New Library!

Make sure you have a chance to check out the new Coquitlam public library!

Taste of Summer

One of the wonderful things about summer is all of the fresh fruits. Check out these beauties that we picked from our garden.





Just add a little of ice cream and you're good to go!







- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Summer again... *sigh*

So I have begun my summer once again. This year's level of parental wrangling of livestock includes a 7 year old daughter with a ferocious appetite for knowledge and understanding and a 2 year old boy with a ferocious appetite. The 2 year boy will become a 3 year old youngling at the end of the month and will likely result in refusing to use the potty for another year.

To survive this summer my workplace has given me an iPad2 to investigate the possibility of using it for staff in a classroom as a research tool or a presentation device. I'm using it as a communication device, school website fixer upper tool, and a great way to update my parental blog as well as my educational exploration blog We are trying to keep students engaged in their learning so using an iPad and sharing with other staff members will hopefully result in a more connected and engaged staff as well. My daughter thinks of it as an extremely large iPhone!

The first day began as a typical morning when Jen isn't home. Really late starts and really bad breakfast choices. We will curb the bad breakfast part later today as we do a grocery shop. Sam has developed strep throat over the last few days but is now on meds and is not contagious any longer. Amanda battled back from her strep throat episode earlier last month and unfortunately had to miss her sports day at school.

So my summer begins with a sick kid and a slick "toy"...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Christmas 2010!

Well it is that time again where we pull little envelopes out of a mailbox which lead into Christmas day! Day 1: Christmas jammy day. I celebrated the night with the kids and lighting a fire! Felt like Christmas for sure! This picture took about 5 minutes in between pulling hair and punching this shot was squeezed in.

More to come!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Amanda's sixth!

Amanda turns six today! She has a marathon of parties and celebrations!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Promise to write!

We have updated our phones to iPhones and now should be able to blog more often!

more often!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Five

It is hard to believe that our beautiful baby girl turned 5! For some reason five seems like such a momentous number...maybe because it signifies such big changes, with Kindergarten (yikes!) coming up this fall.

We have definitely seen such huge changes in Amanda this year. In the past twelve months, she has shot up in height (although her weight has stayed pretty much steady), and her hair had grown almost to her waist until we cut it just after her birthday. She has also become a very competent reader and is well on her way to reading short chapter books. Her vocabulary is amazing; she picks up on new words in conversations and then uses them until she's figured out the right context. She's also remarkably perceptive for her age and the conversations we have with her are definitely not what we ever expected for a 5-year-old! Her writing and drawing skills have improved immensely; when we flipped through her preschool album at the end of the year, it was neat to see the early versions of her own name compared to the later ones. She has a great imagination and loves playing complicated make-believe games...sometimes we are in trouble if we don't follow along with all the convoluted rules! We were also so proud of her at preschool this year – she was the only new child in a class of 10 kids, the rest of whom had all spent the whole year together last year. She adapted remarkably and made a lot of new friends.

One of the best things about Amanda's 5th year has been seeing her adapt to the addition of Sam to our family. It's hard to believe that a year ago she was still an only child! We have been so thrilled to see what a great big sister she is – patient (for the most part), excited to see Sam growing and changing, and always instructing him. It's so much fun to listen to her talking to him. Now that she's reading she also loves to read him stories. For his part, Sam adores his big sister and we fully expect his first word to be some version of "Amanda"!

Of course Amanda is also a typical 5 year old in a lot of other ways too; all too often we get glimpses into what our life will be like when she hits her teenage years. She is definitely capable of giving us a lot of attitude on a fairly regular basis! She also has meltdowns over seemingly small things, especially when she is tired or hungry.

We could not be more proud of our beautiful, crazy, funny, smart girl and the person she is becoming! We love you Amanda!

(Music is Evermore by Alison Krauss, which I blogged about here.)

A Little July 4th Awesomeness...

Summer - Day 4

Summer - Day 4
Originally uploaded by JenJeff

Being at home has really taught me to see the relationship between our kids in a more close manner. Usually when I get home from work they are tired and grouchy.

I can't believe the circus we had today in the Mall. A simple walk in the mall which would normally take about 5 minutes turns into a 2 hour jamboree. We stop at every little ride on toy (which we don't $$ for) and climb over them as if they are a really expensive jungle gym. I thought we were through this stage already!

Sam decided that he wanted to join his sister on this 2 person train contraption (it doesn't look like a train). It is about 2-3 feet off the ground and he decided that he would test my heart's reflexes by fake falling off the edge while laughing as if he didn't notice that his life was in my hands (how naive). Amanda then decided to proceed across the train by scaling the side like she's Marty from "Back To The Future" to join her brother. All of this mayhem and we still manage to make it out of the mall alive!

On to our next adventure!

First Day of Summer

First Day of Summer
Originally uploaded by JenJeff

Mmmm $1.00 breakfast! Well actually more like $21 after all of the upgrades. Not the healthiest breakfast but sure is convenient! Not only do we get fed but we get to spend hundreds of dollars at Ikea!

So the first "official" day of summer for us begins. This is "Dad" reporting. We have an extremely long list of things that need to get done in the house and the summer is already filled with activities (which include 1 week of school where I'm doing some administrative work... at least it will help fund the home reno projects!)

Amanda and Sam seem to be quite a handful these days. Sam's new tooth has caused him to walk around with a portable version of the Niagara falls. It just sits below his chin. I think we'll go shopping for some super absorbent clothes for him later today. Kinda like the ones that that guy in the paper towel commercial. Amanda asks about 1 million questions per minute. I think that we should have a new game show called, "Can You Survive 5 Minutes with a Curious 5 Year Old?" It will be a hit amongst parents. Or not...

Day 1 seems to be going well. Not much is getting accomplished but that is what summer is all about! Enjoy.

10 Month Sam Update

Wow, once again it's been awhile since we've posted! Here's a quick update on Sam as he has just turned 10 months old (ack...where has the time gone?!?).

We posted at 8 months that the big news was mobility...well multiply that by 10! By 9 months Sam was crawling very well and pulling himself up on almost anything (even a flat wall). Now at 10 months he seems very close to walking. He walks very well holding on to only a single finger (even if we're beside him and not behind him), and we can see that he really doesn't need it; it's just a security blanket at this point. He can stand for several seconds not holding on to anything, as long as he doesn't notice he's doing it! As soon as her realizes he's not holding on, he sits down on his bum or grabs onto whatever is in front of him. He can climb stairs - he doesn't do it at our house as the staircase is big, but he loves the small 4-step stairs at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Some more exciting news...Sam is signing! He has a definite sign for "more" (although it isn't the normal one that we taught him...he's kind of made up his own sign) and he's using it whenever he wants to tell us anything. So we're working on "milk", "diaper change", "food", and "water" (and a few others thrown in as well). Hopefully he will pick up some more signs soon so he can communicate with us even better! But we are thrilled that he's even doing any signs at this point - Amanda didn't start until after her first birthday. Hooray Sam!

Other Sam stuff:

• He loves to wave! And he knows the word, because if we ask him to wave at someone he'll do it even if we don't demonstrate!
  
• He still loves books, and is very good at turning the pages on his own.
  
• He continues to eat well, although all new foods are greeted with an extremely dubious face. But we haven't found anything he absolutely won't eat (knock on wood). He has also finally gotten the hang of finger foods...we started introducing some cheerios and small pieces of cheese, etc. just after 8 months and it's only in the past few weeks that he's really gotten the hang of it. Of course, now he wants to put everything in his mouth, including bits of yuckiness that he finds on the floor. Oh well...comes with the territory!
  
• He is a really happy baby and treats us to random laughter at regular intervals. He has a funny laugh, kind of a barking "ha, ha, ha" noise, and he loves to laugh when others are laughing. Sometimes he makes us feel extra-funny when we tell a joke and laughs at it!
  
• He definitely has a mischievous side. When we put him down he will automatically go for the one thing in the room that he's not supposed to touch. He also loves to crawl up onto the fireplace (strictly forbidden) as soon as I have my back turned, and has come dangerously close to turning off the computer a number of times by pushing that lovely power button on the front!
  
• Despite starting out a lot fairer than Amanda did, he has taken after his Dad and sister in automatically turning 50 shades darker as soon as he gets into sunshine, even with super-powered sunscreen on. Oh well, at least he will hopefully be like Amanda and not burn!

Some photos to share:

Hanging out in his booster seat at 8.5 months:


Total blackmail photo - nice outfit dude!Around 9 months:


9 month photo - 18 lbs, 4 oz and around 27":


A nice family shot on Mother's Day (9.5 months):


Playing with some friends at Babyeats, 9.5 months:


First time at the pool (9.5 months):


Sam signing! 9.5 months:


Getting into mischief, 9.5 months:


Eating cheese and demonstrating his funny laugh, also 9.5 months:


Big boy at 10 months! About 19 lbs, 6 oz and just over 27" long:

Easter Fun

I always have so many great ideas for things to do around Easter time, and somehow it sneaks up on me every year and I'm left scrambling at the last minute (hah...scrambling...Easter eggs...OK I'm pathetic). This year was no different. We did manage to fit in a few fun crafts in the days before Easter, but a lot of things - like dyeing Easter eggs - just didn't happen this year.

Amanda and I did make these super-cute tissue paper chicks:

I got the idea from a website and we modified it a bit...stupid dollar store was completely out of all pipe cleaners except red and black and we could only get small egg-shaped styrofoam balls. It still worked great, though. I was a bit dubious as I wasn't sure the tissue would stick well to the styrofoam, but it did, even as we rotated the balls to cover the whole area. Amanda did hers pretty much on her own, and added a few embellishments as well (hers is on the left) - lovely pom pom belly button, ears, and tail, as well as a crinkled up pipe cleaner "hat".

We also put together these great cards for family to give out at Easter dinner:

The idea for these ones came from here. (As you might have noticed, I mostly steal craft ideas from other people since I'm not great at coming up with them on my own!).

We had a lovely dinner at my mom & dad's place with both sets of parents and my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew (as well as little peanut niece/nephew-to-be!), plus my aunt and cousins. We were also celebrating Mike's birthday at the same time...he was an Easter Sunday baby which means that his birthday often falls right around the holidays, this year on Good Friday. The kids looked adorable in their Easter outfits (courtesy of Grandma):



This meant that we were on our own for Easter dinner, which doesn't happen very often! We picked up some rack of lamb and put together a pretty nice dinner: roasted rack of lamb, oven-roasted tomatoes with a bread crumb, pine nut, and feta topping (I made these up), steamed broccoli with lemon (even though I always forget that lemon juice turns the broccoli kinda brown!), and buttery rice. Yum! It was delicious if I do say!


And for dessert, I was actually organized enough to make something in advance. I always love lemon for Easter, and lemon roll is one of my favourites, so I decided to try the recipe from Best of Bridge. It was fantastic! If you're looking for a super-lemony dessert, this one definitely fits the bill. It was actually better a day or two later once it had sat in the fridge for a bit. I will admit that I didn't use real whipping cream...I'm one of the few people on the planet who doesn't love whipping cream, and after a heavy dinner I figured we could use something a bit lighter (as in sitting in the tummy lighter, not calorie-wise...that was already a lost cause). So I used Dream Whip instead and I thought it was delicious! I also doubled the amount of Dream Whip and used half to mix with the lemon filling and half to ice the outside. Mmmm...I wish there was still some left!



I am far too lazy to type in this long recipe, but I found it online (this site does not credit the recipe, but it's from Best of Bridge, The Best of the Best and More, Volume 1.

And so ends this long Easter post! Belated Happy Easter everyone!

Sam at 8 Months

So we're a bit late...he's actually edging towards 9 months as I write this!

At 8 months Sam was 17 lbs, 8 oz and 26" long. Still much smaller than Amanda at the same age (I have her down as 19 lbs, 1 oz and 27.75" long at 8 months). But he's catching up, and he's definitely come a long way in the last couple of months.

The big news in month 8 was mobility! Sam was doing a lot of scootching, squirming, bouncing, and rolling by the time he hit 8 months, and shortly after the 8 month mark he figured out "regular" crawling (though even now he's not very quick at it).

A few random photos of Sam in his 8th month:

Playing in the ball pit at the birthday party of one of Amanda's preschool friends:


Hanging out on the floor in his usual place:


Playing with bubbles with Amanda:


Watching the belugas at his first trip to the aquarium:


Posing with his big sis:


And of course you can look at any of the million photos of him from our Disneyland trip, or see the whole month 8 photoset on Flickr!

Amanda's Day 3 Interview

Amanda's Day 2 Interview

Amanda's Day 1 Interview

We took a short video of Amanda each evening, recounting the day's events...I'm going to try to post them here (even though it requires my editing the video, which I'm not very good at!).

Day 1 video:

Disneyland Day 3

Once again, our hopes for an earlier morning were dashed by our late night on Tuesday! It was about 9 am again by the time we got away from the hotel. But we knew we had a busy day planned so we were happy to let the kids sleep in a bit!

We started Wednesday out back at Disneyland park. By this point we had realized we weren't going to see everything we wanted to see, so we relaxed a bit and enjoyed our last day without rushing any more than necessary. We did want to fit in a few of the classics, so we started with Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which we thought Amanda would love (and thankfully, the line-up was non-existent first thing in the morning!). However she wasn't so impressed! For some reason she wasn't feeling quite as daring this day and was a bit frightened by the fast rollercoaster. She was OK with it, but partway through she asked me if it was almost over. So needless to say, she decided not to ride for a second time with Jeff when we switched out the parent riders!

Next up was Peter Pan's Flight, which I'd never seen. I was quite impressed, actually, especially considering the ride has been around since the park opened in 1955. I thought the effects were pretty effective; my favourite part was the twinkling stars over the city.

Next we rode Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, another 1955 original. Even though it's kind of hokey, I always feel like I need to do this one. In name, at least, it has a special place in our family...my Dad is a super-fast walker and when he's in a rush, my Mom and I always have to jog to keep up with him. Whenever he leaves somewhere busy (like after Symphony of Fire fireworks in the summer), she says it's like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride to follow him to the car! I guess that makes poor Dad Mr. Toad...but not really. We mean it very affectionately! Anyway, we all enjoyed this one although I think the craziness of it might have been a bit much for Mr. Sam.


Our next stop was Toon Town. Jeff and I saw this area when we last visited together (in 1997!!), just after it opened. It was fun to visit with Amanda since there are tons of fun little things to explore. It was really hot though, so we were all getting a little tired after awhile. We also went for a ride on Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin; well, Amanda and I did – Sam was sleeping in the carrier and so we didn't want to wake him up!
In jail!

Meeting Goofy:

Cooling off by the fountain:


After Toon Town we were all feeling a bit grouchy and in need of nourishment and cold drinks...plus, we still had a few more things we wanted to see at California Adventure. So we headed over there and popped in for a quick show at MuppetVision 3D. Jeff and I are both big Muppets fans so we were looking forward to it...Amanda was a bit more reluctant but she really enjoyed the show. She hasn't seen too many 3D things (I remember going to a Christmas movie at IMAX once, but that's about it) so she was really intrigued by things flying out of the screen at her! There were a lot of inside jokes for people who know about the Muppets, but it was fun for everyone. And air-conditioned!!

By this point we were really hungry, so we had lunch at Pizza Oom Mow Mow (interesting name?!?), which had quite a few choices other than pizza and a nice cool inside to sit in! That got us all feeling better, and so we headed over to Toy Story Mania, one of the newest rides at the park. I think overall this was Jeff's and my favourite ride! You sit in a car that travels through the ride, and you have a toy gun that you use to shoot targets on the screens as you go by. There were lots of fun effects too – like on the screen that had water balloons as targets, you got sprayed by little jets of water whenever you popped a balloon. Once again, Jeff beat Amanda and me by a long shot, but fun was had by all!
Amanda in her 3D glasses:


After this we were starting to run out of steam, especially because it was sooo hot! Jeff really wanted to fit in a ride on the California Screamin' coaster, so we grabbed some Mickey ice cream sandwiches and relaxed while we waited for him to finish his ride.


Finally, we bid farewell to California Adventure and headed back to Disneyland for a few last hours. Sam needed a food break, so I fed him while Jeff and Amanda visited the Astro Orbitor (which Amanda desperately wanted to ride for some reason!) and then Star Tours. I was a bit disappointed as I would have liked to ride Star Tours as well!

It was starting to get late and we knew we needed to find a good spot in order to see the fireworks at 9:25 pm, so we decided to try for one last ride first. Walking past the Haunted Mansion we saw that there was no line-up, so Amanda and I headed in. I wasn't sure whether she would be OK with it, and I could tell a few parts were getting kind of scary for her. So I had to talk throughout the ride about how silly everything was so she wouldn't get too freaked out (or keep us up all night with nightmares!). She enjoyed it though, and ever since we returned from our trip, she uses the "this room has no windows and no doors" line at random intervals and in completely non-applicable situations (the other day she told me "this pasta has no windows and no doors", then burst into giggles).

We had decided to save the fireworks show for the last evening we were there – somehow it seemed like an appropriate way to round out a magical Disney vacation! But we also knew we needed to find spots early for the fireworks. This was OK as it turned out we were all pretty tired and happy to sit for awhile and rest. Amanda and Sam both napped, and Jeff went and brought us back food to eat while we waited. Overall we waited about 2 hours before the fireworks, but it was worth it. It was also fun soaking up the ambience, with people walking by and families enjoying being together.


Our spot for the fireworks was excellent – right by the Disney/Mickey statue in the middle. We were absolutely blown away by the show...Disneyland definitely never fails to amaze when it comes to fireworks! There were fiery cannons, laser beams shooting all around us, and even Tinkerbell flying through the sky to light off fireworks (Amanda saw the cables she was on, but told us they were there to keep her from flying away in the wind!).

After the fireworks we walked around for a little while longer, enjoying the atmosphere and taking a few more pictures. Then it was one last walk through the magical castle before heading home to our beds! What an end to our Disney adventures! We can hardly wait to go back!

Disneyland Day 2

On Tuesday we had high hopes of getting to the park early...as part of our park-hopper pass we had one "early morning" into the park. However, after our late night on Monday, we weren't nearly as early as we had hoped! We ended up getting away from the hotel at about 9 am. We headed over to Disneyland with the intention of getting on some of the bigger rides that usually have long line-ups later in the day.

First, showing off the new Mickey ears...



First stop was the Matterhorn. This has always been one of my favourite rides and we were sure Amanda would love it. We were right! She actually rode it twice – this was where we learned about the rider switch pass. Because we had Sam with us, and he couldn't ride (duh!), we both waited in the line – only about 20 minutes – and then when we got to the front, Amanda and I rode together. Then when we got off the ride, Jeff went right on and Amanda went with him! So she got two rides in a row and we only had to wait in the line once. We used this quite a few more times over the course of the trip!

Next we headed over to It's A Small World. This ride, too, has been recently overhauled and the lines for it were huge! However, in the morning we waited only about 10 minutes so we were pretty happy with that! It was fun trying to spot the "new" characters they have added...we saw Ariel and her friends, Aladdin and Jasmine, Nemo and friends, and several others. Sam also seemed to really like this one – so many things to look at!


After that the lines started to get long at Disneyland, so we decided to head over to California Adventure for awhile. This was my first visit and I thought the park was fun! The rides are definitely geared to older visitors for the most part, but my favourite part was just walking around and seeing the funny signs and inside jokes posted everywhere – for example:


We did a quick walk-around in the Hollywood Backlot section of the park, and managed to fit in one ride –Mike & Sully to the Rescue. It was pretty neat, especially the part with all the doors...they managed to make it look like the place was huge!

Next we headed back to the hotel, because we had a surprise planned for Amanda – lunch at Ariel's Grotto! We had to get her outfitted in her beautiful Ariel costume before heading back to California Adventure for lunch at 1:50 pm (precisely, on the nose!). They definitely run the lunch like a well-oiled machine...we were lined up on the winding staircase in a specific order so each child would get a turn with Ariel. Then we were shown to our table and the princesses started arriving fast and furious...only a few minutes between each one! It was a bit crazy at the beginning as we were trying to get both kids settled (and Sam was a bit grumpy), order our food, and take pictures/get autographs from all the princesses.






The good news was that the food was pretty good here!



After lunch we were all filled up and ready to do some more exploring at California Adventure! We headed over to Soarin' Over California, which Amanda again got to ride twice. It was a short ride, but fun – we liked how they added special effects to the video, like the smell of oranges when we were flying over the orange groves. I especially liked the introductory video before we got on the ride – funny!

Next we headed over to the middle of the park to see the Pixar Play Parade. Luckily we ran into Darryl again, and he had scoped out excellent seats right in front and had just texted Jeff to find out if we wanted to join them! So we were very lucky to get great seats for the parade with no effort on our parts! We settled in for a bit of a wait and then enjoyed the parade.




After the parade Sam was in need of some refueling, so Jeff and Amanda headed over to the Bugs' World area while Sam and I hung out in the parents' room for a bit. Amanda enjoyed riding Flik's Flyers and Francis' Ladybug Boogie, and cooling off in the Princess Dot Puddle Park (it was HOT that day!).


At this point it was starting to get pretty late and we needed some dinner, despite our very late and filling lunch! So we decided to do one last ride at California Adventure, using our FastPasses for Grizzly River Run. Amanda rode twice again, and this was probably her favourite ride of all! There are big round rafts that you ride on with 8 people per raft. This one was definitely a soaker! Amanda was so thrilled that she got drenched on her first ride with Jeff, then couldn't wait to go again with me...in fact, she insisted on sitting right by the entrance to the raft where she would get the wettest! The only downside was they were having some technical problems when we were on the ride, so we spent a lot of time waiting for the rafts ahead of us to clear. I'd love to ride it again when it's working properly!



We made one final stop before ending the day – we stopped back at Disneyland for a ride on the Mad Tea Party. I was a bit reluctant...I hadn't been on it before, but I know I'm not great with spinny rides. It was OK, but I was very dizzy after getting off. Lesson learned – no more spinny rides for Jen!


That was about all the excitement we could handle for the day! We walked back to the hotel, stopping for take-out Tony Roma's on the way home. Another very busy day!