Our Little Life

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Black Sheep - Metric*

It's been so long that I forgot my blogger password.

So, here goes: the past 26 days. Yikes.

Claire:

Participated well in her Primary presentation.

Was sick for almost a week and a half. Some kind of cold with copious amounts of vomit and topped off with ear infections in both ears, of course.

Had an EEG at the hospital - results were good. She's been seizure free for a few months now!

Got a new, bigger wheelchair. It's still hot pink though, don't worry.

Attended a home nutrition appointment. We have now added vitamins and protein powder to her regimen.

Claire had her last riding lesson way back on November 22. We had lots of visitors come to cheer her on in achieving the goal of cuing her horse to walk on.

Maddie riding the practice "horse."

All smiles :)

Cousin Cairo, Aunt Natalie, Aunt Olivia, Aunt Mel, Uncle Rob and Grandma Patterson all came to watch!

Madeline:

Had a Teddy Bear Picnic at school.

Is Mommy's helper when she goes to the gym or does grocery shopping.

Attended her Preschool's Silent Auction with Mom.

Had a puppet show at school.

Makes beautiful art every day.

Dad is such a good storyteller. Don't be fooled by the look on Maddie's face. She's loving it.

Upon Madeline's request, we recently made sugar cookies and decorated them.

It's a fun Christmas tradition. :) (I always overcook cookies....boo)

Claire's been loving the Christmas lights.

Girls Days/Nights: (this is our new term for things we do when Ryan is at work)

We helped/visited during Greg and Nat's apartment switch move.

We went to a Christmas party at Kathy and Peter's house. Good times were had by all!

We decorated gingerbread cookies with Claire's class.

We also went out to an Oil Kings game. It was Elvis night, since it was the Oil KINGS versus the Wheat KINGS! There were impersonators all over the place and many came to say hi to Claire.

She loves the atmosphere of the coliseum!

They won 8-4 so we had tons of goals to cheer for. It was great fun.

Ryan:

Has been super busy with work, a teacher by day, a tech wizard by night (and Saturdays). He's got the coolest Apple shirt and sweater. Go say "hi" to him at Southgate some night.

Did report cards and had his Celebration of Learning nights with the parents during his first two weeks of double job duty.

Was acting principal for a day and got a taste of the glory.

Got a night out with his amazing wife featuring a tasty dinner at the Keg and finally seeing Harry Potter!

We had a fun, impromptu family get-together at our place to eat and make our advent calendars.

Mom came up with this great idea years ago for Christmas countdowns and we do it every year. You take a long piece of saran wrap, place twenty five of your favourite candies in a line, wrap it up and tie bows between each one and you have your own customized calendar.

Claire was still feeling under the weather on this day, hence the sleepiness.

Greg & Steph and the baby (hiding).

It was fun to have cousin Zach and Mel get Maddie ready for bed after the festivities were complete.

I don't know what this is.

Jacky:

Has been ever busy with transcription work. It's a perfect job for me and I now appreciate the benefits of good word-of-mouth publicity for acquiring projects. :)

Volunteered to sell programs at the CFR for Claire's horseback riding program. I really should buy some Wranglers for my once-a-year excursion into the cowperson world.

Held another parent association meeting at our house.

Had to deal with our van breaking down in the midst of Claire's sickness. Thank goodness for family close by!

Played the piano for the Simpson family at the Sherwood Park nativity (Natalie was sick at the last minute so we missed hearing her sing.) :(

After doing our advent calendars, we needed to decorate the house to be properly prepared for Christmas.

Yes, this is a typical pose and outfit.

We basically only have one place to display all our Christmas knick knacks, so behold THE PIANO.

You can definitely tell which part of the tree Madeline took over.

With Dad, who needs a ladder?

Bring on Christmas. We're ready!

Friday, November 12, 2010

WHOA NELLY

We have been busy as usual. It's funny - I always look forward a few weeks and think, "Oh things will have slowed down then and we'll finally have time to relax." But that never seems to be the case. So here's what we've been doing lately.

Madeline attended Abby's Tinkerbell birthday party and had a blast. The "real" Tinkerbell even made an appearance!

Ryan took his Young Men geocaching and has acquired his own GPS. We're going to plant some caches and do some hunting. It's quite a fun idea.

He's also been busy training for his new job during his winter break from school. He's met some great people and feels like working for Apple will be a lot of fun. I'm excited for him! Next week will be a shock - from having him home to him working two jobs. Such is life though.

I've been quite busy with work as well, transcriptions and other projects at home. I'm very grateful for the opportunities I have to work and to exercise my brain a bit.

Maddie built this tower all by herself. She is proud.

Claire had her first kindergarten field trip! I'm used to going on most school events, but this time the parent volunteer spots filled up very fast. We had to send our big girl on a bus, for her first field trip, all by herself. We watched them load her chair and waved as they drove off. It made me a little sad to not share that with her, but I know I can't go with her everywhere, right? She had a wonderful time with her friends and her helpers at the Royal Alberta Museum.

Cuddling with my happy girls. :)

Ryan took Madeline to run errands at the mall one evening. A lady at a kiosk stopped them and asked if she could curl Madeline's hair. This what she looked like when they came home.

The following morning we were awoken by screams of "THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY HAIR." I had neglected to explain to her that curls like that don't last forever. She was quite distraught.

We've been having fun with some old game favourites at home. Red light, green light, What time is it Mr. Wolf and Charades have all become the girls' new fascination.

Madeline and Ryan had an adventure at the World of Science with Rob, Olivia and Cairo.

Here are the big kids making a fort out of all the blocks they could find.

Love it!

There is a cool Lego exhibit on now.

Rob was brave and tried this. We have a bunch of blurry pictures of the action.

The fart piano!

The first thing Maddie said to me when she got home? "I got licked by a giant tongue!" She also has a new fascination with "taste bloods (buds)."

We had a quick visit from the Thompsons which included yummy food, Rock Band, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and a fun sleepover.

Here is our new acquisition. DRUMS! We are one step closer to taking over the world via a musical revolution of awesomeness.

We attended a lovely Remembrance Day ceremony at Claire's school on Wednesday. Having moments to reflect on those who have fought for us, and still do sacrifice, is very humbling. It makes me proud to be a Canadian.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

A belated Halloweeny post

As stated above, I am late posting these pictures. And mostly pictures it shall be:

(As a side note, if you are a faithful blog reader [do I have any of those?!] there is another new post after this one cataloging the miscellany of the weeks preceding Halloween)

Some of our spooky decorations. (Thanks Dollarama!)

Carving the pumpkins.

I included this photo just for Ryan's facial expression. That's how he truly feels about the smell of pumpkin guts but he took one for the team and got in to the spirit of things.

The finished products.

Here is Madeline, being a scary pumpkin, in heels no less.
Our little Tinkerbell wore her costume for 4 days in a row. At least we got our money's worth!

I got to be one of the parent helpers at Maddie's preschool Halloween party
but was the only parent who dressed up! Boo.

We went to the CNIB children's Halloween party that same day and it was lots of fun.

Here's Claire testing out some of the gross items on the table.
She liked touching the brains (warm spaghetti.....*shudder*) the best.

Ryan was a good sport and participated in gummy worm bobbing in whipped cream.

The whole fam.

Carving pumpkins yet again. Ryan bowed out of the scraping this time... :)

The cutest pirate I've ever seen. Her little bandana wouldn't stay on though!

Trick or treating at the mall.

Games for prizes.

I thought this picture was very sweet. She's about ready to fall asleep here and you can tell.

Getting our Halloween Orange Julius's.

Ryan and I attended a lovely Halloween/Rock Band 3 party at the Hewitt's and indulged in good scary food, drink and extreme karaoke. Fun was had by all! Next time photographic evidence will be provided, or maybe it's best for all parties if no such evidence arises. :)