Category: Katrine

Advent Begins

Yesterday marked the beginning of the count down to Christmas — Advent.  We had to light the candle in our advent wreath at breakfast because we were not going to be home for dinner.  Sitting at the table looking at the wreath it is obvious that we will need to upgrade next year.  The artificial greenery simply didn’t bounce back as in years past.  Never the less, the girls liked it.  Katrine declared it pretty while Elspeth tried to blow it out like a candle on a birthday cake.

Why weren’t we home at dinner?  Well we were busy crafting at our church for their annual advent craft night.  Basically, you get to take your kids and have them do a bunch of fully prepared Christmas crafts.  Then enjoy a potluck dinner with friends before a brief kid targeted service.  The crafts as usually were fabulous but I think that my favourite part this year was the service.  It consisted of two prayers, three carols, movement and a lit candle (which Elspeth again blew out but that said, at least she didn’t manage to burn anything).  It was the perfect mixture to hold the kids attention and it ended before they got stir crazy.

We took a roundabout route to get home so that we could soak in some of the local lights.  It is much more fun this year as Elspeth is finally tall enough to see out her window instead of simply getting mad that Katrine could see something which was hidden from her view.

I think that this was the funniest craft of the evening.  At this table the kids were suppose to make cards for shut-in seniors.  Well when there is gold paint and glitter on a table, Elspeth is your girl.  I love the upside down Noel and gloopy holly.  Unfortunately I did not get a photo once she had attacked it with the various shades of glitter glue but it was certainly a unique Christmas card.  I did tell the lady running the table that she might want to put a rider on the card stating that it had been made by a three year old.

The penguin twins

In August 2007 a movie about surfing penguins came out.  At the same time, Katrine was enamored with Pablo the penguin from the Backyardigans television show; particularly the episode where he surfs.  So, we took her to see the movie.  Glenn, being the kind of dad that he is, decided to make something special for Katrine’s Halloween costume.  His plan?  I was to create a simple penguin costume using craft foam, a black sweatshirt and some iron on bonding tape while he created a surf board.  As you can see, not only was she adorable but also loved it.

Fast forward five years and we have another three year old in the house (just much smaller).  Said daughter already loves penguins (not so much the surfing).  She has a penguin blanket for her bed, had me build her a shoebox house for a pair of stuffed penguins and has a penguin puppet who she named Meme (it was actually the first stuffed animal that she named).  Last week Elspeth discovered the penguin costume in our dress up box and fell in love.  The day she found it she wore it around the house, to Katrine’s school and the whole time that we were playing around in the arena while Katrine skated.  Of course, her penguin family accompanied her the whole time.

Waubaushene Santa Claus Parade (aka the parade Grandpa missed)

Okay, it is Grey Cup weekend.  What is the wife of a man with Grey Cup tickets to do on Grey Cup weekend?  Drive up north for a Santa Claus parade of course!

The girls and I set off to my parents house right after Elspeth’s swimming class on Saturday morning.  We stopped in Brechin and the Orillia for short but wonderful playdates with a group 204/5 and a group 268 China sisters.  Seeing my girls reconnect with family is always a nice experience.  The fact that I too get a chance to chat with other moms is the cherry on the cake.

We ended up at my parents in time for dinner to hear that my dad is simply too ill to ride on his intended float.  The girls were disappointed they wouldn’t get to see him on the float but more concerned about his health.(He is getting better but still looks and sounds horrible.) After a short drive to admire the various neighbourhood lights and a bath it was off to bed.

 

The highlight of today was the parade itself which was made even more special by the presence of fresh snow on the ground.  Snow which begged to be played in and thrown.  Katrine actually managed to make a pretty good snowball which hit me soundly in the side of the head – guess all of the catch we played this past summer did some good.  Her aim is improving.  Elspeth showed none of her reluctance from the start of winter last year.  Nope, much more curious this go round.  Will have to discuss with her the importance of not eating snow off of ones boot.  Apparently it is “yum, yum, good.”

Okay, we saw the floats at the top of the hill and knew that it was show time.  Bundled the girls into their chairs and they were happy as pie – even more happy once the candy canes began to arrive.

Now as I mentioned earlier, my dad was suppose to be riding on a float but had to bow out at the last minute due to health.  He did however do a lot of work to help create said float and I think that they did a great job.  It was one of the best in the parade (I may be a bit biased being a daddy’s girl and all).

He is a member of the Loyal Order of the Pumpkin which is a fancy sounding name for a group of fun loving people who get together to celebrate pumpkins.  In the spring they have a party and pass out seeds.(The pumpkin which we grew and subsequently carved at Halloween came from this year’s batch of seeds.)  The various order members plant and tend the seeds hoping to grow the biggest pumpkin.  While waiting for said seeds to grow they participate in the area Canada Day parade.  Then come October, the pumpkins are harvested and the biggest wins a prize.  The celebrations are completed with the order’s participation in the local Santa Claus parade.  Such a simple way to have tons of fun.  The order created a brand new float this year honouring the cartoon classic – Charlie Brown’s Christmas.

 

The little wagon at the very back was the girls’ favourite part.  I think it was pretty ingenious myself.

Shortly after we saw the big guy arrive.

They we went just down the street to the local fire hall where the festivities continued (we don’t have anything like this round where we live but it was lovely to see the community coming together).  There was hot chocolate and timbits for the kids.  Balloon animals and face painting.  There was also the big man himself sitting in the corner ready to listen to the holiday wishes of all the waiting children.  Katrine was raring to go whereas Elspeth is still not sure of the whole Santa-as-a-real-guy thing.  I would suggest that you enjoy the group photo with Santa as it may be the only time that I can get Elspeth near him all season.

I must add that an old family friend played Santa and did an exceptional job.  When Elspeth was too busy clinging to me to say what she wanted, he thought to ask her big sister for help.  Katrine left him with a huge smile on her face  feeling extra important…and that was before she learned that this Santa gave out real gifts!!!  As you can see from Katrine’s face she was thrilled.  Elspeth refused to look at the camera, being super tired by this point, so you will have to be satisfied with this side view.

 

Christmas arrives!!

I absolutely love Santa Claus parade weekend.  To me it spells the start of Christmas as it provides the perfect excuse to begin setting up the tree and all of my decorations.  I love how festive the house feels once everything is in place.  Makes me smile thinking about what memories we will build with family and friends over the next few weeks.  Plus to be perfectly honest it also marks the lead up to my birthday and you know how I love my birthday.

Here are the girls Christmas letters.  My favourite part of Katrine’s is where she tells Santa that it is okay if he only brings her 3 or 4 things (way to compromise).  Now our eldest is smart.  She has it all figured out.  Apparently she plans on visiting a number of different Santas over the next few weeks and only aksing for one thing from her list.  That way she will not seem greedy but will still get to ask for everything.  Gotta love her plan.  Wonder how it will work out for her?  Elspeth’s list is simple.  Candy for her Om Nom.  I can almost guarantee that wish will come true seeing as how in all of my living recollection I have never received a stocking totally devoid of candy.  Unfortunately, Elspeth is still only in love with the concept of Santa so I will have to work hard to get my coveted photo of the girls.

I also managed to get matching dresses for them.  Of course, once the mandatory Christmas card photo was done, Elspeth had to put back on her fairy princess wings. 🙂

PS My thumb is much better.  It still hurts like crazy when I hit or bump it (which being me is far too often) but at least it is no longer throbbing!

So proud

Here she was at her first competition:

This past weekend:

Katrine made us super proud this past weekend.  As you can see she brought home a fourth place ribbon; not bad for a kiddo who only started back working on jumps five days before the competition.  She was simply thrilled to be able to skate and to have skated clean.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that she continues to heal from the concussion and will be able to skate full force come January.

Halloween

Wow, am I ever behind.  Okay Halloween.  Lets see…we will start with the pumpkins.  Both girls had fun working on the pumpkins.  I think that it helped that our pumpkins’ guts were more solid than stringy so the girls were willing to touch them.  We grew the pumpkins large enough this year that we did not have to buy pumpkins but were able to use our homegrown ones instead.  After cutting it open we actually scooped out large chunks of flesh with these giant seeds imbedded in it.  The seeds were so nice and plump and large that we rinsed, salted and roasted them.  Man are they good.  Seeing as how we had two, each girl got to design and carve their own pumpkin which made it much more enjoyable for Glenn and I (no bickering).

The night before Halloween Elspeth had her skating lesson and they were allowed to come in costume.  She was so excited to have yet another excuse to wear her EB sheep costume.  Halloween morning saw her baking up a storm with my mom at a local cooking class.  They made spider buns and black cat(chocolate) cookie pops which were half the size of her head.  After nap, she was off to her nursery school for their Halloween party which she enjoyed until an older boy came in with a mask and she hid, quaking, under a table.  This week she is still nervous to go back to nursery in case he walks through the door again.  I am looking at the positive.  She will likely never be a fan of scary movies.  Yippee!

Katrine missed out on a lot of the Halloween activities in her school due to concussion related issues; which seem to have resolved themselves (thank goodness).  She spent a large chunk of Halloween afternoon at home with her grandparents and I playing board games infront of the fire. I think that basking in a sea of undivided attention helped to take the sting out of missing out.

After a quick dinner, my mom, Glenn and I took them out in the drizzle trick or treating.  The girls had fun and came home with too much candy which is slowly being eaten.

 

Getting caught up

1. Concussion:  Well, Katrine is better…mostly.  She is back at school full time and skated again for the first time last night, just some stroking but something.  She was mortified because doctor’s orders were for her to wear her helmet this week to make sure that she didn’t rehurt herself.  If that was not bad enough, she had to borrow her sister’s helmet AND as I was putting it on, Patrick Chan (her hero) walked by.  Poor thing.

Thank goodness that she is able to get up and get moving again.  It is really hard trying to get that girl to sit still without TV or computer to distract her.  The first thing she told her teacher upon going back to school was that I had spent the week saying “Stop jumping.”, “Don’t run around.”, “Put that book down.”  Sigh.  The photos below show how I tried to make the time less trying for all of us.  The best was the mani pedi.  Two hours of having to sit still.  Well worth the money.

We are keeping our fingers crossed that the last few things resolve themselves and she can be ready for her first skating competition in four weeks (she will be crushed if she isn’t).

2. Elspeth skating:  Okay, that girl loves her skating.  She is doing really well but the smile on her face when she puts her skates on and her reluctance to get off the ice makes me happy.

3. Halloween:  We decided to get out this past Sunday for some pre-Halloween fun at the zoo.  We took our black  cat and our E.B. sheep as well as a friend and his kids along with us.  The kids had a blast trick or treating (not for candy!!!) through the tundra section but the highlight was definetely watching Hudson swim in the water.  They were able to get right up to the glass with him diving and paddling infront of them.

I hurt my back lifting Elspeth up to see the gorrillas at play but it seems to be getting better gradually.  Katrine enjoyed going in to the Critter Cave to look at all of the bugs; particularly the giant snails.  Elspeth on the other hand absolutely refused to set foot inside – not a big fan of bugs. 😎

We ended up doing a costume parade where each of the kids got a giant panda flag which was the highlight of the event for Elspeth.  Overall great family fun.

And for her sister’s birthday, she got….

…a concussion.  Yep, our Katrine got a concussion on Thrusday afternoon just in time for her sister’s birthday.  Here is the irony.  We always thought if she got a concussion it would be the result of something happening while skating.  I mean, that is where she spends waaaaaay to much time.  Nope!  Katrine was injured at school.  Nope, not in gym or while at the park.  She was standing in line and tripped over another’s feet before preceeding to smash her head into the ground.

She is off training for seven days of which the only up side is that I do not need to drag Elspeth over to the school in time for the bell.  Instead, she can nap for an extra half hour before we meet the bus.  I know that Katrine will be bored by Monday.

How is she doing?  Well, if you didn’t really know her you would just see an obnoxious child.  She is still dizzy and doesn’t have much appetitie.  Which translates into many snacks and a child who looks fine until you see that she is functioning by sheer will power.  Not sure how school will go as we are taking it one day at a time.  What I do know, is that it should help make the party more entertaining.

 

Happy Autumn Moon

Happy Moon Festival to everyone!

We started our celebrations off with dimsum with Tim and Heather.  The actually had congee (rice porridge) so I got to eat too.  Then last night we were invited to a wonderful party in honour of the Moon Festival.  It was great to mean all of the new people and the girls had a blast making lanterns and eating “moon cookies” (I was thrilled to see that we are not the only family who has created a non-traditional dessert in honour of this occassion).  Then the girls got to join the rest of the kids in a lantern parade through the neighbourhood which was a nice change as they are use to parading alone in front of our house.

 

Today we stayed close to home with the exception of church and Elspeth’s kungfu class.  Dinner was chinese food of course and along with the traditional moon cakes we had “moon cupcakes” (which are much tastier if you ask me.  Maybe one year I will get a traditional moon cake mold and play around at making a gluten free version that actually looks like the traditional variety).  We had bought Katrine’s favourite variety of moon cake; the ones that she had at least half of at every breakfast in China last year only to be told by her that she couldn’t eat her favourite part as it was not fresh enough – darn shipping.  Then it was off outisde to use our muscial lanterns before it rained and look at the setting sun….sorry, I mean moon, and talk about the people in China who love us and who we love.  Of course the outside time was not long enough so the girls brought their lanterns inside and danced around for another half hour with the annoying, no I mean joyful, music playing non-stop.  Not sure that the musical lanterns were the best choice we ever made.  At least the girls enjoy them.

 

A 10th Birthday and a Fall Fair

Every year we go to my brother’s for the weekend to celebrate my nephews birthday.  For the last few years (with the exception of last year where Elspeth was not really ready to do crowds) we have helped him celebrate at the local fall fair by checking out the displays, the baking (my sister in law and neice both won prizes this year!!!!), the rides, parade and demolition derby.  This year we added lawn tractor racing to the itinerary.  Aside from being FREEZING we had a wonderful time as a family.

Displays that stuck out to me:

This hula pumpkin may not have won the ribbon but I thought that it was adorable.
One of the children's categories was to make an ear of corn. Can you believe that some child was patient enough to string together this ear of corn entirely out of beads?

Cuteness:

As you can tell from the last photo, it was really quite chilly as we were taking in the entertainment:

Both Elspeth and Katrine really enjoyed these races.

 

The demolition derby was more my speed but a little confusing for Elspeth while Katrine once again spent the entire time worrying about the drivers. (Glad she missed the car which threatened to go up in flames while she was at the bathroom with Grandma).