More Than Words

There's an extremely cheesy 80s song by Extreme...you know you know it.  Don't pretend.  More Than Words.  It's totally in your head now, as it is mine.  You're welcome.

We're having a good time here.  And we have the pictures to prove it.  And today, I feel cheesy.  And my feelings for these crazy kiddos and this crazy family and this crazy life we're living out here leaves me speechless.

Lucy sang her heart out in sacrament meeting today as we sang the intermediate hymn, "Home Can Be A Heaven on Earth."  It left me speechless.  And also unable to finish singing.

Things are good.

Buskers!

Today, we headed downtown to check out the Buskers Festival.  This was our first chance to see them and we were super excited.  Well, I was.  The kids didn't know what a busker was, but they were happy to go along for a trip and a picnic.  Last year, the Buskers Festival was the same weekend we moved to Kingston, so we missed it.  Something about unpacking boxes in a crazy heat-wave didn't lend itself to taking time to watch some juggling.  But no excuses this year.

We started in Confederation Park where there were supposed to be kids activities going on.  At first it was only Bandaid the Clown and some colouring, so we were getting a little disappointed with the Buskers...but the day definitely picked up.

The kids waited in line to get their balloon object from Bandaid.  Logan got a black sword.

Lucy got an orange bird.

And Max got a black butterfly.  He didn't pause for a picture.

Logan's sword popped almost immediately...but Bandaid was nice enough to make him a new one.

Then the kids got to pretend to milk a cow and do some colouring.

They were most excited to share their cheese buns with the ducks.

We heard there were some performers up on Clergy street at the St. Andrews church, so we made the 8 block trek up there.  Seriously, it is crazy hot out today.

We made it just in time to see the last act, which was a Puppet Tamer and his puppet Crackers.  He was hilarious and the kids really enjoyed eating apples and watching him.  He made jokes that were perfect for 5-year-old boy humour.

Once that was done, we headed back down Princess Street because the street performers were coming out.  We wanted to head back to Confederation Park where more kids stuff was supposed to happen, but we got distracted by The Real McCoy show.  He described himself as Cirque de Soleil meats The Home Depot.  He was hilarious.

But the best part was when he asked for a cute, smart volunteer between the ages of 5 and 6.  And Max was chosen!!  I may have shouted a little loud to get the guy's attention...but it worked!  So Max got to be assistant for the show.  I have some awesome videos of Max doing some cool moves and helping pass Brent's juggling paraphernalia to him while he balanced on a ball (Brent...not Max).

In the end, Brent gave Max $9 for his help.  He told him if he could catch a twoonie, he could keep it.  he didn't catch it, but he let him keep it again...and then he tried again with a second twoonie...still didn't catch it.  So the guy tried with a $5.  Max got that one and got to keep them all.  He told Max that he was now a Street Performer.  The audience really hooted and hollered for Max and he really enjoyed it.

We moved down the street a bit and watched a plate spinner for a few minutes (who wasn't funny and a lot more lame, so we only stayed for 2 minutes).

Then we went back to the kids area.  Throughout the day, we were pretty disappointed in what they claimed as a kids area and kids activities, but the rest of it didn't disappoint.

We saw our friend Sister Cudd who had set up for face painting and Logan helped himself to her stool and told her he wanted a dinosaur.  She's his nursery leader.  She was good enough to indulge him.  Funny kid.

The kids went and made their own Jester Hats and then we headed home so Logan could have a nap and so we could get out of the sun for a bit.

Logan reassured me that he wasn't tired and, 'see, I'm happy!" he said, with a big grin.  Nevertheless...he is now napping.

There are more performances tonight, but I think we got ourselves a good taste of what the Buskers had to offer.  The Real McCoy was definitely the highlight.

An Invention of Epic Proportions

I don't know if I'm a genius, or if other people know about this wonderful invention already and I am just slow on the uptake, but if you are not aware, I will share my knowledge with you and you can all benefit from it.  It's a wonderful thing.  It'll make your summer days a breeze.  It will leave you with hours of free time to read (I've read 30 chapters today) or get things done around the house.  It's a beautiful time and money saving invention...not to mention stress reducer and headache banisher.  Have I talked it up sufficiently?  Do you really want to know what it is?

It's not really an invention, per say...it's more of a life choice.  And here is the genius of a life choice I made 1 year ago.

Live in a neighbourhood where there are lots of kids, one of which needs to be about 2-4 years older than your own.  I call this invention, Neighbourhood Nick.

Neighbourhood Nick is a boy that lives down the street from us and is about 10 or 11 years old.  There is only one other kid on the street in his age group.  His parents work, so he's home all day with his older brother, who mostly sits in the dark basement playing video games or whatever.  I'm assuming that's what he does because we never see him.  Therefore Nick is left to find other sources of entertainment.  His source of entertainment comes in the form of my children...plus a few other neighbourhood kids.  They are all younger then him, ranging in age from 2 1/2 to 8.

Nick walks around the neighbourhood every morning like the pied piper he is, carrying his skate board, knocking on doors and inviting all the neighbourhood kids to come out to play.  And the kids want to oh so badly.  Another day with Neighbourhood Nick!  It shall be glorious, they say.

When Logan is involved in the playing, they congregate in our backyard and play in the kiddie pool, or sprinkler or invent super hero games.  They play hide and seek.  Yesterday, I had 7 kids in my backyard for about 4 hours.  When they get tired of our backyard, they congregate down the street in Owen's backyard.  I believe Owen's mother has been on to this genius invention for a few years now.

How could 7 kids in your backyard possibly equate to money-saving, stress reduction and headache banishing, you say?  Easy.  While my kids are happily entertained in the backyard for hours on end with Neighbourhood Nick who seems to have boundless energy, a limitless imagination for fun games, and exudes high levels of patience for kids of all ages and their needs and whines and pouts, I am in my yard weeding, mowing, watering, or in my house doing dishes, laundry, vacuuming, cleaning.  And when those things get done without a bazillion interruptions, they get done SO quickly.  Which leaves me with lots of time to sit and read 30 chapters of my book.

And, when Logan is napping?  Nick takes the neighbourhood kids to the park or on a bike ride, because they're tired of being cooped up in our backyard all morning and need to spring free...and I'm happy to let them spring free.  You want to take my older two kids to the park while my little one sleeps and leave me home alone ALL afternoon?  I don't know...this is such a tough choice...

Oh, and whoever Neighbourhood Nick's mother is...she's a good mother.  Neighbourhood Nick is polite.  He enjoys the glorious days of summer and wants to be outside, all day.  He never wants to come into the house to use our bathroom or play with toys, and therefore the children stay outside, keeping my clean house clean.  He never asks for things and is very grateful.  He's very accommodating to my two-year-old who I believe has fallen in love with Neighbourhood Nick.  Plus, the other day, Neighbourhood Nick took Max on a bike ride to the spider park.  On the way the ice-cream truck went by.  Neighbourhood Nick bought my son an ice-cream cone with his own money...unbeknownst to me.  Amazing.

And at the end of the day, my kids are so exhausted from all the fun they've had with Neighbourhood Nick that they just can't keep their eyes open and ask if they can go to bed early.  Am I shameless?

This has been my life for 2 weeks now.  I love my life.  And all it costs me is a couple of glasses of water every once and a while, and the occasional handful of freezies.  Brilliant.  Neighbourhood Nick.  You're welcome anytime.

Mont Cascades

Well, it's Sunday again.  I'm exhausted.  I don't feel I've taken enough time to decompress in preparation for the Summer of George.  Pretty much I have filled this whole week with as many fun things as I can come up with.  It's setting some pretty high expectations for the following weeks.

At soccer on Thursday night, we found out our friends, who just got home from a trip to Alberta and who we missed terribly, were going to Mont Cascades Water Park on Saturday.  And so we invited ourselves to join them.  Pretty nice of us, hey?  We're awesome like that.

Mont Cascades is about 2 1/2 hours away just north of Ottawa.  It's a ski hill in the winter and water park in the summer.  I wasn't planning on being away all day Saturday, so Friday suddenly got really busy.  I had to have mine and the 2 kids talks ready on Friday because I knew it would be a later night on Saturday.  Plus I got some groceries to take with us for a picnic lunch.  Cleaned the house.  Had the kids clean their rooms.  Made sure all the bathing suits that we had been using all week were clean.  And went to the neighbours to play in the sprinkler.  I was exhausted all day from a very terrible night's sleep (seriously, I tossed and turned until about 3:30am unable to sleep - it sucked), so we opted for a night at home eating burgers and watching "Back To The Future II".  It was awesome.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early and in the car to head to the water park.  Tyler had the brilliant idea of playing the alphabet game in the van on the way, and then we tried to find all the numbers from 1-9 as well.  It took most of the trip and he commented, "Hey kids, when we were young we didn't have DVD players in the van so whenever we went on trips anywhere we would play games like these."  We also listened to the top 40 with Kasey Kasum for a few minutes and he explained that before iPods and MP3s and downloading music, if you were broke, you listened to the radio and tried to record your favourite songs onto cassette tape.  I'm sure our kids think we're so old.

It was a bit cloudy and windy at the water park to start, but it heated up and turned out to be a fantastic day.  In fact, it heated up enough that we all got a little toasty.  My shoulders are crazy sore today and the kids have red faces.  Grrr!

We made the mistake of starting with 2 of the big slides first which scared Lucy and Logan and I thought our day was going to be ruined before it even started.  There were lots of tears (Max loved it).  Once we found the kiddie pool with kids water slides Lucy and Logan were happy and proceeded to be content there for about 4 hours.  It was awesome.  Great day!

 At one point I had to take Logan out to the van for a nap.  I set up the playpen and sat with him while he slept, promising him that he could do more water slides when he woke up.  After about an hour I decided I should probably wake him so he would have a chance to do some more slides before we had to leave.  I gently rubbed his shoulder and whispered his name.  Normally he would fuss or at least yawn or stretch and lay in the bed for a few minutes before agreeing to get up.  Today, he sat straight up without a yawn or a stretch and immediately said, "Now we can do more slides?"

On the way home we decided to make a quick stop at IKEA because we don't get there very often.  What was supposed to be a cheap dinner (I love IKEA prices!) and a quick peak at curtains ended up being 2 1/2 hours!  We didn't get on the road home until 9pm.  (After MULTIPLE potty breaks - seriously, can't kids figure out their digestive systems and go to the bathroom all at once?  Graphic - pee and poo do not need 2 separate trips to the bathroom!)

We were home by about 10:45pm.  The kids fell asleep in the van and we carried them inside to their beds.  

But we did get some curtains and a picture.  I'm excited to put them up.  

Today we had to be at church extra early now that Tyler is Elder's Quorum president and has to attend Ward Council.  The kids and I hung out in the primary room and ate breakfast, practiced their talks and I reviewed my talk while they played in the nursery.  I ended up scraping almost everything I had written and gave a talk that I had not prepared.  I think it went well.  

Logan had to take a turn practicing a talk in the primary room too, of course.  It was so funny to only be able to see the top of his head at the pulpit.  

Logan has taken to calling Sister Piasetski in our ward "Grandma".  She's the grandma of one of his friends and his favourite person in nursery (thank goodness the nursery tears have ended!) and now he calls her Grandma.  It's sweet.  

We had a linger longer after church that was pretty lame.  With so many people moving and people on vacation there weren't very many people there.  Plus we are all SO tired that we just wanted to get home.  Thank goodness for a day of rest.  I Love that we don't have anywhere else to be today.  I need a break.  

I didn't sleep good again on Friday night before our trip to the water park and I was beginning to worry that I was hitting an insomnia phase, like what I experienced as a teenager.  Fortunately, lots of driving, a day in the sun at a water park and a really late night (plus a sunburn) were a recipe for a good night's sleep last night.  I'm not sure it's a recipe I can repeat very often!

Max's Talk

Being Kind is Doing and Saying Nice Things to Others

Being kind is something that can be very hard, but it can also be very fun.  

Some ways that we can be kind are:

• giving a compliment, like saying, “You’re awesome!”
• listening
• remembering to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
• Saying sorry
• sharing
• drawing a picture
• being reverent

Sometimes it is hard to be kind when someone else is being mean.  It is important to still be kind.  There is a primary song that says, 

“I want to be kind to everyone

For that is right, you see

So I say to myself, remember this

Kindness begins with me”

I know Heavenly Father and Jesus are happy when we are kind

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.  

Lucy's Talk

Being Kind is Doing and Saying Nice Things to Others

I would like to read you a story from this month’s Friend magazine

(READ STORY)

I like that story because it shows how important helping and doing nice things for others can be.  I also like that the sister was still kind to the girls, even though she was trying to stop them from being mean to her brother.  She wasn’t mean in return, but instead decided to create a game that they could all play together.  Sometimes, being kind is forgiving.  Or showing kindness even when others are being mean.  

Helping someone who is being picked on is one example of being kind.  

Some other examples of being kind include:

• serving others
• complimenting a friend or family member
• visiting people who are sick
• sharing
• drawing a picture
• bringing a friend to church or other activity

Heavenly Father and Jesus want us to help each other.  Jesus was always kind and helps everyone.  I can follow His example.  

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.  

I Aim to Please

As if this week wasn't great already, we decided to add to the mix today a trip to the Splash Park.  We went to the library first, because, why not?  It's summertime.  I plan on spending a lot of time at the beach.  And I want to get my read on.

We decided to check out the splash park at the base.  Lucy went on a field trip there last week with her class and raved about it.  It's minutes away from our house and we haven't gone yet.  So today was the day.

I tried to find some shade and read the Ensign from this month.  Hoping it would give me some inspiration for my talk on Sunday.  As I was laying in the grass (while the kids ate lunch) I noticed a rainbow ring around the sun.  Pretty cool.  I didn't really get any inspiration about my talk, but I did have a brilliant idea of a gift that I want to get together for Lucy.  I wish I had prepared it for her birthday, but it'll have to just be a late gift.  I'm looking forward to working on it this week so I can give it to her as soon as possible.  More on that later.  

While we were there, the Ice cream Truck showed up.  I had some American money left in the van from our trip, so I decided to splurge.  The kids exclaimed, "This is the best day of my life!"  and proceeded to explain why, "Splash park, ice-cream truck, chips, AND a green apple!  Mom's awesome!"  I had no idea a green apple could induce so much excitement.

The ice-cream was a good break to dry off before we headed to the park half of the splash park.  It was fun there too, but it started to get hot, so we headed home.  Not much shade to be had at that splash park.

Logan loves these little windows and pretending to order food through them.  Here he is requesting 5 hot dogs.  

While Logan napped, I spent the afternoon working on mine and the kid's talks for sunday.  And getting us organized for soccer tonight.  Good times.