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!!

Random summer fun

A few from our cottage trip late August...

Bedtime:

Playtime!

New outfits for back to school!

Trying out some fun beds for a couple of nights:

More new outfits...and matching again!

More from the cottage trip

A book called Pugsley with the main character named Lizzie. Coincidence? I think not.

Finally! The  s'mores pizza box oven we wanted to make all summer!

Green summer hair! Wicked! Just means we were having fun in the pool!

A trip to the park:

The rain...

This was the day it rained so much that most of south burlington was flooded out.  Thank goodness we weren't effected.  The pool almost overflowed and mike had to drain it a bit, but really thats nothing compared to the people with 4 feet of sewage in their basements...

Too cool for school!

Cool school outfit.  Paige wore her new outfits, but the days were so hot in her non-airconditioned school that she really could have just worn a bathing suit and still been too hot.  Yikes!

Special dinner night!

Paige and I went out for a mother daughter dinner night at Montana's on the first day of school.  We decided that when Rose was at gymnastics I would take Paige for a special dinner, and then Mike would have a turn in the future.  Then when Paige is at Brownies, we'll do the same for Rose.  Paige was really excited to have the special dinner, and Rose is really looking forward to her nights too.  As much as I was worried about the summer, it was really awesome, and the dinners will be a great way to connect one on one, now that the summer is over and they're at school so much.