Dance shoes...

I sewed my first pair of dance shoes.  Not sure if this is one of many, or first and only.  On Saturday Paige starts jazz and ballet.  The classes are back to back and she has 2 sets of shoes, which she will come out to swap in the middle.  This means 2 dances at the year end recital, which hopefully end up on the same night.  I'm looking forward to dance this year, although I'm not sure if she'll be in a room where I can watch.  If not, the plan is to have an hour of reading time.

More things Paige says....

Scene: Looking at photo album...

Paige: Mom, how'd you get these pictures out of the camera like this?

But the fact that as soon as we load the photos onto the computer we can also view them on our ipads, iphone, ipod, and TV instantly is perfectly normal to her...

Things Rose says...

Scene: Getting organized to go out to dinner.

Mommy: We're going to go to a restaurant....Kelsey's.

Rose: I don't wanna go Kelsey's!!! I wanna go McDonalds!!!

(Rose has never eaten at McDonalds...only a happy meal at home, or on the road via cottage).

Things Paige says....

Scene: Paige trying to braid my hair.

Paige: It's easier to braid when you have 3 different colours.

Me: Ya, i guess it's easier to see each piece.

Paige: Ya, because it is tricky because your hair's all grey.

St. Albert Part 4

Here's a couple more pictures from our trip to St. Albert.

The more time that goes by, the harder it is to remember all the activities we did.  Other fun things were a trip to Galaxyland, visiting with Turcsanyi's, a dinner out with Janice and Andrew, a dinner with Cam and Lana Barr, visiting friends, a board game night,  trips to the park, a few comedy specials on TV, a girls dinner at Earls, a couple trips to the Servus place pool, and lots more.  The girls were at a great age this year.  They got along well, and Paige was a great older cousin.  Lizzy loved having her cousins there and apparently misses them a lot.  Paige and Rose mention Lizzy quite a bit and Paige wants to get Lizzy a "really great present" for Christmas.

The unfortunate part about St. Albert was that Rose only napped 3 times in the 10 days we were there.  Some days she didn't need a nap, but other days she was clearly suffering because of it.  Also Rose was pretty shy around new people.  Paige said a lot that she missed Scout.  I would have loved to stay longer, as it is never long enough, but realistically, we did need to get home to Scout.

Our return flight home was early morning so we woke up at 4:45am and headed off to the airport.  We had to say goodbye to everyone the night before,  so it lessened the blow a bit.  Always sad to say goodbye. 

St. Albert Part 3

On the Friday in St. A, James took the day off work and we all travelled to the Space Science Center.   There was a kid-themed star show that we wanted to look at, as well as a discovery area for kids. 

Coffees that we just bought and then had to down before going in.  I actually locked mine up in a locker and retrieved it later.  sick.

In the star theatre

Self photo...Lizzy got cut out.

In the discovery area there was a plane.  First you scanned the bags at security.  You could see the contents on a screen.  Then Rose loaded them into the baggage area at the back of the plane.

St. Albert Part 2

Pictures from a trip to the Keenoshayo park.  Completely redone from my childhood days, but fun to be outside the old school.  A beautiful day temperature wise.  Blue Alberta sky.  Ah bliss.  Afterwards we headed to a toy store and got the girls a toy each.

St. Albert Part 1

Eating breakfast together the first morning.  Lizzy was so happy to have her cousins at her house:

Real Abby took stuffie Abby for a ride:

Girls in the tub. Paige, Lizzy, and the Puerto Rican:

Cousins about the same size:

Much to our dismay, St. Albert was really mosquito-y, and quite hot.  Our visions of lots of outside time were kind of thwarted.  No one wanted 100 bites, and it was actually uncharacteristically humid.   But we still kept pretty busy.  More about the trip later. ...

Off to St. Albert

Well, at least that's over. 

Our flight left at 6:30pm out of Hamilton airport.  We swung by dinosaur camp to get Paige, had an easy check in for our flight and enjoyed some Tim Horton's smoothies and other random sandwiches. (Hamilton airport basically has no food at all). 

Things started out ok, with Rose happily watching the TV in front of her.

Paige was playing with some surprise paper dogs that I had tucked away in the carry on.

As the flight went on and Rose got restless and tired, things went down hill.  She didn't have a nap (of course she didn't), so by 8:00pm or so, she started to get a little nuts.  Now that we occupy 4 full seats, Mike was across the aisle.  Rose kept asking for "Daddy!", and sitting with him for 5 minutes, and then "Mommy!" and sitting with me for 5 minutes.  We were telling her she could sleep, but the sun was pretty bright as our plane flew west.  We were telling Paige to sleep to, but she didn't want to either.  At least Paige was just rubbing her eyes and yawning, but essentially acting normal.

Finally she sat with me at 10:00ish EST and closed her eyes and fell asleep face down on my nap mere minutes before the seatbelt sign would go on for landing:

She was so fast asleep at this point, that my moving her didn't cause any problems and I was able to put her in her seat with her seatbelt on.  She just lay there like this for the entire descent, landing, and while all of the other passengers got off:

As we didn't bring a stroller (we never use it anymore), we had no where to put her as we lugged our stuff along. At first I held her and then Mike took a turn.  She woke up at first and was screaming and trying to lie down horizontally.  She perked up when we went outside to load up our rental car and install the car seat, but promptly fell asleep as we drove off.  Paige still was awake at this point, pretty alert actually, but fell asleep after I told her the ride to Auntie Booze's house was long and boring (so basically Paige went to bed at 11:00pm.

Both girls were asleep when we arrived.  As we opened the car doors, Abby even jumped in my side and went into the back to sniff them.  Neither of them woke up.  We put Rose straight into her bed, and managed to take Paige to the bathroom and bring her upstairs to say good night to Jen, James, and Abby.

Obedience School graduation

Pleased to announce that Scout graduated from obedience school with honours: 94%.  Although Mike thinks she should have had 98% as she did 2 things perfectly, but was only graded 9 out of 10 on them.

The next step will be level 2 obedience when she is a bit older and more mature and less of a toddler.