. Sam and Rachel tried on their Hallowe'en costumes and played (and got in each other's way a few times!) and I talked to Katherine on the phone in lieu of an in-person visit. Then I talked to my friend Karen about potential Hallowe'en plans.

During this time my bagel was toasting and it got cold. I hurriedly ate a strawberry yogurt somewhere in there and we Skyped with my parents. We often Skype them after our breakfast, first thing in their morning. I love that the kids get to see my parents and my parents get to see the kids in their daily routines. Then Sam and Rachel played, I ate my cold bagel, made some tea and checked computer stuff (e-mail, blogs, Facebook, the weather.) I also played a few rounds of "Mad Birds," as Sam calls it, with him cheering me on. It's not selfish on my part, it's entertaining Sam, really :)

Then Sam went and played downstairs for a bit while I did dishes and Rachel alternately walked around and played. And whined a bit, to be honest. (In the far right of the picture below you can see my cup of tea waiting patiently for me to drink it.) My dish doing music was Les Mis today, inspired by a post written by Erika, a blog friend of mine.
Then I changed some diapers, got some laundry going and played with Sam and Rachel downstairs for a bit. Then I fed Rachel some lunch, heated up some soup for me, and tried to ignore Sam's meltdown because I cut his sandwich into three pieces instead of two. After that it was naptime. Thankfully. Sam refused to sleep in his bed so we compromised on him being in his rocking chair.
While the kids napped, I sat at my computer, blogging, eating lunch, drinking my (reheated) tea, and responding to e-mails. I also sorted through some folders of pictures to be printed. How sad that I was doing this exact same thing last year when I did this series. sigh. I love blogging because I've been taking so many more pictures but I hate blogging because now I have over one hundred folders of pictures to sort through. Yes, I still like to print pictures out for albums.
At about 4:45 I woke up Rachel and Sam, put the challah in the oven to bake and attempted to attack Mount Laundry-more, as Dave sometimes calls it. Fortunately I had distracting help from Sam and Rachel as they played peek-a-boo with some of the laundry!
When Dave got home he turned lots of fresh food from our awesome CSA into a green pepper-potato frittata. The eggs are even ones Sam got to help gather yesterday! It was pretty good. And we celebrated Shabbat, doing the blessings fairly quickly because both kids were melting down. I don't even know why since they both had good naps and supper was right on time.
Supper was a little crazy because ALL Rachel wanted to eat was challah. She ate barely any of her supper. And I had only a few sips of my wine and then felt like falling asleep. I had a late night last night finishing one of my bookclub books and so I was very tired today.
After supper I played Angry Birds while Sam and Rachel cheered me on (it really is family entertainment) and Dave played guitar upstairs. He has to get ready for tomorrow night! (ohhhh, the suspense!). Then Dave gave Rachel a bath and, since she was freaking out so much, I went up to help.
I put Miss Rachel to bed while Dave bathed Sam. Then I blogged while Dave put Sam to bed and now I'm going upstairs to fold one more load of laundry, drink some hot tea because I'm cold, and go to bed early because I am tired. And tomorrow is another busy day! Good night.

Show Us Your Life: Hallowe'en Costumes

EDITED TO ADD: I originally did this as a post for Kelly's Korner, however I am also linking up with Kate at 2 3 Kids, a Mini Van and a Mortgage to show you what we're doing for Hallowe'en this year. Basically we're going trick or treating at my husband's work and then for about ten minutes each with two sets of friends. Sam and Rachel are too young to really get what Hallowe'en is about so I figure this gives them a bit of friend time, a bit of fun time, and some candy, but not so much that they (and we) are dealing with the consequences for hours days afterwards. Now on to my original post. (For this year's costumes just go directly to the bottom of the post.)

I'm linking up with Kelly's Korner to show you our Hallowe'en costumes. I don't have a whole ton of Hallowe'en pictures on my computer so I will just post the last few years.

In October 2008 I was around twenty weeks pregnant with Sam and he had the best Hallowe'en costume of all time, lovingly sewn by his daddy. I was a nurse and Dave was a pirate-karate kind of guy. It was awesome! (I still have this costume if anyone is pregnant and wants to borrow it.)
 
I always dreamed of having a "pod of peas" baby so, through friends, I was able to borrow the following costume for Sam for his first Hallowe'en, which rocked! And since we went to Ontario for Hallowe'en, and the pea costume was in Ontario, for Alberta parties I just dressed Sam in his Hallowe'en sleeper with a skeleton onesie on top. It was pretty lame :)

For Sam's second Hallowe'en I was super-sick in my pregnancy with Miss Rachel so Hallowe'en was a bit of a wash. Sam was a lion, a costume we borrowed from Tim and Janice. It's the costume Tessa wore the first Hallowe'en I knew her and then Willem wore it too. I was excited it was Sam's turn but also too sick to really care.
Last year I found an awesome deal on a pod of peas costume for Rachel, and since she was four and a half months she was alternately a karate-chopping pod of peas or a nonviolent one! And since it can be pretty cold in the Prairies for Hallowe'en, it was great that her costume was so fleecy and warm. Dave, Rachel and I were also all avid Saskatchewan Roughriders fans for part of Hallowe'en.
Sam was a dinosaur or alligator or maybe a dragon (I can't quite tell what it is; can you?) but he was not thrilled about wearing it. By the third time he wore it however he was quite excited about it which made me realize I should have gotten him used to his costume before the first time he needed it. This was another costume which we got from the Hedricks. 
 
This year Rachel will be the lion and Sam is going to be Piglet, as modeled below. Although I still have no idea what we're actually going to be doing for Hallowe'en this year. Yerghks :()

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Last Chance Blog

I'm calling this post "Last Chance Blog" because starting tomorrow I am going to blog everything I do for a week. I know I promised this to you starting on Monday but then Rachel got sick and I wasn't going to write about being stuck at home all week. I am just not a stay-at-home, stay-at-home mom. I like doing things with my kids and they like doing things too. I did this last year and you can check it out starting here. After this coming week (yes, I do a full seven days, after all I do things on the weekends too!), I am going to take a word-blogging break and post a "Picture of the Day" for the next week. Again, I did this last year and I felt like the two weeks together were about two week's worth of "normal" posts. So read, or not, and learn more than you ever wanted to know about my life.

So for today I am going to post some pictures and talk about some things which have happened in the past week, and which I haven't had a chance to blog about yet.
Last Friday Rachel was just coming down with her week of sickness (which is done by the way!!!), and so Dave came home from work and stayed with her while I picked Sam up from school. Then Sam and I had a date at Starbucks. As you can tell by the above picture he was thrilled! No really, he was. He just never looks normal in pictures.
On Saturday, Rachel wanted to sit at Sam's table with him. What happened to my baby?!?!?!
Yesterday, Rachel was hugging her bunny, which we call Funny Bunny (Sam named it so don't ask as I'm not even sure why he called it that but now we all do), and I got all sad thinking about The Velveteen Rabbit and how Rachel had been sick. If Funny Bunny had to become "real" I think I'd totally be sobbing since Rachel has become very attached to him. When we bought it for her way back when we had no idea how important he would become to us her.
Sam wanted to jump in the puddles yesterday after school, and because he'd been cooped up inside because of Rachel being sick I told him to "Go for it!" which he did with abandon. He ended up getting so wet he went home without pants on!
We went to Herrle's again on Sunday to get our pumpkins. We got a farm family picture and of course Sam was only looking at the camera for the individual picture of him. Three-and-a-half-year-olds -- the master of awful pictures :)
I wanted a picture for the blog header but Rachel was sad and Sam was distracted by a bus. Then we moved to the hay wagon and got this awesome picture of Sam by himself. You can take back what I said about three-and-a-half-year-olds above :) And as you can tell from the new blog look, we did manage to get a picture I was happy with. (ie both kids look halfway decent!)
Rachel perked up a bit for Nathan's birthday party and had some fun when she wasn't screaming. Poor kid.


And that's what's been going on around these here parts. What have you been up to lately?