The pros and cons of going to the Ex

Army display:

Pros - hmmmm...thinking hard here...colour coordination? Seeing the inside of a helicopter? Marching band? Seeing Julio light up as he approached a torpedo?
Cons - seeing teenagers looking far too enthused about huge weapons. I don't think Julio would call that a con, for the record. But I can't help myself, I just do.

This is Luke in the helicopter simulator. He could've cared less. It didn't look very helicopterish without the big propellers, who could blame him? The boy beside him was super enthused though.
The rides:
Pros - Luke could do many of them already and loved it. Another big pro is that these rides are about my speed. I've become rather chicken in the last few years and by the grin on my face on the "roller coaster" picture, this is about as much roller coaster as I can handle. Another pro was bumping into church friends so Luke could go on a few rides with them. Although in the helicopter one I think he just looked wistfully at the steering wheels the whole time. On any ride with a steering wheel, of which he had control, I truly believe he thought he needed to steer, and looked pretty serious about it.
Cons - not many. Maybe price. I'm not sure if Luke got $4 a ride enjoyment out of each but apparently my $4 were well spent (see photo below) so I don't know if that counts as a con.


The petting zoo:
Pros - lots of animals, room for kids to roam right were the animals were, cute piglet and goats in a basket, according to Luke. I didn't enter into the hands on area because it was a stroller free zone, but Luke kept talking about the goats in a basket afterwards, so it must have been a highlight.
Cons - sleeping lemurs, signs that say "only a loonie" for feeding the animals (didn't it used to be a quarter?!?), hmmm...that's about all I can think of. (I wasn't totally hung up on the expense, for the record, I just have to think of some cons, to be good and negative I guess.)
The farming area:
Pros - interesting and educational, getting to watch a cow getting milked (that may also fall under con, explanation to follow), seeing a baby chick hatch before my eyes!, seeing laying hens lay eggs according to their colour (apparently white hens lay white eggs and brown hens lay brown eggs, who knew? Not this city girl apparently...), watching Luke take it all in
Cons - identifying in a very serious way with farm animals. Let's start with the cow. The farmer milking the cow did a lovely, if not overly thorough, job of explaining the milking process, from stimulating the utters to get a let down, talking about oxitocin, watching the utters fill up and then drain after being milked...asa a nursing mother let's just say it all hit so close to home and watching him constantly touching the utters was a little weird. (He wasn't a sicko or anything for the record, I'm just a city girl). Now let's move on to the sow. She was in a tiny little pen with all her little piglets and all of a sudden one piglet started squealing and suckling, and before you knew it all twelve or so of them were at it. Talk about survival of the fittest, what an aggressive bunch! And momma sow just lay there grunting, resigning herself to her duty as a sow mother. I'm sure the males in my family did not have the same experience there as I did.
Food:
Pros - I think Julio was happy with the mini donuts and hot dog, as I was with my cotton candy. I don't remember it being quite THAT sweet but it's been a while.
Cons - being hungry for some "real" food and only being able to eat fries (again, this seems to happen to me a lot). And then finding out that they were just a frozen bag from Superstore. For $4. Not that i'm dwelling on the money...

Samuel at the Ex:
Pros - he's cute no matter where we take him and he was mostly happy as long as the food kept coming. We packed a ton of fruit and cheese and what not and kept throwing it on his stroller tray.
Cons - well...just look at this picture. What a mess. The picture doesn't do the reality justice.

Weather:
Pros - the weather started out being hot and sunny and beautiful, and we got there around 3:30 so had lots of time to enjoy the warm weather. As the day progressed though, it got more and more overcast and did rain a little. But nothing too severe and we made it home in time for good bed times for all of us, a HUGE pro in my books.

Cons - crazy winds, people running like it's the end of the world, seeing sand swirl a few hundred yards away (I have no concept of distance, that just sounds good), not knowing where to go ourselves, whether to run and hide or wait it out. The wind died down pretty quick so Julio and Luke quickly hopped on the last ride of the night before it started raining while Sammy and I hovered in fear as the winds picked up again.

All in all, much fun, we'll do it again for sure!

Bedtime prayer

Here's a little conversation between Luke and I at bedtime tonight:
- who do you want to pray for Luke?
- God
- What do you want to pray to Him about?
- ask Him for help!
- for what?
- pipes!
- what else?
- hockey nets
- do you want to pray for people?
- what's people?
- like mom and dad and Samuel and friends and family, anyone really
- I want to pray for hockey nets, and pipes, and volleyballs, and...(more sports equipment, my memory is failing me)

So then we prayed, and then he said, "Let's not close our eyes. Let's keep our eyes OPEN!" I finally suggested that he try just keeping one eye open and that was definitely video worthy, although none was in sight. He then proceeded to sing me a bedtime song, which was something along the lines of, "goodnight, diamond in the sky, jingle bells jingle all the way and daddy fixes it and...(more randomness, getting higher and higher pitched until only the neighbourhood dogs could hear...)"

Two funny things

This morning while I was pulling weeds out of our flower bed, Luke "helped" me. At one point he said, "Mom! I got a weeb!" Or with Menno spelling, that's "Wiebe".

Also, we went to St. Boniface today for a little check-up for Sammy (all is well) and as we walked in to the hospital Luke looked at me and said, "It smells like doctors in here!"

Gardening again!

From our lilac bush...

Julio built a box garden for us at the side of the house. We are eagerly awaiting the arrival of plants, and so far have lettuce, peas, potatoes, cucumbers and zucchini peeking out of the ground. We are waiting on carrots and beans. Tomato plants are in as well and are doing great. I'm sure there will be more garden posts to follow!

Here's a few planting pics and a video:

Big soupy man and the great school debate

While singing "Big Soupy Man"

The other morning at breakfast Luke broke out into song, once again to the tune of the ABCs...
"Big soupy man, big soupy man.
His hat was blowing away because he couldn't get it.
It was too windy for him."

In other news, the other day I asked Luke if he would like me to teach him school at our house. (I'm always partially tempted by homeschooling even though it scares me.) He promptly said, "But there's no school at our house!" To which I replied, "Some people do school at their house." Response: "Yeah, but I don't." Good, issue settled!

Putting myself out there...

I've started another blog...it's nothing too crazy, just a place to post pictures and thoughts on the various sewing projects I've done. I'm not too sure why I felt compelled to do this and have no idea if I'll manage to keep on top of it or if I'll ever have time for another sewing project, but for what it's worth, here's the link. I'm no Martha Stewart but at least this keeps me out of trouble.

Fun with a friend

Luke's new obsession is to stack his toys on the couch and pretend the couch is a truck. So the other night when we had friends over, Luke and his friend Benjamen decided to go to the extreme. I walked downstairs to see what they were doing (we had left them to their own devices for quite a while) and noticed that the first part of the basement was completely cleaned out. Then I looked over and saw this...

Our little prodigy

A cottage long weekend and other tales

Pictures and stories...
These tulips are in our backyard, no thanks to us. Somehow this year we actually have some really great ones coming up and they make me happy every time I walk out my back door.

Luke and Bear after the Teddy Bear's picnic. Bear got a cast on his leg and the whole medical tent thing was amazing. He first went to triage, then MRI and X-ray, then to the ER for the cast...and then it started to rain so we all (Julio, Samuel, Luke and I) ended up under the DQ ice cream tent for part of the downpour, got free ice cream and then biked home in the rain. The kids were snug in the bike trailer and both fell asleep...Julio and I were exhausted, wet and happy by the time we got home and we sat in the car in the garage while the boys slept in the bike trailer. Definitely a memorable moment!

Our cottage weekend. Not a very eventful weekend, minus a huge tree falling down in a windstorm and seeing some deer and going for a somewhat gruelling but great bike ride. Nice to get away though, and go for walks and relax.

Mini-golf was our one "event" of the weekend as Luke has just started to get more into golf. My sister's girls have a golf set and Luke was playing at their place the other day and managed to loft the ball over the fence into the neighbour's swimming pool! Marcia was so impressed she let Luke borrow the golf clubs for a bit, and he plays with them a lot. When we were packing to go to the cottage he kept asking if we could put his golf "cloves" (rhymes with "gloves) in the trunk too (just like Papa Ron).

He tolerated the golfing shenanigans quite well.

My attempt at a "looking up" shot, inspired by Ellen, who was inspired by her brother Dan. My looking up shot is almost exactly like hers. Let's hear it for creativity!

I love this picture of Julio. I just had to say that.

The infamous tree.

Deer on our cottage lawn.
Deer doing gross things on our cottage lawn.
Cousin cuteness.
Luke and buddy Benjamen. I've taken care of Benny a few times while his mom's been at work and he's such a fun little guy with the best giggle ever. Luke and him have a blast together.

I've started to write down some of Luke's funny stories as I feel like every day he says something to make me smile and five minutes later I forget what it is. So here's a few, to put my memory at ease. (Side note: I read a Maclean's article today about a lady that remembers everything since she was ten. Dates, times, exact wording, every detail...it was evidently not about me!).

Luke: Mom, I need to bring something to Jake's house.

Me: What is it?

Luke: I need to bring Jake a credit card. (???)

And in other money news...

"Josh bought a hockey stick today. It was twenty dollars." (Side note/story: He still talks about Josh all the time. He calls the Josh he talks to at home "pretending Josh". It got a little confusing today when his friend was over and he kept saying "Me and Josh are going to do _____" and I would say, "today you're playing with Benjamen so you can talk about Benjamen" and he'd say, "I'm playing with Josh AND Benjamen". Poor Benjamen must have thought we were hiding another small child somewhere...)

Luke was playing with stackable cups the other day and I let him put water in some and pour them from one to another. All of a sudden he said to me, while he was playing, "Mom, I'm playing with water filters!" (Julio's been talking about installing a water filter in our home lately...)

And as you will see from some of the cottage pictures, we had some excitement while we were there and a tree fell down. We got to see/hear 2/3 of it come down so it was pretty exciting. Later Julio, Kevin and my dad cut a lot of it up and hauled it to the dump with the "help" of Luke and cousin Claire. So, the other day Luke looked outside our front window and said, "We should cut all the trees down!"

And then, the sweetest story of them all. Usually when I put Luke to bed I tell him the story of his day. I start out by saying something like "Once upon a time there was a little boy named Luke." And then I go on to list off the days events. He loves it. So the other night Julio was putting him to bed and was about to read him a story when Luke said that HE had a story. This is how it went: "There once was a BIG man named Julio. (He apparently looked at Julio with a little smile, knowing he was being funny using his real name.) He loved Jesus very much and Jesus took care of him. The end.

A link and a new thing

Julio and I watched this tonight and I wanted to share it. It's a little CBC story about a Winnipeg family that lived on refugee rations for three days.
Also, I added a "current projects" section to our blog...hopefully I'll have a completed projects section one day, but don't hold your breath.

Mother's Day

(My lovely boys...) Today was a great day. And after yesterday, Julio and I were in need of a great day. Yesterday we ended up buying, sort of, 3 bike trailers after going to Canadian Tire (twice), Walmart - my least favorite store in the world partly thanks to this video (twice), and Costco (once). For those of you that don't want to read a really frustrating tale, I suggest you mosey on to the next paragraph. For the rest, here's the story. We set out in search of a bike trailer as we have been biking a little more lately using Julio's brother's 10-year-old trailer which was adequate, if not a little scary in terms of child security. So we went to Canadian tire, and while we were there Julio wanted to pick up some glue for fixing up my bike tire as he had a repair kit but no glue. They only had repair kits, you couldn't buy the glue separately which was annoying, but whatever, we bought the repair kit and left. Then we went to Walmart to check out their bike trailer stock. Julio talked to a 16-year-old who said they didn't carry them and as Julio came back to find Luke and I looking at toys in one of the aisles and leaned against a shelf, to tell us that they don't have them, he looked down only to realize he was basically leaning against one. Great customer service, that Walmart. They sure know their stuff. I guess I shouldn't be hard on them because they do carry absolutely everything known to man, so how could they possibly remember every little last thing. But, it is almost summer, bike trailers are large and the kid worked in the section. Might be a handy little tidbit of information to know. Anyway, we bought it, because it was a good price and had everything we wanted on it, and left. I should mention that before that, we bumped into a friend of ours that suggested checking out Costco. That's important later, see if you can piece it all together in the end. When we came home after all of this, our friend that we had bumped into at Walmart said that he went to Costco and he saw them at Costco for $80 cheaper than the one at Walmart, and said that he'd be willing to meet us there sometime if we didn't have a membership to get one. So I tried to call him but he wasn't there so I left a message, called my dad (who has a membership) and he said he could meet us there. So we loaded up the bike trailer from Walmart that Julio and Luke were in the process of putting together, loaded the kids BACK into the car after an afternoon of errands, and brought along the Canadian Tire bike repair kit which just so happened to be missing the GLUE, the one and only part Julio actually needed. And I cannot lie to you and tell you we were all a happy bunch at this point, but there was still some optimism to be found with the thought of big deals on a bike trailer. Long story slightly shorter, we bought the Costco one, kept the Walmart one just in case we tried out the Costco one and didn't love it, went to Canadian Tire to return the bike repair kit, went BACK to said hated store to buy much cheaper bike repair kit, came home with two crying children in the backseat. I came inside and checked the messages and our friend, lovely and gracious that he is, had gone to Costco and bought the bike trailer for us just in case we wanted it. So, at the end of the day we sort of had 3 new bike trailers and 1 old one. That's a lot of bike trailers. I wish there were as many smiling, happy people at the end of yesterday as there were bike trailers.

However, hope was on the horizon with a sunny, beautiful Sunday morning, complete with a sleep-in for me until nearly 9am, breakfast of toast with Nutella and coffee, a lovely card and gift from Julio and boys, and a good morning at church, connecting with friends and enjoying a great service. After which we promptly came home, fed starving Samuel, loaded the crew in the new, Costco bike trailer with a picnic lunch in tow, and headed out for a lovely afternoon of biking and hanging out at Assiniboine Park. It was a gorgeous day, we had a ton of fun, both boys napped in the trailer on the way home and this pathetically out-of-shape body of mine finally got some exercise. So, here are a few pictures of our fun time at the park.

Before I forget...

3 Luke stories...
The other day we were lying on our bed (Luke, Julio and I) and Luke was looking at the heap of laundry in our laundry basket. He said, "it looks like an ice cream cone." Then, after thinking a little more he said, "it's ice cream clothes!"
My mom was over the other day until after Luke went to bed. When he woke up in the morning he asked me, "where's gramma Anne? Is she here?" I told him, no, she's not here anymore, to which he replied, "Don't say no to me, of course she is!"
And tonight was a beautiful, warm spring evening so after putting Samuel to bed, Luke, Julio and I had a fire and roasted marshmallows. After seeing it done a little bit, Luke thought he was ready to try his own. He got a stick about 4 inches long, stuck his marshmallow on it and held it somewhat near the fire for about 20 sec. He said it was just right!
And if you're looking for something interesting to watch, check this out. Great video, one of those things you wish you could sit all of North America down for 20 minutes to check out. (Thanks Ellen!)

An eventful week

(I started this post a couple of weeks ago, so some of it is old news...)

We had far too much excitement around here last week. And it all started out with a night of Wii. We went to our friends' place for the evening, an adults only Wii night get-together (that's somewhat of a novelty for us, so we were quite excited) and I was hoping that the worst thing that would happen that week would be that I would need Wii tennis lessons. My friend, Jeannie, by the way, is an absolute star at all things Wii, but we all had fun basking in her boxing/baseball/tennis glory. Anyway, enough about Wii, as fun as it was...

We came home that night late-ish, drove the babysitter home and at 1:30am heard a bang bang CRASH! At first we thought it was just Luke crashing around in his bed as he sometimes does, but the shattered glass sort of nullified that thought. Julio went into the living room and I creeped behind him and low and behold, what did we find but a massive rock that had made it's way through our living room window. I called 911 before actually going into the room, thinking for sure we were getting robbed, and had to emphasize the fact that we had small children in the house thinking that would somehow evoke more pity, I guess. In the end, because the kids, or whoever it was, ran off, we never even got a visit from the police. What we did get was 2 hours of vacuuming to try and pick up every little piece of shattered glass. What a mess. And don't even get Julio started on our insurance claim...it happened on a Friday night and they told us no one would be in until Monday to help us. Nice. What if our house burned down? Anyway, that's all sorted out now and we have a really pathetic estimate for fixing our window, so this will be a lovely financial set back for us. So much cheery news. On to the next fiasco.

Samuel had a fever, starting out around Sunday and on Monday we started noticing that he was twitching a lot as well. By Tuesday it had still not gone away (the fever and the twitching) so after calling his doctor I went with the boys to Children's Emergency. I was crying on the way, nervous about all this twitching, and from the backseat I all of a sudden heard, "I like happy moms. They're great." Subtle. That did actually cheer me up a bit on the drive down. So, in the ER he had a couple of actual seizures (so scary!) but they were not long lived so that was a positive. After all of his shenanigans (I love that word) the neurologist decided it'd be best to observe him for the night as he was still having these other weird twitches (different from the actual seizure he had that was probably related to the fever). He had an EEG the next morning which showed some midline abnormalities, but the neurologist wasn't hugely worried. We stayed another night to observe these twitches, although I felt ridiculous because he would do it all the time when I was alone with him but as soon as I got a nurse to check it out he'd just beam and smile and seem completely fine. Since then he's been getting a lot better, with fewer and fewer twitches and mostly happy and content. It was sure eye opening being in the ward for a few days though. Here's a little snapshot of what I saw:

Mother of 4, youngest son recovering from heart surgery done in Montreal, seemingly doing quite well for a 2 month old. I can't imagine how that would've all played out with the other 3 kids though!

Nurses talking at the nurses station, asking each other how long this one mom stayed to visit her baby this time. The consensus was maybe 5 minutes or so. Later I saw this same mom as she was leaving from a visit to her baby boy. The nurses were calling after her saying, "try not to be much more than twenty minutes" to which she just continued walking and didn't reply. I heard that baby boy cry a lot and was so sad that his mom didn't stay with him. That was the one and only time I saw his mom in the two days I was there. I just can't imagine.

Fun, spirited teenaged-girl, probably around 15 but looked like a super slim 12-year-old and quite sickly. She was talking on the phone with a boy one night for about a 1/2 hour, about video games and school and annoying subs and after she hung up the phone, had a conversation with a nurse about getting hooked up to her machine, some sort of a feeding scenario. I was just so struck with how much she was trying to lead a normal, teenaged life even though her life was much more complicated than most teenagers.

It was a tough stay, in some ways, and I came out of it feeling like I had no clue what so many people have to deal with all the time. I'm so glad major illness is not a part of my daily life and am so thankful that Samuel has been doing so well since. It's been over 2 weeks since our hospital stay and he's pretty much back to his smiley, funny self. I still feel like I observe him a lot and analyze his every move quite a bit, but even that is dwindling which is a positive sign. All in all I have to say that I experienced a new level of God's grace and a feeling of helplessness, but feeling like I was in good hands being in His hands. I am more and more convinced of prayer ever since, not necessarily for the outcome we want, but to draw us closer to God. Not to be morbid, but in the last while I've thought a lot more about death and heaven and I am realizing something about prayer and God. We pray so much for health and physical wholeness and earthly security when really, every single person's ultimate end is death and, consequently, no earthly security and no longevity in terms of health. So I wonder if it's almost humorous to God that we pray so much about what's a blip, and not so much (or maybe that's just me) about what is forever. In this journey of mine, I'm starting to pray more to cling to what's forever as opposed to what is not, but it doesn't come easily. I for sure want to see my kids get older and stay healthy and be with Julio until we're grandparents on a porch somewhere looking at a sunset. But more than that (I say it, not sure if I always believe it) I want to know God and feel His security and His rest. These are a lot of deep thoughts for a Saturday afternoon, I think I'll leave it there for now and share a few more pictures!

Bath-time! I absolulely LOVE that they can bathe together now, they are so cute to watch splash around together.

An afternoon at the zoo. The animals were the lowest of Luke and the other kids' priority, playing on the grass and on the play structures were much more fun.

Samuel chilling out in his stroller, eating, as we walked around the zoo. As long as the food kept coming, he was fine!What Luke does every day now that it's nicer out. It's hard to drag him inside ever, and I don't even want to really as I remember spending hours outside as a kid and love seeing him so content out there. Thank goodness for spring, I honestly don't know what we did all winter!

Our eventful week is a few weeks in the past now, and life has since consisted mostly of walks to the park, hanging out outside and enjoying the first few weeks of spring. There was a blip of snow and cold in there for a week and I thought I'd lose my mind. But thankfully it's been warmer the last few days and we are back outside where we belong. So be prepared for more outside pictures, as long as I can remember to bring my camera...

This past month

Apparently it's been a month since my last post, so I'll see if we've done anything blog-worthy lately. Hmmm...this past month has marked the end of daytime potty training I think! Luke had a potty chart that he put stickers on, and once it was completed he got some hockey equipment as seen in the following picture. A goalie helmet, a net, two hockey sticks and two balls. It was so fun taking him to Canadian Tire to pick it out, and we weren't going to originally get it all for him, it was going to be EITHER the goalie helmet OR the net and sticks and balls. But trying to get him to choose nearly sent him to tears. This is kind of how the conversation went:

Us: what do you want, the goalie helmet or the net?

Luke: the goalie helmet.

Us: Okay, then the net and hockey sticks stay here.

Luke: I want the goalie helmet AND the hockey sticks.

Us: You can't have both. Would you rather have the net and sticks and balls?

Luke: Yeah.

Us: Okay, then let's leave the goalie helmet.

Luke: But I need the goalie helmet AND the net!

Me, to Julio: He's worked so hard at this, this is the one time in his life he's actually EARNED something, shouldn't we just get him both?
Julio to me: eyes rolling...

Julio to Luke: Okay, Luke, you can have both.

I don't think he's regretted it either. Luke plays with that stuff every day. He is such a sports-a-holic. We've been going to watch my dad curl on Saturdays more too, so he's often found "curling" in the living room or playing badminton as there's a badminton area at the curling rink too that Luke's totally fascinated with.

Here's another funny moment from this past month. Luke's Bear got potty trained one day. I came into the bathroom and found Luke reading him a story while he sat on the potty.

And here is my table full of a couple of Norwex orders that came in on the same day. My little business continues to be fun and a real blessing in this time when Julio's been at home making a bit less moolah. Although our family four month vacation is coming to an end, as Julio will be back at work next week. Somehow it's felt busier with him around! It'll definitely be an adjustment to have him back at work, we've actually had a ton of fun.

And finally, our good friends Jeremy and Jaimee just had the sweetest little boy Isaac this past month. He's an absolutely doll and they are having a lot of fun with him which is great to see.

And now for some Sammy news: he has two bottom teeth, I think that happened around 6 months exactly, he's sleeping pretty good now which is really great, he's had one haircut and needs another to fix his combover look, he's a huge smiler and can jump higher in the Jolly Jumper than I think it's intended for! He is such a fun kid. I was at Kidspot (an indoor play area at a church) the other day and a lady was looking at Samuel as he was making eyes at her and smiling and said, that kid could fool you into wanting more! He has his moments, for sure, but on the whole he's a pretty happy, fun little guy. The other night I had a bunch of women over and he was just going to bed as they were arriving. He wouldn't settle so I brought him out and he immediately started smiling at everyone. After about half an hour of that, he started squawking a bit so I brought him to his crib but he turned around a gave them all one huge grin before going off to bed! What a goofball.
Happy Easter everyone!