Carving time...

Brushing teeth

Someone LOVES brushing his teeth! He especially likes standing on the stool like a big boy and sticking his toothbrush in the water.  He would brush them for 10 minutes if we let him, but eventually he starts wandering around the house, so we have to take the toothbrush away.  Then he cries.

St. Albert fun!

As one of our children smashed the lens of our camera, we could only take photos on our trip with our phones.  Kind of a bummer, but we got lots of cousin photos in the summer at our house.  So no big deal.  The reason for the trip to Alberta was Mike's scheduled hunting trip.  We decided to take advantage of it and have the entire family tag along to do some visiting at the same time.  We hadn't been back to Alberta for a couple of years, and not since Henry was born.  We did gets lots of visiting in, and the girls and Lizzy had TONS of play time.  It was really special for them to get to bond like that.  They miss Lizzy and ask to see her a lot, especially Rose as they are the same age.  As the kids get older it'll make more sense to visit when school is off, but for now it was fine to miss a week.  While we were gone though, the weather in Burlington was amazing, and the weather in St. Albert was freezing!! 

It was really so great to see everyone, and nice that people got to meet Henry, and we got to meet Lincoln and Juliet for the first time too (the other new kids!)

Grandpa Jerry and Henry.  Poor Henry had a major cold at this point. 

Paige's must do activity: Galaxyland:

 We also spent some time at Servus Place.  Mike even took all 3 kids swimming one day when I came down with Henry's cold and needed to have a nap.  He met up with Uncle Tyson too.

On our last night we went to Auntie Judy's for a dinner.

Great Group photo!

The boys were so cute together.  Lewis would reach over and pull on Henry's tray so he could inch over and steal his food.

 Luckily we had a reasonable flight time on the way home.  Henry was still very sick though and not happy on the plane.  I finally got him to sleep after a long period of screaming.  I think everyone on the plane was relieved.  He woke up as we were getting closer to home though and Mike held him for a while as henry screamed and rubbed his ears.  Poor little guy.  I'm glad our next flight will be to Florida, and it will be a lot shorter....

Off to Edmonton!

The beginning of our journey to Alberta at the end of September.  Early morning flight. The girls love nothing more than to begun a journey in the middle of the night or wee hours of the morning.  They think it's fun in the dark, and like going straight into the car from their beds. 

Ok these car seats have got to go...time to grow kids!

Breakfast in the Plaza Premium Lounge

Henry with tape on his face.  I bought the tape as a distraction tactic. 

Too bad this next photo is blurry.  The girls wheel their suitcases like pros now.  No issues at all and the cases always stay upright.  Plus they are fast in the airport now, even if it's the middle of the night.
This photo is the kids walking down the aisle to get off the plane.  Henry was sure happy to walk around.  He wasn't happy on the flight!

BEAUTIFUL day in a corn maze!

First day of the harvest festival at Springridge.  Such a great day to go.  Too early for pumpkins, but got to enjoy the nice weather one more time!

Brownies!

Paige has been having a great time at Brownies. She's in the middle of cooking selling, and has yet to earn any badges.  It seems that the badges come later.  The only issue with Brownies is that it is at 5:30, so when you factor in loading up all the kids into the car and driving there, she doesn't really have enough time to eat dinner beforehand, since it would be ridiculously early.  So she waits until after, but they have a treaty-like snack right before they leave to come home.  It's all sort of backwards.

Dino 101

A week ago I was telling Mike about how when I applied to the UofA way back in 1997 my first thought was to take Paleontology.  I never did, and ended up in Business (even though I had heavily focused on Science in school and had taken extra courses). Well obviously that really didn't work out (boring!!...and So so soooo not characteristic of something I would do), and I ended up switching to Anthropology (and eventually added a secondary major in English) when I transferred to UofT.  Obviously I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I digress.  Anyway, I was curious as to what the prerequisites were for the program, as I was wondering why I never took it.  I was on the UofA site and stumbled across an online Paleontology course I could take for free.  UofA students can take it for credit, and if I wanted a certificate I could pay a small fee, but also I could just take it for fun.  I decided to sign up! Dinosaur Paleobiology.  Why not? I have extra time now and I was in the mode to learn.  And how much fun is it to just sit with a coffee and a snack for 30-50 minutes a week and watch a lecture without the pressure of an exam.  There are quizzes at the end of each session, but it is fun as it doesn't really matter.

I'm really excited to be learning something random and new, and I'm hoping I can do an Anthropology course soon to brush up on the current knowledge, and even if the current knowledge is the same as the knowledge from 12 years ago, I don't remember it anyway.

School days...

Henry and I are adjusting to our life while the girls are at school.  It's a mixture of enjoying the time with Henry, missing the girls, and appreciating the vast amounts of time I have every day while Henry naps.  Henry and I haven't done too much so far, but have another 165 days or so to take advantage of our time together before the girls are off for the summer!

Every day we drop off Paige at 8:45 at her school where she walks from the car to meet her class lineup.  Then we drive home and drop off the car where we then walk in the opposite direction to Rose's school, taking Scout along for the trip.  While pushing the stroller and walking Scout is a bit annoying, it gets everything done at once and leaves more time for mike to sleep in the morning, and more time for me to get up and get ready for the day before anyone else gets up (and have a coffee and read a chapter of my book).  Scout enjoys the walk as we see lots of dogs and people.  Rose can walk the entire 1.2 km, but she stands on the stroller stand for part of it to make sure we get to her school in time.  We could drive there also, but the weather is too nice to bother driving, and getting in and out of the car is silly as we have to park super far from the school anyway.  Plus, on the way home I have to get in and out of the car at both schools to pick the girls up at the door--which makes pick up at least an hour ordeal.

So the mornings are quite busy, and when you factor in gymnastics at 5 on Tuesdays, and Brownies at 5:30 on Wednesdays, there is a lot of activity.  But really Henry and I don't have to do much during the day, so the middle section is pretty laid back.  By the time we get to gymnastics pick up and Henry has been in and out of the car about 12 times, he gets pretty cranky though.  Mike has been busy though, and next week we shouldn't have to do all of these trips alone.

Henry and I started Kindermusik this week which was pretty cute.  I tried to do the free library program last week though, and it was a disaster.  He spent the entire time fixated on playing with the blinds and wasn't interested at all in the class.  I had to take him out of the room and just abandoned my stroller for the rest of the class, as I couldn't get it out without a huge ordeal.  I wasn't surprised at all as he is the most active of the 3 kids.  Kindermusik was more song and instrument based (obviously), which was fun for him.  He hated the parachute part though and was sacred of it.  Another funny thing as the girls loved the parachute in the classes I took them to as toddlers.

The other thing Henry and I have done is get caught up on overdue chores, and errands.  Not too exciting, but at this age he's not too worried, and still only likes to sweep at home.  I was hoping to sign up for the baby gymnastics program in the winter, but as I discovered, he will not sit still, and definitely will not follow a structure or stick with the class.  I used to see little boys just like him, running off from the group as my little girls sat nicely in my lap.  Now I TOTALLY get it.

As for nap time,  I have tidied up a lot of stuff around the house, done a lot of dinner prep, baking, reading, drank too much coffee, watched a show or two, tons of laundry, and obviously caught up on this blog.  Also, have began my next blog book--hopefully won't take an entire year to edit this one.

Also something else very exciting I have done...in the next post....

Sweeping

Henry likes to sweep.  I mean that fully and entirely.  That's all he wants to do.  And anytime he sees a broom-like object he is ready to go.  He sweeps all day long.

Swimming lesson success!!

The girls had private swim lessons at home during the summer.  A college aged lifeguard from the city of Burlington came to the house and taught the girls a half hour lesson each.  Paige worked on her front crawl and learned how to dive...success! And Rose fully learned how to swim...double success!!

It was so awesome to avoid pool change rooms, and all of that business and just be able to really focus on the swimming.  Rose just loves getting in the pool now (as limited as the swimming days are now), and swims all over the place.  She needs to stay in the shallow end though where she can touch until she can build up some endurance.  But for 4 years old, it's really amazing swimming.  I never thought we could teach Paige to dive either as I'm such a rough swimmer, but it was easy for her.

Great job kids!!