Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Parent-Teacher Conference



Tonight was Lucy's first Parent/Teacher interview...with a twist. It was called a Student-Lead Conference. We got there at 5pm and Lucy lead us through a stream of 6 different stations where she got to demonstrate to us some of the things she's been doing so far this year. She was SO excited to show off, and we were excited to participate with her. She started us off at the water table where she got to create a boat out of tin foil. She had to 'predict' whether she thought her boat would float when filled with little plastic people. She predicted it would sink, because she had witnessed many of the other kids throughout the day attempt this project and had their boats sink. But she didn't count on her engineer-savy dad. They created a large boat (large surface area) with sturdy sides. They were able to fill the boat with 145 without sinking it. They ran out of people, and then started filling the boat with sea creatures. It never sank. Whoo-hoo Dad!
Then we headed over to the "Patterns" station, where Dad created patterns for Lucy to guess. He started with a few pieces of alternating colored blocks and covered the last 3 tiles with cups. Lucy had to guess how to complete the pattern. To toughen up it for her, he started using different shapes and colors, and then stacking blocks. She did great and guessed all the patterns. Then it was her turn to stump her dad...and stump him she did. Whoo-hoo Lucy!

We got to guess how many gold-fish crackers were in a jar, and the Lucy got to show us her journal, her drawing book, and her scrapbook. She did a little book of her emotions, and we had fun looking at all her drawings.

It's sweet to see that all her drawings include Max in some way or another.

She also got to practice writing the letter 'F' for us, and painting a Fish picture. Max was pretty pleased with all the toys and artwork, so he decided to paint a picture of a fish as well. We finished with a chat with the teacher and then it was home for dinner.
Lucy's friend Ava and her parents had had their student conference at 3:15 (which is at the end of school) and since they were driving home today, they decided to have Lucy wait at the school while they had their conference, and then they'd bring her home. The conferences were scheduled to only take half an hour, but if the students were extra chatty, it could take quite a bit longer. It turned out that we met up with Lucy on the way to the school and had her switch out of Ava's car and into ours, so we could go straight back to the school because their conference had gone long. So Lucy stayed at the school from about 8:30 this morning until after 6pm tonight. She was exhausted. We had a quick dinner, played a game of Statue and a tub/scriptures/prayers and into bed. She will sleep good tonight, I'm sure. What a start student.

A Break


Santa Sleighs...made out of Gingerbread...make for a GREAT family home evening. There was laughter and cheering and happiness all around and it was nice to pause the work for a few minutes and just play.


Logan spent most of the evening playing with Lucy's play kitchen that was pulled out of the kid's room for the water tank renos. He loves opening and closing the cupboards and sticking stuff inside and pulling it out again. It's a relief to me too, because now he enjoys playing with that play kitchen, instead of opening and closing my cupboards and pulling boxes of cereal and blenders out all over the kitchen.

Genealogy



A few weeks ago when Kari and Barrett in town, we decided to take a "Grandkids" photo for Grandma and Papa. It was quite an undertaking to get all the kids to even look at the camera, let alone smile. So we took what we could get. We also got a few pictures of my kids together


just the girls

and just the boys.

It was hectic but so cute and so fun to see the end results.

Monday, November 29, 2010

I Can Do That

Whew, this day was a marathon...and I survived it. Maybe it felt like a marathon because somewhere in the crossover from yesterday to today, I didn't get that break of sleep that I so desperately needed and wanted. It started out as a pretty exhausting, yet awesome Sabbath. We have no hot water...again. But this time, not due to frozen pipes, but because the hot water tank was shot. The water out here is incredibly hard, and our tank is incredibly old, and the mix of those two elements creates the need for us to replace the heating elements in our tank about every 9 months. The hard water just wears through them. So we're sick (STILL!) and we have no hot water. My husband needs to attend another ward at 9am in the NE of Calgary for a Confirmation, which means that me and my three kids need to get ready alone (not so unusual, since Tyler usually has early morning meetings anyway), with no hot water. So I get up a bit early in order to run up the hill in the snow (yes, literally) to my in-laws house to use their shower before my husband has to get up an leave. I think to myself that at least this way I will be on time for church because we're getting started on this morning so much earlier than usual. (haha). So my husband leaves and I start on the task of getting us all ready. We did it. We were 5 minutes late for church, as usual, and I had ample choice of seating since no one else in our family was around. So it was me and the three kids through Sacrament Meeting. That was exhausting. But I did manage to get snippets of spiritual upliftment from our High Council speaker. Lucy was giving the scripture in Primary today, and she did awesome. It was a coincidence that it just so happened to be her favorite scripture too. Mosiah 2:17 - when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God. Max joined us to watch his sister and we talked a bit about him moving up into primary in a few weeks...I hope that transition goes well. I know he'll like being with Lucy again. But there are no toys in Primary. Anyway, I'm side-tracking. It was a full Sabbath, and a somewhat relaxing evening. We decided to kick it at home since our kids are STILL sick (20 days and counting now!) and let them get an early night. I got kids into bed and flopped down exhausted on the couch at 9:30, fully intending to fold laundry, but I fell asleep until 10:30. Little did I know that would be the best sleep I'd get all night. I was in bed by about 11:30 and was woken up to a very upset Maxwell at 12:30am. He didn't know what was wrong, and then decided he had to go to the bathroom. So we did that. Then he realized that his ear was hurting...a lot. So we got some tylenol and I wondered how the rest of the night was going to go. He had a drink of water, a wipe to the runny nose and back to bed. Only to call out again at about 1:05. His ear was still hurting. "I know buddy, it'll take a few minutes for the medicine to work. You need to try and get some sleep." "Ok mom." He calls out again at 1:20. Still hurting. 1:35, still hurting. 1:45 I finally bring him into the bed with us, because I'm tired of getting up and walking down the hallway. He sleeps like that for a few minutes and Tyler and I decide to carry him to his room to finish the night. No such luck. He cried out about 2:10, still hurting. So Tyler grabbed a sleeping bag to sleep on the couch and Max was back in the bed with me. The idea was this way everyone would get a good night sleep. Good idea. Max finally settled by about 3:45am and slept. So I finally did too. He woke up at 6am because he was too hot, but fell back asleep quickly till 9:45am. Mom, however got to get up at 7:45am because although it was a huge blessing that all the up and downs of the night did not disturb Lucy or Logan, it did not mean that those two were prepared to sleep in at all, like the rest of us were hoping for. So I woke up to a cheerful but very persistent little boy saying, "Da, da, da, da, da!"
In theory today would be a relaxing day to recover from that night, but the doctor had to be called, and kids ears had to be checked, groceries needed to be bought, parts for the hot water tank had to be bought and the tank needed to be fixed so we could have hot water again...sometime. These are the things that I was running around doing because Tyler was at home working on a HUGE project and trying to clean up the hot water tank and drain it so we could fix it. The Doctor visit proved successful as Logan and Max were both diagnosed with ear infections. Prescriptions were written and filled and as we were checking out at the pharmacy, the silver lining of the day presented itself...in the form of a gingerbread santa sleigh kit for four sleighs, with all the candy, icing and cookie pieces needed for $12.99. Pretty perfect FHE, especially since the kids had been promised earlier in the weekend that we would put our tree up today, but sickness and hot water tanks had prevented us from going to Great Grandma's house to pick up the tree and decorations.
The most amazing part of the whole event is that I was exhausted ALL day. My muscles ached every time I stood up or walked down the hallway, as if I had just climbed to the 40th floor of a skyscraper. But I was patient. I had some reserve of energy that I didn't know existed. I was able to stay positive and just 'get-er-done'. "What's that, I need to completely rearrange my kids' entire room because that's the only way we can get access to the hot water tank in order to fix it? ok, I can do that." "What's that? I need to use a crowbar to scrape rusty hard-water deposits off the bottom of my hot water tank and vacuum them out with the shop-vac while trying to entertain my 9-month old and keep him from putting all the dirty tools in his mouth? ok, I can do that." "What's that? I need to unload my groceries, TWICE, and stand in line at the grocery store, TWICE, because the credit card machine wasn't working, TWICE, with 2 of my three sick kids after racing around the store to get the groceries done in a record breaking 15 minutes because the baby is sleeping at home while dad is getting some work done? ok, I can do that." "What's that? I need to take 3 sick kids to the doctor's office alone and get ears checked and kids weighed and boots and coats on and off and on again and take the prescription to the pharmacy and wait for 25 minutes with a baby who is ready to be in bed already, but has to wait until we get this medicine before he can go home and then I have to stop at the post office to mail the letter Lucy wrote to her cousin yesterday because she was so excited to do it, and I just didn't have the heart to disappoint her because people were tired? ok, I can do that." "What's that? The hot water tank is fixed but hasn't had time to heat the water yet, so I have to heat water on the stove top and in the microwave in order to bathe my children's snot-crusted and icing covered faces and in the process of running the microwave constantly for 20 minutes cause it to short out and stop working...yes, no microwave + figuring out how to warm bottles for my baby and wondering to myself if this brown rusty colored water that comes out of the taps after having the water turned off all day is really cleaning my children at all, or is just going to result in making them look like they have a winter tan? ok, I can do that."
I don't know where it came from, but I did it. Actually, I do know where it came from, and I'm grateful. I did not do this day on my own...that's for sure.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

It's been a while

I have nothing to say. It's snowing and freezing cold. We all know that. Not gonna blog about it. Kids are the same. I'm the same. Tyler's the same. Kinda in a blogger rut. We're creating Christmas lists, but I'm trying to be practical this year ( which is Christmas-boring, I know!). Debating whether or not to put up a tree with a scootch-butt getting into everything. Blah, blah, blah.

Kid's still saying funny things though:

Max: "mom! You should smell my breath!"
Ah, no thanks

Lucy: "logan's upset because he's jealous of me."
Dad: "why?"
Lucy: "because I'm so beautiful."

Max: "Heavenly Father, please bless that we will brush our teeth."

Monday, November 1, 2010

Boo



And the Halloween celebrations continue:
We had a Trunk or Treat out at our place on Saturday night with about 50 kids. I expected it to last about 2 hours, but the actual trunk-or-treating portion lasted about 12 minutes...so we sent the kids around for a second go, until all the candy was gone. There was a few games played, a parade of costumes

and the kids all sang Happy Birthday to me (thanks to a kind prompt by Janie). A few huddled in the garage with Apple Cider when the wind picked up, but most just headed home and our evening was done by about 6:45. Nice! An awesome party, lots of candy, and the potential for an early night before church. That's my kind of party!

Before we started, I wanted to get a picture of my kids in their skeleton t-shirts. I took a ton of photos and couldn't get a single one where all of them were smiling and looking at the camera...but this one's pretty awesome:

We also tried to have a pumpkin carving contest...and here was our entry

There was a lot of set-up involved, including building a pirate fort out of hay-bales. But the kids loved having a chance to ride around in the truck as we prepared

Three Little Chickens


I love Halloween. I love decorating for it, counting down to it, getting costumes organized, the music, and planning or participating in lots of parties. Let's be honest, I also love the candy and the fact that it's the day after my birthday. This year, since Halloween was on a Sunday, we planned a Trunk-or-Treat for family and friends out at our place for Saturday evening. But before we get there, we had a Halloween party at Lucy's school to attend. She was so excited to bring her costume to school that day, and to ride the bus for 10 minutes over to the hall where the party was being held. Max was especially excited to participate in an event at Lucy's school. So Thursday afternoon, the boys and I loaded into the van, costumes on, to meet Lucy for a party...rice krispie pumpkins in hand.

They played a few halloween games, did a few crafts, ate some goodies and the class shared a halloween song they had been learning.

I was the only parent who dressed up, but I didn't care...I love Halloween!

Logan is not asleep, just can't keep his eyes open with the flash of the camera...I took this same picture three times.
The kids got a goodie bag from one of the other students that included some vampire teeth, so they spent the afternoon making their fiercest faces...in spite of the fact that the teeth were too big.