The excitement is building

Here is our annual photo with Santa. We took advantage of our flexible school hours and went mid-week in the middle of the day. Not a single person in line and Santa had time to have a good long chat with the kids. I can't believe how grown up they both look in this photo. Those socks of Maddy's are about 3 years old. They used to be huge on her and now they look like they'll only last to the end of the season.

Pierced

Lately Maddy has really been showing that she could handle more responsibility. She's really getting into the groove of things when it comes to school, extra-curriculars and taking care of herself. Josh and I felt that perhaps it was a good time to let her to pierce her ears. She has shown interest in the past and at first the answer was always, 'when you're bigger'. At the same time, we didn't want to wait too long. We have certain conditions she needs to abide by before she was allowed to take the plunge and we felt like if we waited too long, following those conditions would be more of a struggle/fight between us and her desire to be independent of us. So on the weekend we did.

I have to say that I was nervous. I woke from a bad dream about her and couldn't get back to sleep. Then when we got to the location, I was finally ready to 'just do it'. Only we found out the piercer wasn't available until two hours later. Ahhhh, more time for my stomach to twist in knots. Maddy? She was fine. At least she didn't seem to show any concerns and was her normal self. Finally, when it was time it was quite a nice experience. All four of us were in the room and able to cheer her on. She came through like a champ. Actually, the piercing was WAY easier than pulling her teeth! No tears at all.

As you can see, we didn't go to Claire's or a beauty salon. We opted instead to go to a tattoo/body piercing place on Granville St. I wanted to add this in because in my research, it was really hard to find anywhere else besides places like Claires/beauty salons and there certainly weren't any reviews of piercings they did on young children at tattoo/piercing salons. Everyone who worked there were super nice and they explained everything to us and what to expect. As you can imagine, nothing shouts "Out Of Place!" like us four Blommesteins in a Tattoo joint, but the people were extremely nice and very knowledgeable. Maddy was pierced by a women named Adrianna and she was awesome.

Chips and Popcorn for dinner

I am definitely more of a savoury lover than sweets. I always talk about how I love popcorn so much, I could eat it for dinner. Well, now we did and threw some chips in there too!

I remember getting an idea once of 'going nuts' and have ice cream for dinner. One time a year, the family would just splurge and get nothing but ice cream for dinner. Got me thinking...but I really don't like ice cream THAT much.

Recently, I've found that the kids (and myself as well) really liked all sorts of veggies, especially if they were roasted. Carrots, brussel sprouts, squash, cauliflower; roast those babies and we love them! We went to a farm market and found all these great veggies and they had the best looking kale. I've never really been able to make kale chips properly, but came across this site. It lists really great tips and I've made the chips about 3 times now and they always turned out delicious. The popcorn was thrown in because well, like I said, I love popcorn and don't feel so guilty about serving popcorn with dinner if they're eating a plate full of veggies too.

So I'm happy to say that perhaps we may have a new 'night' and it does include popcorn for dinner!

Catching up the last bit

Phew, I'm almost done catching the blog for the rest of Fall. Here are just some pictures with captions. Too many bits and pieces for me to properly write a post for each one.

 The DIDO group has dinner at The Rocky Mountain Flatbread Co. The kids were

able to make their pizza. It's amazing the stuff he'll put on his pizza just because he likes to cook. 

Spinach? Red onions? Really? 

 This was Maddy's enrollment ceremony for officially becoming a Brownie. It was a cute ceremony.

 We had a fun afternoon  completing some new art for the living room.

 Maddy's choir had a performance at the GoGo Grannies charity event.

 Ethan begging for money asking for donations at the Scouts Apple Day fundraiser.

Ethan's Beavers group went on a field trip to see the Skytrain system. Scouts has been great for boosting his confidence.

He loves going each week and often chooses for us to not stay with him for field trips. (Chinese school...not so much, but baby steps right?)

 

Halloween 2014

This Halloween will go down as 'The One Mama Didn't Do a Thing For". I usually LOVE Halloween. Not that I wasn't looking forward to it, but I just didn't have much desire to search Pinterest and do something cool. (Ahem....I may or may not have been busy reading in the evenings rather than on the computer) Anyway, last year I spent all this time prior to Halloween working on our Sushi Family costume. Unfortunately, we were super sick last year and didn't get to really enjoy them, so it worked out that I didn't have to do anything to pull our costumes together. Here are a few pictures from our night. I have to say that it was a pretty relaxing Halloween. I could get used to this "use a random costume from before" thing. Ooops, was that out loud?

 

Mushroom Madness

A couple of weeks ago we went for a walk in the afternoon. It was the first sunny day following a big dump of rain so the playground was too wet to play. We ended up finding so many different types of mushrooms. Enjoy the pictures!

Maddy-7 years old

So I know that Maddy's birthday has LONG since passed and this 7 year old update is over a month overdue. I have no excuse, except that I've been HOOKED reading a series of books. Since her birthday I've read the first 4 of the series and finally decided that I should take a break from the Outlander series and read something else. So I figure before it becomes appropriate to write a 8 year old blog instead, I'd better get caught up.

Maddy's favourite thing to do is to read. I can barely keep up with trips to the library and she takes out about  8-10 chapter books each time. I secretly love the afternoons when we have fresh library books because the house is so quiet. I was relieved to find out from the eye doctor today that she is still good for 'no glasses'. Another favourite past time is Rainbow Looming. She got one for her birthday and she has really gotten into it. The nice thing about the looming is that finishing a project doesn't need to take very long. With the knitting and yarn looming, Maddy was very interested in starting, but since they take so long to actually finish a project, she loses interest. The Rainbow Loom has tons of videos on YouTube that she likes to follow. This year, for her Girl Guides' fundraiser, she made Christmas Rainbow Loom bracelets as her contribution to sell.

One big milestone that has started for Maddy is that her baby teeth have begun to come out. You know we hear stories of kids' teeth falling out  as they eat and they hardly notice, or they just wiggle a bit and them come right out. NOT.OUR.EXPERIENCE. Each tooth has been work. Hard work. Finally her top two front teeth are out after two nights of work. Hard. Work. At one point, through tears and that hiccupy crying, she said, "I just want it out and be done with it!" Josh said he had flashbacks to labour. Hmph! I beg to differ, but that's a different story.

Maddy's extra curricular activities are the same as last year. It was quite fun to see her move up to Brownies and to see that many of the same girls from her Sparks group have moved up too. They are a lovely group and I'm so happy that she has that connection with the girls. In her choir group, she is now one of the older kids (Her group is grades K-2) and it's fun to see her take some of the younger girls under her wing. Maddy is very social and makes new friends very easily. I don't know where she gets this from, but I hope that it will always be so for her.

Most recently, Maddy has really been pushing for more independence in various areas. She has started to make her own breakfast since the day she made breakfast in bed for Josh, Ethan and myself. She's not allowed to use the toaster or stove top yet, so mostly she microwaves a piece of bread and spreads butter, jam or peanut butter. She's also voiced the desire to do her own hair in the mornings. It's resulted in many bumpy ponytails, but she is super proud of doing this herself, so bumpy ponytails it is! Lastly, she asked to take over brushing her own teeth. We've compromised and given her the task of morning brushing and washing her face. Ahhh, it's so bittersweet to have her take over these tasks. She's definitely growing up.

Thanksgiving

Thank you to Joanne for hosting Thanksgiving lunch on Monday. After a busy weekend with the birthday party and visiting family in town, it was a perfect way to end the long weekend. The kids had a great time Rainbow Looming and we all enjoyed a yummy meal. So much to be thankful for this weekend!

Cousin Time

With the somewhat dry weather on Sunday and Auntie Kim, Uncle Pascal and Kaes being in town for the weekend, we decided to go to Terra Nova Park. Turns out it was a great place to get some shots of the kids. Gotta love cousin time!

Maddy's Birthday

We celebrated Maddy's 7th birthday with a 'friends' party at GardenWorks this year. I call it a 'friends party' because every other year we opt for a 'family only' party. Maddy was excited to send out invitations and very carefully chose who her 7 guests would be. GardenWorks has a variety of activities to choose from and Maddy wanted to do the Fairy Gardens workshop.  She was a very happy girl and had an awesome time. Happy Birthday Maddy, we love you so much! xoxo

Fall Fun

Gotta love this Fall weather. It's funny because I never thought that I liked the Fall. I think it's because I always associated it with the 'going back to school/work' thing for me. September and October at work were always such busy times of year, and then after the kids were born, with both their birthdays falling in there as well, it became madness. This year, I think I've been able to stop and enjoy the cooler, yet not too cool weather and I love it!

Last week the weather was funny, but on the days it wasn't raining we took full advantage. The first time we went to the new Terra Nova Park in Richmond, it was packed. There were 15 min. line ups just to get to climb up the giant structure. We didn't even attempt to line up for the zip line. We left after a short play with the promise that we'd go back when all the kids were in school. Anytime the sun peaked out, the kids would ask if we could go, so we finally did on Wednesday. With the exception of a few preschoolers, the playground was pretty much ours. Fun times!! The best was that the kids could get on the zip line on their own AND pull each other, so I didn't have to run back and forth the whole time. :) Awesome.

On Thursday the weather was STILL nice, so I told the kids that if we were really good with the school work, we could go out to the basketball courts before the big kids got back from school and Ethan could try to ride the two wheeler. So excited to report that he pretty much figured out how to ride the bike in about 20 minutes. The run bikes to start are just awesome. It really is about figuring out how the balance works and once they have that, the pedaling part is not too hard. The funny thing about Ethan is that once he learned how to ride the two wheeler, I watched him and something just seemed 'off'. After a short while it dawned on me that he looked like a grown-up clown trying to ride a teeny-weeny bike. We switched to Maddy's bike and it was much better. Haha, I still get a chuckle when I see the first picture. Yay! We are now into new territory. Next summer? Biking excursions, yahoo! Oh, the places we could go!

 Here's the mini bike the poor kid tried to ride until mom finally clued in.

 Kisses from Jeh Jeh for the bike rider!

So much better, except now we need another bike.

Ethan-5 years old

 It's quite fun to sit down and write these yearly updates. It's always a good confirmation for me personally as to why I take the time to write this blog. I do it because I know that one day I'll forget these snippets and details about the kids and today was no different. I always go back to the last update before I start the new one. Again, I was hit with how much has changed in the last year and also how many of the 'little details' I'd already forgotten.

As I read the beginning of Ethan's post from last year , I feel as though I could copy and paste the first paragraph from his 4 year old update except that he's even more confident. This year Ethan has started two new adventures on his own. He's joined a Beaver Scouts group and started a cooking class at Killarney CC. He totally rocked them both! No tears, no anxiety and even excitement about going. After the first night of Beavers, we were informed that the following Sunday was a canoeing day. He went and stayed for 4 hours completely on his own! It's so great to see his confidence in this area grow. The first two weeks of Chinese school went off without a hitch. He's in a new level and he transitioned well. The third week felt like we were going backwards a bit because there were tears again, but as with most things for Ethan, it all boils down to his confidence. I think the lessons are getting a bit harder and he had some anxiety about not being able to 'do it properly'.

Last year the term Ethan kept using was 'achilly' and this year it seems his new catch-phrase is 'I believe'. He'll often start his sentences off with it, something like, "Mama, I believe today gon' be sunny, so dat why I wear my shorts." Another phrase that he uses a lot is "Oh m'gosh..." I just love the way he says this one because it really does capture the innocence and surprise at whatever he's referring to. One speech pattern that he's lost is that last year he would have said, "So dat why I wear me shorts." Ugh, just tiny details, but definitely signs that time is passing faster than I'd like.

Ethan LOVES to play games. We have a game called Gobblet Gobblers, which is basically like Tic Tac Toe with a twist and he's quite the expert. He also started playing chess at the park this summer and for his birthday he got a chess set. I have to admit that I have no clue how to play chess and that I may or may not be a little intimidated of the idea of playing with him. I really should bite the bullet and just learn now while they are both still 'learning' too! (Update: I did play once with him. It was pretty fun!) Checkers is one that we both really like and also we've graduated from Uno Moo (Thank goodness!) to regular Uno. The biggest growth with Ethan in the playing games area is that he is much better at fair play and at losing now. Now when I play with him, he can even take a little banter back and forth about how I'm going to win and he'll just laugh it off when I do win. It's definitely a lot of fun to play games with him now.

Another love that developed in the last year is Lego. He's really good at the Lego City sets and can sit with the booklet and build it on his own. He loves to build and rebuild sets over and over again. The Lego building has really helped to lengthen his attention span. I don't know that it's because of the Lego, but I have definitely noticed that he concentration and attention to detail has improved from last year. With Ethan, the is biggest hurdle is just to get the confidence to do something. Once he has that, he will definitely take the activity and just fly with it.

I'll end this 5 year post with a memory that I'd like to keep. Last night I needed to run an errand and pick something up at the mall. I asked if Ethan would like to join me because then we could shop for a gift that he could get for Maddy's birthday. He was happy to go. We started calling it a "Mama and Ethan date". So while on our date I thought I'd take the opportunity to introduce to him some date etiquette.

1.) Be sure to open the doors for your date. So cute to see him struggle and push with all his might on those heavy doors. But, he did it.
2.) Always let your date go first. So this was funny because he forgot and jumped right onto the escalator first. We laugh as I stood at the bottom waiting for him to clue in. Then on the next opportunity, he proceeded to push me onto the escalator to let me go first. I told him that he could say something like, "Ladies first" or "After you..." to let the person know instead of pushing them on.
3.) It's nice to treat your date to a little something to eat. Since he doesn't have any money, I treated him. We were at Sweet Factory running our errand so I thought I'd let him choose 1 candy to add to the bag. How bad could that be right? It's just one candy. Well, obviously I didn't scan the selection widely enough as Ethan found a froggy gummie as his 1 candy. (It was the size of his hand. No. Joke.)

Anyway, today we were at the mall (Yes, again, but we were waiting for Maddy to get out of choir). It was time to go and we were at the top of the escalator and I hear a little, "After yooouuuu!" I look down at Ethan and I see him standing there with the happiest, cutest smile on his face. Ahhhhhh, my sweet, sweet little boy. xoxo

Ethan's Birthday

Our little guy is five years old! I'll be back with an "Ethan at 5 years" update, but just a quick post about his party. This year we celebrated with a small party at home. We had Mike's Critters come to the party because Ethan really enjoyed seeing him at his preschool this Spring. He was so excited about being the one who gets to choose ALL the animals, and was most excited about the tarantula coming.

Happy birthday my dear sweet little boy. We love you so much, we love you all the time, we love you Ethan!!!

Camping: Lake Wenatchee

This was our second trip to Lake Wenatchee State Park. We went with the same friends as last year (plus the LeWongs) and had a great time. This year was even better! Our two campsites were side by side and that made it much easier to hang out together. We also found that the beach was much more enjoyable this year. My memories of last year was that it was a very windy/rocky beach. I suppose we just hit it on a bad weekend last year. This year it was quite the opposite. The beach was rocky, but it you wade further in, it turned into soft packed sand. The beach also had boat rentals. Everything from kayaks, to canoes, to pedal boats and even paddle boards. We got to try the paddle board and it was a lot of fun. I definitely want to try it again for a longer time. :)

Like last year, there was campfire ban. I supposed most places you camp in August would have the fire ban. Luckily for us, the Van Dops brought their propane campfire. While all the other sites packed into their tents early in the night, we were warm and toasty around the fire. The following night, it started to rain, but again the Van Dops pulled through with a large tent that was big enough to protect all 16 chairs! Then the NEXT night it was rather windy. Would you believe that tent even had a side wall to block the wind? Well it did! We were quite the 'glamping' site and it was awesome! (Thank you Van Dops!!)

We took another day to head into Leavenworth and visit our usual taco place and taffy shop. The kids were looking forward to this all summer and they had fun picking from all the flavours. It's pretty funny because Maddy is good at savouring yummy foods, while Ethan just devours the goodness. Ethan has learned that it sucks to eat all his treat super fast and then have to watch his sister eat her slowly later on. He tried super hard to keep the same pace as Maddy. He'd only eat a candy if Maddy said that she'd eat one of hers, but even in the eating of said candy, he'd still gobble it up quickly and then have to watch as she nibbled the same one. Pretty funny!

The kids had a blast playing with each other and there were so many of them! On the drive there, Maddy and Ethan were begging to get to help wash the dishes. (Sounds odd, but they like washing the dishes while we camp) In reality though, since there were so many kids to play with, I don't think they washed a single dish all four days!

Unfortunately, both Josh and I didn't take very many photos this year. So this was all I could find. It was a super fun weekend. Thanks to the Van Dops, Lowricos, LeWongs, Vangie and Skye for another great trip!

 This is Ethan even before the sugar high.

 The usual 'Camping Kids" photo.

Behind the scenes of taking the 'Camping Kids' photo.

Family Picture

With all the families living in different parts of the country/world, it's been really hard to get a family picture with all 18 of us in it. Back in 2010 we took this photo while on a trip to Whidbey Island.

 It had been a while since we all got together due to a baby boom. Let's be honest, we were all so busy with new babies here and there, we just couldn't get it together to all be in the same place at the same time. Anyway we finally did it in 2010, but Philip couldn't coordinate his holidays with this trip and Reagan, well she wasn't even born yet.

The next time the family was all together was last year. Summer of 2013. The Toronto clan (Calvin's crew) was increased by 1 and were able to make the trip to Vancouver. Yes it was a photo in front of the garage door, but with that many people (read: 'kids to appease') you take what you can get.

Poor Philip. Again his holiday times didn't coordinate with the time that the rest of the gang was in town. We joked about having to Photoshop him in. See that spot beside Joanne? That was the plan. Well, that was the joke anyways.

2014! That is to be the year that my mom FINALLY gets her picture! All 18 of us in one shot. Yes, we are still standing in front of the garage, but when you hear how this photo actually came about, you'll care less about the garage door.

This year Philip was in town for 3 weeks. He was here, but the Toronto crew and the Prince George crew were not. Philip was scheduled to leave for Hong Kong on the Friday at 3pm. The PG gang got into town late Thursday night. The Toronto crew were arriving at YVR around 12:30pm. We had high hopes that we could pick up the Toronto crew from the airport, whip them home to snap a picture before Philip had to leave FOR the airport to catch his international flight. It was not to be.

Then how did we get this picture?...Photoshop, HA! But it does have all 18 of us and we'll take it!

The Summer in Pictures

 Lots of playdates with friends a different parks.

 Countless hours at our own Wesburn Park.

 Can you guess what everyone is so excited about? Hint: It plays annoying music.

 Lots of ice cream. And then even more ice cream.

 Awesome family time. With my family it usually revolves around food. 

 This is a shot of the kids outside the same Chinese restaurant. They are working off the big meal.

 A visit to the Salmon Hatchery in North Vancouver. 

 Hiking on Seymour

 This year they are repainting the mural at Wesburn Park. The kids got to help and put their 'mark' on the building.

Thanks to Groupon we tried pedal boats on Deer Lake.