Cubs

Brett has started Cub Scouts this fall. He has enjoyed it a lot. Especially earning his First Aid Badge, visiting a local Police Station, and playing games and seeing his friends every week.




Brett would say his most favourite activity so far this year was Apple Day. He helped his Pack earn a lot of money towards their activities.

Who wouldn't buy an apple from this sweet Cub Scout?

Pierced Ears

Samantha has been waiting for this day for quite a while. I can't decide if she was more excited or nervous. I guess excited because she went through with it without any hesitation.

My Mom had reminded me to make certain the holes were pierced in the exact middle of the lobe. I'm not sure if I took her advice a little too far. But it seemed like my perfectionism was starting to give the poor lady at the jewelery store a complex.

But they look great, so it was definitely worth the double quadruple-checking.

She seemed like a resilient lady...

Here are the results!

Before

After!

November Birthdays

JD & I both celebrated our birthdays this month.

My birthday was wonderful. Scott had planned a day in Toronto for the two of us. We went to the temple with some friends, ate ridiculously good food, did some quick shopping (new bedding from West Elm!) and ended the night with front row seats at Wicked.

Wicked was so good! We both loved it. Scott told me during the intermission that he was torn between watching the actual show and watching the orchestra and conductor, who were almost as entertaining as the people on stage.

Thank you Mom and Emma for watching our kids all day, and thanks Uncle Jeff for taking JD to his hockey practice.

Speaking of JD....

He has a party planned in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime we had dinner and cake on his actual birthday.

The pictures are stuck on my camera right now, so I dug through my older photos and started reminiscing about some of my favourite Jesse memories.











JD is such a special boy. So energetic and fun-loving, yet so sweet and tender underneath his extreme hyper-activeness.

He has really blossomed in the last few months and is doing well at the new school. His reading in English and French has improved dramatically and he has made lots of new friends.

He continues to excel at hockey and piano. He has a wicked slapshot.

He melts into a puddle when he sees his green blanket. And he still sucks his thumb, although after the dentist's lecture at his check-up today, he has promised to try (harder) to quit.

He drives me crazy pretty much on a daily basis... But when I think about how much I love him it brings tears to my eyes.

JD is generally a lot like his Dad. But he and I have plenty in common, besides our birthday month.

We both love shrimp. And babies. And getting our backs scratched.

Happy Birthday JD!

Never Wake a Sleeping Baby

I never get to take pictures of Clara sleeping, as I don't want her to wake up early. That would be such a tragedy around here. Maybe some of you Moms can relate. Nap time is so precious.

When she fell asleep on our bedroom floor one day, it was the perfect opportunity to snap a couple of photos.

Nathan's Humour

Nathan loves corny humour. Recently, he has been trying to make up his own puns.

The other day we had soup for lunch (Nathan's favourite).

He was being very quiet while eating and then finally he said:

This is a soup-er duper lunch!

I laughed and told him how funny he was, so he decided to try again a few minutes later with:

This is soup-er amazing, Mom.

There's never a dull moment with Nathan around.

Cross Country Kids

Samantha and Brett ran Cross Country this year. They only had one meet before the qualifying meet for City Finals.

This was Brett's first year in Cross Country and he enjoyed it.

Tying her shoe at the starting line.

Waiting for the rest of the team to finish.


Samantha came in 23rd at the first meet. Way to go!




Samantha after her last race. She didn't quite qualify for City Finals but was still smiling!

The school team on the whole did great and one of our girls teams won Gold at City, competing against over 80 other elementary schools.

Halloween 2010

We had a Trunk-or-Treat bash at the church on Saturday night. The kids got to go trick-or-treating from trunk to trunk at all the cars in the parking lot.

There were some seriously cool looking trunks too - the decorations were awesome.

This year we had a medieval lady, a ghost pirate, a ninja, a zebra, and Tinkerbell.






We also had the cutest little Mario & Luigi cousins.



The great thing about our party on Saturday was that the kids got to hand out candy at home on Sunday, something they have never done before.

We tuned in to the Halloween edition of Extreme Home Makeover, popped a big bowl of popcorn, and took turns answering the doorbell every 1.2 minutes.

Clara kept sneaking over to the candy bowl by the door and quietly picking a treat, which she would then hide under the table.


She didn't ever ask for someone to open one of her treats. Probably because she thought that if she asked, we would notice what she was up to and take the treats away.


So she just spent the night alternating between lining them up on the floor, and then picking them up and hugging them. Every few minutes she's sneak back for another one.

Fall Treat Bags & Gogo's

Here are the teacher treat bags we made for Halloween this year for school teachers, piano teacher, visiting teachers, and a few other special people.


I packaged them up early because that way the candy is stapled inside and prevents them from being eaten before Halloween.

The candy in the jars was used to make up some other treat bags, as well as for some Halloween activities. I still have the two jars of candy corn on the counter as nobody likes to eat candy corn at our house. That's why it makes great Halloween decorations.

Here's a close up of the bag toppers, which I created in Word and printed onto cardstock. The bags are in the craft section of Dollarama. You get 50 bags for a dollar.


These are super easy and quick, but if you want to make them without a computer you can do that too:


The little creatures in the bags are called Gogo's or Gogo's Crazy Bones. They are all the rage right now and impossible to find in any stores, apparently. I bought the last couple of bags at Toys R Us one night, not knowing they were such a hot commodity. Maybe I should have sold them on Kijiji instead of giving them to the kids for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving weekend. We put the turkey in to bake on Saturday morning, then went to watch JD's hockey game. His team won!

(Waiting at the arena while JD was changing)

We were lucky to get to host Thanksgiving here at our house. Scott ordered a fresh turkey from a nearby turkey farm. Fresh turkeys are so delicious. If you've only had frozen turkey you haven't lived.




We enjoyed turkey dinner with Grandma, Nana, Papa, Jeff, Lindsey & kids, the Bridge family, and our old neighbour, Mila (old, as in she's no longer our neighbour, not saying anything about her age).







Sunday morning we woke up painfully early to drive to church three hours away to say goodbye to Scott's cousin who is leaving for a 2 year mission. Aunt Suzanne made up for the early morning by hosting a big turkey dinner at her home after church.

Our kids napped all the way home, so when we walked through the doors at 7:00 PM, they were full of energy and ready to have some fun. Luckily Monday was a holiday, so we didn't have to worry about early bedtimes.

Monday was a relaxing day at home with the family. We tried to go apple picking, our Thanksgiving weekend tradition. Unfortunately, the orchard we have been picking from lately had a very small crop due to hail earlier in the season. We managed to scrape together a bushel, but they were slim pickings.


We came straight home and made fresh apple pies. Fresh as in the apples went from on-the-tree to in-our-tummies in about three hours. I think this should be our new tradition.

Speaking of tradition, this year I made two huge pots of our Thanksgiving Turkey Soup. We love it so much, sometimes I think we have the turkey dinner just so we can make this soup the day after.