Celebrations Part 4 - I have a 4-year old!!!

4 years ago I was lying in the hospital holding my larger than average baby and recovering from a c-section. He was my miracle. It's a cliche, I know, but it seems like only yesterday! Fast forward to today and he's now my oldest son and he's 4!!! I can't believe how fast time has flown. On his birthday, July 28th, we had a small celebration (in the wake of the larger one the day before) with only his grandparents and his Great-Aunty Peggy.

Alex's birthday cake. An ice-cream cake from Dairy Queen... so that Connor can have some too.
His "big boy" bike... pretty cool, huh?

Reading his gift from Aunty Peggy. He loved it, it's one of those hide and seek books. He kept going back to it despite the other gifts still to open. Finally showing some interest in our gift...
And yesterday, we decided to give the bike a whirl for the first time. I put helmets on both boys and grabbed Alex's trike to do the official "hand-me-downing" thinking that Connor would be happy with a second-hand tricycle.

Backfired!!!

Connor's enjoying the two-wheeler...

...and Alex won't go near it! Darn kids!

Celebrations Part 3 - "The petting zoo"

My sister-in-law phoned several weeks ago and said that they would be in PG the weekend before Alex's birthday. I said we would have his party on the 27th to accomodate them and she suggested that we do a joint birthday party so that they could celebrate Brandon's 2nd birthday at the same time. We tossed around a few ideas and settled on having the party here:It was awesome! PG's best kept secret! It's a petting zoo. It also has playground equipment, a ball pit, and a neat swing ride. There is a barn with a loft for cake and gifts. It was the easiest and "funnest" (most fun didn't sound right here) birthday party Alex has had. I think the adults got as much out of it as the kids did.

The swing ride... here's Connor humouring us. He didn't crack a smile, and seemed more than happy to get off.Alex, on the other hand, loved it!My brave, almost 4 year old, on the "pony" rides. Umm, are you sure this is a pony??? Alex was very proud of himself. Initially he said "no", but somehow had a change of heart, giving me some great photos of him riding a beautiful, gentle, and probably exceedingly patient horse. Cute huh? This is probably my favourite photo from the entire day. He looks good up there! Our nephew, on something a little more his size...
And then... when my back was turned, Grandma took this photo... Okay, who put my 1 year old on top of a giant, dangerous, probably rabid beast... DAD???The cake! Again, my mother-in-law outdid herself. A giraffe for Alex, and a lion for Brandon! Happy Birthday, boys!




We had a great day, the weather held out, no one got hurt, and I took 200 photos so I'm itching to print them and start whipping off zoo pages! :)

Celebration Part 2 - "The Tiger Cake"

July 23rd, Cory's birthday. For 12 days every year, I get to be the younger woman. Sometimes it's fun to remind him of that, like when he turned 30 and I was still in my 20's. This year it really doesn't make much difference either way, 32 is a stupid number. Very non-memorable. Cory had a low key birthday, but I think he enjoyed it. The kids got him a subscription to National Geographic and I gave him the first two seasons of House. I took him (and my nursling) to his favourite restaurant for dinner while the boys dined at Cory's parents home. Afterwards we went to pick up the boys and his Mom had made him a fabulous cake and had invited my Mom out as well.
Here's our little family. The boys are in their pj's ready for the trip home already, but when your 3 year old refuses to cooperate for portraits, you take any family photos opportunities you can get! :)
And here's the cake. Isn't my mother-in-law talented? It's was a shame to eat it, but if we must, we must... :)

Celebrations Part 1 "The decade"

Aah... summertime and the living is --- crazy! July marks our Anniversary, Cory's birthday and Alex's birthday. Not too bad, I suppose, since my other two kids are born on New Year's Day and Mother's Day so we've got some overlapping celebrations then too. Cory's vacation starts on Saturday so we're heading to Victoria to help my Grandma celebrate her 90th on Sunday. It's my birthday on Monday, and Tuesday we're going to Squamish to a birthday party for my friends' daughter. The following week we'll be in Kamloops helping our nephew celebrate his 2nd birthday. I'm already "caked out" and we're only partway through the festivities.

On July 11th, Cory and I hit a milestone. A decade. We celebrated our 10th Anniversary in PG. Mom and Dad watched the boys while we took Kirstin with us for steak and prawns at the Keg (Yummy!). Then we left Kirstin with them as well (aren't I so brave?) while we checked out the casino. I have a hard time leaving my kids with anyone, especially the nursing ones, so we've had very few date nights since Alex was born. We took all the kids back to the hotel for the night. We rented a lovely suite with a separate bedroom for the kids so we could stay up and watch an expensive pay per view movie - no, not that kind... "Baby Mama" with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It was a pretty good "date" night, and I didn't suffer too much separation anxiety! :)

Here's what 10 years of marriage looks like... a little older and a little wider than we were in '98.

Here's what Cory gave me. The ring on top is my Anniversary ring. It rounds out my engagement ring and wedding band nicely. Now... he has to get to work on decorating my other hand! :)

I was pretty spoiled... I haven't had roses in YEARS! They were lovely, and our cat didn't eat them, either (Cory's excuse for never buying me flowers)!

And, to top off the evening... we both spent $20 at the casino. That was it. We just wanted to try it out, not go broke. $20 goes really, really quickly. We were there for about an hour. I'm happy to say, I don't have any desire to go back again any time soon, so my addictive personality didn't grasp onto this activity. This is a picture of, believe it or not, what Cory won with his first spin on a PENNY machine. He was impressed that he won 10,000 credits and said "Hey, I just won $10". Yeah, I'll admit, I laughed at him. I've always been better at math! :)

My babies!

Just some close-ups of my kids... cause they're adorable! No Mama bias whatsoever...

Connor enjoying the swing... he says "fwy" or "may" when he wants to be pushed. I've figured out "fly", but haven't quite interpreted May yet. The joys of 1 year olds! :)

Alex enjoying the other swing. He looks grubby!

And here's our little girl showing off her grin. I love the toothless smile and I'm trying to capture it as often as possible because it lasts such a short time!

No, she's not giggling yet, but soon. Right now her laughs sound like grunts.

Getting better at going digital...

Okay, I'm giving it another shot! For someone like me, with three children under the age of 4, digital scrapbooking definitely has merit! I've started an alphabet book for Alex because it'll probably never get done if I try to do it on paper. It's pretty cool, actually, and I would recommend it to anyone that likes to scrapbook but just doesn't seem to have the time to do it anymore. The home class I attended was for Heritage Makers. You upload your photos to their sight and when you're done playing you can order the books that you've made. They come bound with archival quality materials. It's not the real thing, that's for sure, but heck! I do it at night while nursing my baby. It does the trick! :)

Here are a few of my pages...

Move over Martha...

So my one-year old was "channel surfing" (read messing around with the remote control) and we caught a 5 minute segment of Martha Stewart. It intrigued me so I hit record and taped it. She had a guest on who was demonstrating how to make stuffed animals out of gloves. I was very impressed so I decided to give it a whirl.

Unfortunately Cory was reviewing the stuff we had recorded and when he saw 5 minutes of Martha Stewart, he figured it was a mistake so he deleted it. (Despite the fact that I had predicted he would do that so I PROTECTED it... moron!) Anyway, I told him that would be a costly mistake and I happily purchased the book, which is so cute and shows how to make 16 different stuffies out of either a pair of gloves or cast off socks --- you know the kind, the ones the washing machine eats the mates to. Here's the book...

So... I set out on a mission and purchased a dozen pairs of work gloves (really cheap, $9.97 at Wal-Mart) a bag of stuffing, some brightly coloured embroidery thread, and raided my Mom's supply of buttons.

Here's the dog that I decided to create on my first attempt. This is what Martha demonstrated on her show (you can probably still catch the clip on marthastewart.com)

Isn't he adorable?And here is my dog!

I call him Lumpy!

Anyone want 11 sets of work gloves, some barely used embroidery thread and a large bag of stuffing?

My first attempt at going digital...

Inspired by a home party my neighbour threw for "heritage makers" yesterday, I decided to google digital scrapbooking (while I impatiently await activation of my heritage makers account). I found this sight, Scrapblog.com, and have officially created my first digital scrapbook page. I was hoping for a way to scrapbook one handed, while I multi-task and nurse a baby with the other. It was very challenging to make this layout. The sight kept crashing, and took way longer to do that I expected... and now I can't figure out how to print it, so pretty useless anyway. This might by my last foray into digital scrapbooking. I think I'll stick to my tried and true hobby with paper and stickers, and hope that soon I might have time to get back into it!