Fall 2018

Our yearly family photo

 

We kept busy this fall. 
Sundays were spent at the curling club. H is the only child curling this year and that means I'm instructing. But because he's moved up to the 9-12 year old division I have as well for teaching and teach alongside one of my teammates. 

Monday and Wednesday nights were at the pool with V.

 

Tuesday nights I curled and C took a class at the local university regarding computer stuff-video game design, programming, etc.

 

Thursday night was also curling.

 

Friday night H ice skates.

 

We continued encouraging a competitive spirit in the kids by playing board games. 

 

(my mortgaged properties are on the nearside, V counts up my money to pay her as she holds Boardwalk).

 

I love that the kids are at the ages now that we are having really good Pictionary games and the only words we have to skip are "old fashioned" words like nylons, abacus, shag carpet. (Though I had to explain denim and toupee to V). However, I think that the two smallest children are savants in Pictionary and the eldest is not too shabby, either. I am very glad we split them amongst the adults and am terrified at how badly we'd be crushed if we did adults v. kids.

 

My niece earned a spot as Clara in the Nutcracker production that she was in last year.

 

H's favorite time of the year-eggnog season started

 

 

We tried out the skating pad in the town's new arena.  Way better than our old leaky arena and there's a walking/running track which I've been taking advantage of with walking/running partners as the colder weather arrives.

 

 

So far school's going well. 

I Found out C has been helping out at school to be a lunch monitor for a Grade 2 class every day, reading announcements to the school one day every two weeks and student secretary (a students answers the phone and helps people while the secretary eats lunch) one day every two weeks (they are on a 10 day cycle). Also, I had to poke around school and find out these things. Two teachers today stopped me and said he's "such a nice kid"

A friend I scrapbook with and I met up with another mutual scrapbooking friend in Niagara Falls NY and attended her wedding!  She and her now husband had a destination wedding and when we found out how close it would be we asked to crash it and she was happy to have her two witnesses to sign off. I'd never been to the American side of the falls-it's a very different perspective.

 

 

I hosted Canadian Thanksgiving at our house and made some green bean casserole as my American contribution. 


I'm still going to the gym I started going to in July. Still haven't lost any weight but am getting stronger.  I did a pilates/yoga pass in November and December and attended lots of classes to work on my core and back to counteract the walking, running and curling I also do.

V made cranapple crisp at school and shared it with the rest of us.

 

Halloween came!  We all made costumes and trick or treated for lots of candy. C made it up and down our street, the little kids canvased the whole neighborhood then divided the candy up between the simple chocolate (V) the non-chocolate (H) and the fancy chocolate (mom and dad)

 

 

H's shirt was made with one of my new, fun crafting tools, iron on vinyl.

 

the kids continue to amaze me with their creative activities & questionable fashion choices

 

C made this puppet out of modeling clay, some screw rings and string

H got a castle setup for his Stickbots and put it together. He and V got quite in to the building of it and did it all by themselves.

Making pizza at home.

Luckily I caught her before she went off to school with my headband on.

 

H's birthday costume we got him-Steve from Minecraft!

 

 

Heading over to school in our jammies for movie night.

 

 

Husband and the kids have been playing a role-playing book game on many evenings.  I love that they have an activity that they are sharing.

 

C keeps growing. I guess that comes with being 13. He's not quite in adult men's clothes, but he's at the tail end of the teen clothes and I'm having to get a little more inventive with finding places to shop.  He's still not taller than me though.  Yes, he's growing out his mustache and plans to wax it in to a bicycle handle motif.

 

 

 

I tried a very Canadian activity for the first time.  Snowblowing.  My father in law gave his to ours now that he's moving into a community where it's done for residents and my brother in law was kind enough to come over and give me a lesson since his is the same model.  He told me to stay in 1st gear for awhile. Especially after I backed myself into the house...

 

 

Is this on the citizenship exam???

 

We've had snow and cold even though it's not officially winter. Not looking forward to this! Especially since.... drumroll, please....  husband is working on the west coast!  We aren't sure how long or how it will work out but for now he's started in November back at his old company and they are so glad to have him back.  It was a little crazy in November/December because I've been working a merchandising job. Basically I go out to stores and check on products for companies, set up advertising displays, put product on shelves, etc.  It's interesting work that is very flexible and keeps me out and about.  That being said it's also in the retail sector, so Nov/December was crazy busy at work and it was the first month husband was gone. I was also getting ready for our holiday travel (see next post) where we'd get to see him after his first month of work.  That's why I've neglected the blog!

 

 

 

 

2018 reading list

Books I read in 2018:
1) Arthur Pepper's Curious Charms
2) Mrs. Queen Takes the Train
3) Big Brother (Lionel Shriver)
4) 100 Year Old Man Went out the Window
5) Secret Sister
6) Lovely Bones
7) Alligator (would not recommend)
8) The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe
9) The Architect (Keith Ablow)
10) The Carosel (Richard Paul Evans)
11) Lean Mean Thirteen (Evanovich)
12) Before We Were Yours
13) A Wrinkle in Time
14) The Story Keeper
15) Four to Score
16) The Prayer Box
17) Turtles All the Way Down (Green)
18) Hot Six
19) High Five
20) The Nest
21) Then She was Gone (Lisa Jewell-loving her books)
22) Confessions of a Domestic Failure (Bunmi Laditan)
23) The Good Daughter (Karin Slaughter-also loving this author)
24) Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry
25) Class Action
26) The Art of Racing in the Rain
27) The Broken Girls (Simone St. James)
28) Whistle in the Dark
29) The Immortalists (Chloe Benjamin)
30) Mr. Flood's Last Resort (Jess Kidd)
31) The Mars Room (Rachel Kushner)
32) Our Kind of Cruelty (Araminta Hall)
33) Tin Man ( Sarah Winmari)
34) Underground Canada
35) Finishing School
36) Among the Mad
37) Saints for All Occasions
38) The Rosie Project
39) The Conscience Parent
40) Eat Move Think
41) Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng)
42) Firefly Lane
43) Educated
44) One Crazy Summer
45) Standard Deviation
46) Nothing Sacred (Lewis Black)
47) Suburgatory
48) Land Mammals & Sea Creatures
49) All the Beautiful Lies (Peter Swanson
50) After Anna (Lisa Scottoline-good author)
51) Girl, Wash Your Face
52) Escape Artist
53) Every Note Played (Scottoline)
54) Second Nature (Alice Hoffman)
55) Rules of Magic (Alice Hoffman)
56) The Rosie Effect
57) I'll Push You
58) Wishtree
59) Faithful (Alice Hoffman)
60) The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
61) Fortunes Daughter (Alice Hoffman)
62) Practical Magic (Alice Hoffman)
63) Hunger Fix
64) 13 Things Mentally Strong People Do

Summer... is it over already?

I certainly hope not! We have too much winter to let it run away.  But this was the first summer I think that I wasn't ready for kids going back to school. The following summer recap is in no particular order of events.

It was very weird to not go anywhere.  We typically go visit family in WA for 3 weeks, but this year we stayed home and my parents came to us for the last week of summer.

After coming back from North Bay, we tried to find local places to check out.  We had 8 weeks available to us.  C was busy, so I and a friend took our little kids to Decew Falls.  It's near Morningstar Mill maybe 10 minutes north of us.

Free parking at the mill, and it was amazing.  Not going to lie to you though, it's a bit of a trek to get down to the swimming hole.  Like really steep and using roots as stairs steep, but even the little guys made it.  The river was clear and so refreshing and there's a swing and the swim hole is up to my chest to neck depending on how much water is in the river at the time.

 

We also chipped in with our neighbor to replace the fence between us.

 

We even dealt with the tree right on the property line

 

Shortly after we had a bunny move in under the deck. He's been with us the entire summer. V has been leaving water out for it.  As long as we stay on the deck, it sits in the grass eating the clover and we stare at each other.  We also have chipmunks who have apparently built a whole castle under our backyard slope.

 

 

 

We got crafty.  The kids and I have been trying rollerblading-the whole family has a pair now and I was getting confused with all the elbow and knee pads, so each kid learned how to make a simple drawstring bag to hold their stuff.

 

 I took a few days to work on projects I'd bought a long time ago that had been sitting in my craft closet.

I spruced up the entry way be repainting this table from my inlaws who are downsizing into their retirement home.  We'll miss the pool, but I'm sure they won't miss the upkeep.

 

V turned 8!  She had friends from school over to celebrate. In a huge miracle everyone RSVPed 2 weeks in advance and only one girl couldn't come because she had out of town guests. 

 

 

 

I made a pinata per her request.  I'd never done the fringe decor before  but it was so easy!

 

 

V did her second summer on swim team with her first year competing (she practiced last year but because we were traveling, she never competed).  She got lots of ribbons (though, she laments, never a first place ) and loves it so much that she'll be taking a program where she did lessons last year practicing strokes like swim team practice in the off-season.

 

 

She's the biggest cheerleader besides the coaches.

 

We signed the kids up for free bowling.  We only went once so I probably didn't need to sign up for the parents' passes, but it was nice to know it was available to us. We played 5-pin with little balls for the kids.

 

 

We went to Zooz/Safari Niagara and tried out the ropes course, saw some animals then spent the rest of the time in the splash area as it gets hot here in the summer.

 

I went crazy on groupon and we got a Niagara Falls fun pass-we did two rounds of 18 hole mini golf, a mirror maze, two different arcades, a majic show and walked crazy amounts.

We also got a groupon for Skyzone

 

 

We checked out our friends' new coffee bar in town-Font.  V decided the paint your own cookie was a great way to entertain herself while mom had a coffee.

We played lego when I made the kids get off the computers/xBox/ipads

 

 

We took a trip to Fantasy Island in NY.  They let Canadians in for $20US! It's got milder rides which is perfect for my little scaredy cats.  Except H who rode the Silver Comet wooden coaster with us several times.  There's also a water park and H went on every single water slide and proclaimed it was "better than video games" which is pretty much his highest possible compliment.

 

Besides roller blading by the canal, we also rode bikes.  We were very blessed by our local bike store who not only gave out free helmets (V and C) but we won a new bike at the local streetfair! (H got that one)

 

 

H also got to try a paddleboard class for FREE!  Our local water rental through the city got a grant to teach kids 8-12 paddleboarding.  He said it "exceeded (his) expectations."

 

H and I discovered kombucha on the recommendation of a friend.  We now travel supermarkets and farmer's market in search of the best we can find.

 

The husband went out to help my parents pilot the boat in Alaska for almost 2 weeks.  I received this picture as the longest form of communication while he was away:

 

 

 

And he came back with a beard.

 

If you want to know what happened you'll have to read my parents' blog

https://salishaire.blogspot.com/2018/08/returning-to-salish-sea.html

 

We spent a lot of time in our regular hammock and at the end of the season got an amazing deal on a smaller swing/hammock so that the kids will stop fighting over the danged hammock have more options available to them when they want to read outside.

 

 

We watched a few of the husband's baseball games. H seems very in to figuring out the rules and critiquing the team's techniques.  V checks the score often.

 

 

My parents came out during the summer.  They have only been out in the winter and we lament that many of the activities here are only open Victoria Day (kind of like Memorial Day in the US-the kickoff to summer) to Labour Day (like Labor day, but without the U)  and my mom remarked several times, "it's so pretty here in the summer!"

 

We took them to Niagara Falls

 

 

Balls Falls

Rockway falls

 

 

Which, as you can see was pretty dry.  This is H standing literally in the middle of the falls/river where the water is supposed to be.

 

We took them to Decew Falls and hiked up a bit since we'd only ever stayed in the swimming hole.

 

(lower falls, accessible from swimming hole)

H and his beloved rope swing.

 

Then, lest they think there's only falls here, we took them to the Comfort Maple

 

 

And the Royal Ontario Museum which none of us had ever been to.  There was a lot to see but the kids' favorite were the dinosaurs and the rocks/gems.

 

 

I took my parents to Port Dahlousie.  It was pouring rain but I insisted they ride the 5 cent carousel (that's like 3.5 cents US)

 

 

Sadly, I have some issue with motion and going around and around so I took pictures and waved like a maniac at them everytime they came around.

 

Then my parents left and the kids went back to school.  They are grades 8, 5 and 3 this year.

 

 

You can see how much the teenager has grown when you view this back to school picture taken 2 years ago and you compare what panel of the garage he measures up to. He's almost 1/2 a panel taller!  Also, our family has lots of Minecraft creeper shirts-we've done two birthday parties where guests made them.  They are in pretty much every dresser in the house now.

 

 

 

This first week back has been busy. I'm so lucky that my job is flexible so I took off the week my parents were here, so I've been filling out school paperwork, catching up on housework that was just not that important compared to catching up with my parents and catching up on work jobs.  Next week I'll be working so that I can take another few days off to go to my annual scrapbook retreat to put all these lovely photos in scrapbooks.  I'm looking forward to a weekend to just chill. There's also a beautiful lake to run around there.