So addictive...

Alex found this on the ytv website... we've been playing it for the last hour (my husband and I, the kids took off to the bedroom)

http://www.ytv.com/games/493/spongebob-patty-panic.aspx

Another impression...

This one's for you, Uncy Vince...

My boys new impression... with a surprise "twist" ending.

Kirstin's Donald Duck impression

Probably only cute if you're her mother... otherwise, I bore you! :)

Leading by example

So I have three children, 2, 3, and 6. They pair off at times, the oldest two playing nicely or the youngest two playing nicely... or sometimes the oldest and the youngest team up and exclude the middle one. Most of the time all three of them play well together. And I try really hard to encourage them to treat each other well.

And I try, too, to use logical consequences when things get a bit heated. Like separating them or removing the offending toy that they fight over. Most of the time, cause I'm a softie, I issue a warning or two before I call a time-out.

So... I guess I should be pleased that it's sinking in. My middle one, Connor the three-year-old, is obviously paying attention to something I've said. Because he very calmly, very sweetly, reminded Kirstin - my two-year old - about the consequences if she continued to antagonize him.

He said, "Kirstin, if you take that toy away from me again, I'm going to hit you on the head."

Oh dear...

The End of Innocence

My daughter is learning from her older brothers --- namely the 6 year-old who picked up some obnoxious little boy habits in Kindergarten this past year. Not only is poop humour hilarious these days, everyone is stupid too. An example of this, my daughter has a doll whom she affectionately calls "stupid-baby". I have only my oldest to blame for that. And you know he taught her to say that, because of the way he cracks up whenever she does.

So... here's her latest vocabulary acquisition...

Kirstin - "You're a dummy!"

Me (appalled) - "I'm not a dummy!"

Kirstin (laughing) - "Yes, you're a dummy!"

Me - "Do you even know what a dummy is?"

Kirstin - "Yes."

Me - "Oh yeah, then what's a dummy?"

Kirstin - "Mama!"

Yeah, I walked right into that one...

My innocent little toddler

Going up in smoke...

I just thought I'd share some photos of what it looks like when the town is under an air quality advisory due to the fact that the entire province seems to be experiencing an apocolyptic wildfire pandemic.

We're not under evacuation alert yet, and I don't think that we will be, but several communities in the area are. If I knew how to do a rain dance, I'd be doing it. Unfortunately all we seem to be getting is lightning and strong winds, so someone's dancing out of step.

Beautiful British Columbia, you're going up in flames! :( My commute home, at approximately 4pm. It looks more like dusk, but believe it or not, the sun was blazing.

More 4pm photos. In this one you can actually see a cloud, but it's almost obscured by the smoke.

The sun...

Smoke drifting in front of the sun... weird eclipse-like sky.

A bit of blue sky on the horizon, proving that, yes, it is actually daylight!

This one was taken about 6pm. Still about 3 hours too early for the sunset. I kept looking around expecting to see a tornado or something.

Our house silhouetted by the lovely brown sky. Should the fires get any closer, we're definitely in trouble. Note how dry our lawn is? Yikes!

I left the windows open last night to cool the house down during the windstorm, because in this relentless heat, it's been unbearably stuffy in here every evening. It definitely worked, but it also filled it with a the pleasant smell of campfire and left us with sore throats and itchy eyes.

Off to figure out that rain dance again!

Mario Party 6

My son is turning six on Wednesday. We celebrated his birthday yesterday, in SUPER style! It was probably the best birthday party we've thrown to date. Certainly the most work. Our inspiration stemmed from his simple request, "Do you think I could have a Yoshi cake this year?" The idea was fueled and we started planning.

Alex is currently in a bit of a Super Mario obsession. Cory taught him how to play Mario Party on the Wii several months ago. When they got bored of that, Cory introduced him to Super Mario Galaxy. He's been hooked ever since.

I, myself, am "Old School" Mario. Galaxy is a bit to trippy for me. I like the 2-D running and stomping the goombas, from when I was a teenager. Galaxy makes me dizzy, to be honest. But between the generations, all that's really changed is the graphics. You still have to rescue ditzy Princess Peach (come on... where's the girlpower in that tired theme?) from Bowser. You still have to defeat the boss at the end of each world. And you still collect coins. Even the music of Wii Mario is reminicent of the music from the "good 'ol days".

Mario Party, on the other hand, is a refreshingly goofy game where the woman can be heroes too and everyone has the chance to be a winner! So, that was the inspiration for our Mario Party 6.

Step 1: The Invitations:

The first step just may have been our most challenging one. I gave Alex the opportunity to create the guest list. The first time I haven't just invited "my friends with kids" to one of our children's parties. Alex has school chums, now. So... he gave me a list of seven friends.

"I'd like to invite Jason, Madison, Vance..."

Umm... last names? Phone numbers?

"I don't know!"

Sigh. A little prepwork before school let out would have helped. But the one phone number Alex did bring home from Kindergarten was "not even close", the boy's mother later told us. Lesson, don't trust 5 years olds to exchange phone numbers correctly.

So, armed with the school year book and the phone book, we actually managed to track down all seven families. I felt a bit stupid cold-calling strangers and asking "Are you Madison's Mom?" But everyone was pretty good about it. Ava's great-grandma pointed me in the right direction, as did Tiara's Aunt... one of the perks about small town life is that everyone is related and everyone knows everyone else.



Step 2: The Prep Work

After officially invited a group of strangers over to our house, my next challenge was to get ready for the party. So I've spent my evenings creating the "props" and my weekend tidying the house. I know its a farce, but I still want people to think I have everything under control. I hit a few snags... the vacuum cleaner died, but a wise woman suggested I use the shop vac, and voila! Works in a pinch! Then the lawn mower wouldn't start. Then the weedwacker ran out of cord. So our yard looked pretty overgrown, but I decided I had to just "let it go!" Yesterday morning we spent an hour "decluttering" by basically throwing all the excess stuff into laundry baskets and hiding it in our bedroom. Then a quick sweep, vacuum and dust and voila, perfect housekeeping! Just don't open our door...

Here's a sampling of the fun prep work:


The Yoshi Cake, the inspiration for our theme. My Mom baked and decorated it. Not bad for her first attempt at a cartoon character cake huh? Thanks a million, Mom!

Party Hats - I made a dozen of these.

The "Yoshi Eggs" The "Magic Mushrooms".Goody bags... well, coin blocks, of course! The assembled "stuff".

Step 3: The Mini Games

Mario Party is basically a game where you run around like crazy collecting coins and occasionally squaring off against each other playing mini-games, from which you collect more coins.

So, that's what we did!

My kids' share of the "loot"

Divide the kids up into two teams - Team Luigi and Team Mario --- unfortunately everyone wanted to be Mario (Luigi always did get the shaft) so our teams were uneven and eventually abandoned for a more free-for-all style of game play.

Game #1 - An obstacle course:

Don't forget to invite the fun Aunty who still has youth and agility... well, youth, on her side! :)

Thanks for the help, Lindsay!

Even the youngest party-goer can have fun on a well-executed obstacle course! :)

Game #2 - Mario/Luigi says

No explanation needed, think of Simon Says, but picture a short, round Italian man with a bad mustache and bad fashion sense...

Game #3 - Pin the Moustache on Mario

Or on the kids...

Game #4 - "Bean Bag Boo"

Connor demonstrates the overhand throw

Fun for all ages! We all gave it a whirl after the kids left. Here's my Mom showing Dad how it's done!

Game #5 - The infamous (Yoshi) egg on spoon relay:

And yes, I did hard-boil them. So sue me, I'm a softie!

Step 5: The filler

Five mini-games was enough for the day. The kids are still pretty young and don't have that competitive attention span required for too much structure. So we also had some "down-time" activities that the kids enjoyed during transitions between activities.

The bouncy castle. The kids got this for Christmas. We've used it twice, at Kirstin's birthday party and then at Alex's. It's pretty fun and I do believe Santa got a bargain on it because of it being off-season.The swing-set... always a classic! I think they were trying to see how many kids they could cram onto one swing... kind of like the whole clowns in Volkswagon type thing.And the yard toys. Here Connor is trying to see if Gold coins make good replacements for the eye stickers he peeled off last year.

Step 6: The food

We'd originally wanted an Italian menu, but because cooking pizza in the oven would have heated up the whole house, we chose something simpler. Cold cuts, buns, veggies and dip and chips. Nice a simple and fantastic for leftovers.

Short on tables, we found ourselves improvising!

Step 7: Opening gifts

Step 8: The cake and the song

And that's it. The party ended at two o'clock. A week and a half of preparation, three hours of crazy Mario fun... hopefully a lifetime of memories.

Happy 6th Birthday Alex! :)