Friday, April 29, 2011

Miscellaneous pictures of Sam

Sam has been very amusing lately so here are some fun pictures.
Below is Sam wearing a piece of strawberry as a hat!
He thought this was hysterically funny,
especially when it kept falling off!

Sam hijacked Dave's bowl of Crispix and bran,
AND Dave's spoon, for breakfast one day.

Sam thought it was fun to wear "Daddy's underwear!"
Mommy thought it was funny too!

I don't remember why this picture was taken but lately
Sam has really enjoyed playing outside with balls.
Especially kicking them.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

New teapot!!!

There was good news and bad news in teapot-land this week. In putting away dishes, a bowl was dropped on the old teapot and the handle broke off. Fortunately, the bowl did not break. However, the old teapot is now out of commission, except as a very unique vase -- possibly.

A new teapot was in order. After scouring a lot of stores at Southgate Mall for "an interesting teapot" (ie one that was MORE than one colour!), we found the new teapot, made by Portmerion which has a line of mugs I LOVE and ADORE!

Below are the two teapots -- the old one on the left and the new one on the right. Dave loves the fact that now we can say we own a "T(ea)-Mobile Blackberry Device." I just think he's a nerd :)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Lovely Lilies

Dave's parents bought me some lilies when they were here. They are looking beautiful and spring-y right now so I wanted to share some pictures.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Dave's family visit

My parents and niece, Lily, came to visit over the Easter long weekend, and we had a very enjoyable visit. Some highlights were Sam and Lily getting lots of quality play time, an action-packed outing to the swimming pool at Millennium Place (complete with hot tub, lazy river, and wave pool) and, as always, re-visiting the farmer's market, library, and park circuit on Saturday morning. We capped off the visit with an excursion to Marble Slab Creamery, where tasty, tasty ice cream was had by all.

Here are a few photos to give a sense of the visit.


Lily reading Sam one of his books ("Snoozers" by Sandra Boynton)


Lily and Sam, all ready to head off to the market on Saturday.


My mom, gamely pulling her grandkids to the market.


Sam doing "tai-chi", as he mimicked some more experienced practitioners at the park.


Here I am, pretending to know how to grill bison burgers.


Everyone sitting down to enjoy the bison burgers and potato salad on the deck.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Easter

Easter for me is always about attending services at Waterloo North. But sadly, since moving to Edmonton, that just isn't possible. And, ironically, we've only been able to get to Saskatoon for Easter JUST ONCE since moving here. This year Dave's family was visiting and we fit in a few Easter things anyways.

On the Wednesday before, I took Sam to an Easter Egg Hunt at a nearby pre-school. Sam LOVED it! He didn't even want to trade in his eggs for his prize. Although eventually I convinced him to do so. I picked a stuffed fish for him and he has slept with it every night since so I think he likes it :)



On Saturday night Dave's family dyed Easter Eggs with us. I hadn't dyed Easter Eggs in years but Dave's family had NEVER done it so I passed on what knowledge I could remember. I think everyone had fun. Sam mostly enjoyed sticking stickers on one of the un-dyed eggs.



Afterward, to have some fun, we made patterns in the little bit of snow left on our front lawn with the leftover dye. It looked kind of funky and really pretty. A bit like our own little piece of graffiti!



And here is the carton of our finished eggs, most of which I turned into potato salad for our BBQ on Easter Sunday. Dave was particularly proud of his Saskatchewan Roughriders egg!


Easter Sunday, itself, was a gorgeous day so we went swimming in the morning at Millenium Place in Sherwood Park and then had a BBQ for supper. Dave BBQd bison burgers from the market, and grilled vegetables and I made a HUGE potato salad. We ate on the back deck and it was awesome! I wore capris and flip flops outside for the first time this year and it was beautiful.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Knut at 33 weeks, exactly!

So Knut is now 33 weeks, exactly! I hardly ever get a picture of me on the exact day that the week changes over but today I did. Yay me!

I've had more Braxton-Hicks this week and they sure feel weird. I don't remember them being like this with Sam. I guess I just get tighter and it feels harder to breathe. I don't remember the breathing thing being an issue with Sam. I guess Knut is just sitting in a different position!

Also notable about this picture, although you can't tell, is that I am wearing maternity capris for the first time this pregnancy, if you don't count the stay-at-home sweat-like ones my friend Hannah gave to me. It was beautiful outside today so capris were definitely called for.

I think I look A LOT bigger, suddenly, in this picture. Maybe it's just me?!?!?

Friday, April 22, 2011

Sam and Olivia

On Thursday we had Olivia here all day. She and Sam play so well together. Dave had them in the morning so I could go to MOPS. Sam and Olivia enjoyed hanging out on the couch for awhile.



Dave took them in the wagon to the library and Ten Thousand Villages. Then I came home and we fed them lunch. At one point Sam and Olivia came into the kitchen and Sam announced, "We holding hands!" And they were. It was super cute :) And Sam seems to have gotten over his shyness of hugging Olivia, as witnessed below.



The two of them are such good friends and get along so well. I'm so happy for that!

Date night!

So Dave and I had date night today. Well, really it started this afternoon when we watched the rest of "Life As We Know It." Maybe it was my mood but I just couldn't get into it. Tonight we used some time to talk to Jen and Mike. It was really good to catch up with Jen, especially, about the birth of Will and his early weeks of life.

Then we got out of the house and went to the library, Videodrome, and then to Block 1912 for some actual date-night quality time. I went there yesterday with Sam, Hannah, Stella and Mia and Sam and I shared a white-chocolate-raspberry gelato. Tonight I had the pink grapefruit and Dave had a cafe latte and blueberry cheesecake. Yum!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Not sure whether to laugh or cry...!

So I took something downstairs today and left Sam playing upstairs, as I often do. I came upstairs and asked, "Sam, what are you doing?" His response: "Colouring on the wall!" Sadly, he was right. The wall AND our bedroom door.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Seders

In celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover, it is traditional to celebrate two seders, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. This year, we ended up celebrating three seders, with a variety of people and settings.

The first was a pre-Passover seder that we hosted for our neighbourhood potluck ("Hoodluck", for short) group the night before Passover started. Since I was the only Jewish adult present, I was the de facto seder leader, and did my best to blend traditional seder elements with traditions from my family.

Unfortunately, we didn't get many pictures of the event, but here is one of Sam, getting into the interactive, recreating-the-slavery-experience spirit of the seder by crushing matzah with one of his toys.


And here is our seder plate, with a supplemental bowl of parsely off to the side.


Hosting ten people for dinner created a number of dishes. Here is the before-and-after evidence of all the dish-doing that happened in the aftermath of the seder. You will, of course, notice that there are still some dishes in the "after" picture, but I will point out that the pile of dishes is, much, much smaller!


For our second seder, which was on the first night of Passover, we were invited to Dan and Sheila's house, along with several other families from our synagogue, and Dan and Sheila's kids and significant others. It was a great evening, and felt very warm, welcoming, and extended family-ish (in a good way! :) Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures, so you'll have to imagine everyone gathered around a very long table for lots of excellent, kosher-for-Passover food.

Finally, we went to a second seder (well, our third seder, but who's counting?) hosted by Temple Beth Ora. This ended up being a quite different crowd from the people that were at Dan and Sheila's the previous night, so it was good to see a wide variety of TBO people. Also, the Rabbi introduced some elements that -- even having just been to two seders -- we had not yet seen, so that was nice. Again, we didn't take too many pictures, and the only one that turned out was this one of Sam, who spent a large part of the seder set-up time gathering gummi worms and spiders (for the Ten Plagues) into neat piles on people's chairs. I made sure to move these "collections" before anyone sat down! :)



After the third seder, we were all officially seder-ed out... with the possible exception of Sam, who was crying for "More Seder!" as we left that evening.

Monday, April 18, 2011

The World -- from Sam's point of view

The pictures in this post were all taken by Sam. Sometimes someone was helping to steady the camera and sometimes not. I will let the pictures speak for themselves (mostly!).




Baby Knut!





Sunday, April 17, 2011

Legal, the French Mural Capital of Canada

On our way back from our trip to Slave Lake, we stopped by in the small town of Legal, Alberta. The name caught our eye, but it turns out that it is not pronounced like the English word, rhyming with "eagle", but rather with its French roots in mind, to rhyme with "egale". Not only does the town have strong Francophone roots, but they have commemorated this heritage with a number of large murals scattered throughout the town.

Since we had a bit of extra time, we spent a little while exploring the town, and really enjoyed getting a sense of the town's history.



One of the town's founders was a cobbler, and apparently lived to be over 100 -- that is, into the 21st century.



Another of the town's first families, who apparently ran a hotel.



A homesteading family living in a sod house. This kind of house would have been dug a few feet into the ground, and sod would have been used for the roof.





This mural commemorates a famous botanist, who blended the Alberta wild rose with the Kamtchaka Rose to create a thorn-less version of the provincial flower.



This mural celebrates the role of ACFA (Association Canadienne-Francaise de l'Alberta) in the town, and in advocating for Francophone rights and issues in Alberta.