Category: Katrine

Down on the farm

Decided that today was the perfect day an outing to the farm. It was awesome!

We started out at the upick section in the midst of a strawberry patch.  I was expecting to be nagging the girls to pick and not eat the berries but that was not the case.  Instead, each of the girls was totally in to picking.  Katrine actually filled one of our baskets all by herself.  She walked up and down the rows searching for “the biggest, juicest berries for my lunches”.  Elspeth tried to pick a few of the berries.  They were big but most were more of a white colour than red so she got put on hide and seek duty.  “Okay sweetie can you find the big, red berry?  It has to be hiding in this plant.”  Who knew that her new found interest in hide and seek could come in handy in the middle of a field?  We have a few small berry plants in our garden and the berries are small but pretty darn sweet.  However, they are sour in comparison to how sweet and juicy the ones we picked this morning are.  Delicious.

The farm that we were at had a stay and play section as well so once we had our fill of berry picking we headed there.  What a play yard!  They had this bounce pillow.  I had never seen one before today but it was awesome. (It alone might warrant the drive back to Mount Albert sometime this summer)  It is like a roof less and side less bouncy castle whose base is buried in the ground.  You scamper up and then jump.  It was funny being able to climb on and jump right along with the girls.  Katrine got some serious air while Elspeth was happy to hold my hand and run from one end to the other until someone bounced her off her feet.

Then there were the animals to visit and haystacks to jump from.  Crazy horse swings that moved in every direction.  I know because I literally spun Katrine around in a circle.  😀   We also had to visit the playhouse, slides and spray zone before taking a ride on their train (actually a converted tractor).  The ride started out well enough but I thought that it was only going to be a quick spin but it turned out to be an actual tour of their farm.  Sounds interesting right?  Not when you can feel your youngest begin to break down halfway through the ride.  As we got off the train, I carried the screaming kicking toddler directly to the cool farm market for a slushy.  Between the slushy, some fries and a sing-song show of animatronic chickens a la Muppets, peace was restored to her world.  Elspeth’s ability to over heat is pretty amazing considering the daily temperatures that we encountered in Jiangxi last summer.  She must take after me. 😆

We capped the day off by heading to our local splashpad to cool off.  Katrine ran right in and was happily soaked in seconds.  Elspeth is still puzzling the attraction of jets shooting water into the air while buckets dump it on the ground.  I did manage to talk her into splashing in a puddle for about 5 minutes before she, miss “the water in my bath, while only tepid, is tooooo hot! Please add more cold.”, declared it cold.  What a girl.  She also refused a cooling wrap (that is the thing that looks like a balloon wrapped around my head – heavenly).  She did seem to appreciate my huge hat whether it was because of the shade it offered or the fact that she could hide underneath it I don’t know. Fun.

 

Katrine’s Fun Fair

 

Do anyone of you remember school fun fairs from your public school days?  I remember running up and down the halls of the school while my parents helped to set up various activities in the gym for the next day.  Bean bag toss, ring toss, haunted house.  That kind of thing.

Each year, Katrine’s school has a Fun Fair for the kids in May.  Have I mentioned that I love the Parent Council at her school?  They rock.  Their fun fair was a bit more high tech than that of my youth.  Instead of the simple games there were jumping castles, hockey games and a DJ dance party.  There was however still the piles of junk food which the girls consumed in large quantities – popcorn, bake sale, cotton candy….MMMMMM!  The fact that it was a perfect day, being neither too hot nor too cold while still being cheerfully sunny, made it all the more fun.  Both girls fell asleep very quickly tonight inspite of all of the sugar.

Katrine’s favourite part was socializing with all of her friends and the giant dance party.

Elspeth however, loved the visiting fire truck the most which is not surprising as she has currently been putting on the dress up firehat and carting around her Fis*er Price firetruck.  She also eventually got in to the dancing.  Looks like she is break dancing doesn’t she?

Oh, our garden?  Started to grow!! Very excited.

 

Long Weekend

And what a long weekend it was!

We had a wonderful time at Katrine’s China family reunion and then finished it off by working on the garden.  Throw in the great weather and who could ask for more….well, maybe a working bbq (but that is another post).

I love reunion weekend almost as much as Katrine.  She says that it is one of her favourite holidays.  Who can blame her?  A weekend with your China sisters and brothers (we missed a few this year. 😥   ) Throw in candy, games, a ton of swimming, giggles, teasing and even loot bags and what kid wouldn’t like it.  For us adults it is about reconnecting and seeing how everyone is doing.  These are some amazing kids I have to tell you.  Even Elspeth had a great time.  She tried hard to keep up with the big kids (who were really good with her) and was quite the ham around the adults.  Can’t wait for our next reunion with Elspeth’s China family in July!

Our garden is looking good.  Glenn and I have been talking about digging in a border for years and this year he did it.  It looks great and might even help to keep the grass at bay.  This year we are growing, well trying to, sunflowers (hoping to dry the seeds this year…unlike last year), pumpkins, white patipan squash, banana potatoes, shallots, beets, radishes, cucumbers and two types of heirloom tomatoes (too bad that I am still reacting to tomatoes or else I could make a killer salsa).  Katrine also brought home a strawberry plant last year and then we bought a few more.  They all survived the winter and a few even have some berries starting to grow.

As you know, Katrine is a big fan of gardening.  She enjoys it so much that she was thrilled when the Easter bunny brought her gardening gloves to replace her Dora pair.  This was Elspeth’s first experience in gardening.  She seemed pretty interested and helped to throw the seed potatoes into the holes, dig random holes and then move all of our row markers about.  And she did it all with a smile.  Next spring will certainly be easier when it comes to planting but nothing beats that first time spent introducing her to a new experience.

Let me finish with a request that anyone with suggestions on how to dry sunflower seeds or grow large pumpkins post them.  Those are two things that Katrine is hoping will happen with our garden this year are both are currently beyond our area of expertise.

We also have ducklings at the marsh near our house!

 

Dance exams a success!

Katrine did what might be her last set of Highland Dance exams on Friday.  She managed to pass both her Nationals and Highland exams with the highest possible award.  Very proud of her.  Now if she can apply the same amount of focus to practicing for her competitions this summer it should be interesting.

A Mother’s Day Christening

When we were in Nanchang, one of the things that we did was arranged to have articles of clothing sewn specifically for the christening.  Katrine got to chose the material for each item with the one stipulation that it all had to be red (the colour of celebration and good luck).  She did a bang up job and we ended up looking quite smashing for the christening.  So eye catching that a little girl in the pew infront of us turned around, eyed us all and ernestly asked “Are you Chinese?” Hmmmm, well let’s see two of us are blonde.  Hmmm, she must be thinking that we had to be Chinese to wear those clothes.  She is about 7, how to answer, how to answer. Katrine pipes up, “Only me and my sister are.” Little girl nods as if that has cleared the matter up and then turns back around.  Almost as funny as the time that my mom and I picked Katrine up at Chinese class and the kids looked at the pair of us in confusion before turning to her and asking if her grandmother spoke Chinese.  “Nope, just Scottish.”  Isn’t it interesting how they try to make sense of their world?

Anyways, back to the christening.  We usually sit upstairs at our church where there are less people but yesterday that was out and we sat right up at the front.  Man did Elspeth’s eyes get big like saucers when she looked over her shoulder at the rows of people.  You could tell that she was already getting a bit stressed.

When we met with the minister in April, we had warned her that Elspeth doesn’t really like getting water put on her head and she should be prepared for some noise.  Well, up we go to the front with Karen, Glenn’s sister aka Godmother, and Scott, my brother aka Godfather (thanks guys).  Katrine is super excited that she can pour the water into the baptismal font.  We repeat our promises to guide Elspeth in the path of Christ and approach the minister who takes Elspeth and begins the placing the water on her head.  HOWL!!!! TEARS!!!  Okay, return said child to mom as soon as possible.  I think the passion of Elspeth’s howls surprised the minister.  She was really protesting.

Once back in my arms she wimpered and then went into shut down which lasted until we could escape the sanctuary and go into the nursery which is her normal routine.  Poor baby.  At least once she was okay, she was okay.  She was happy to pose for photos once the service was complete. Thrilled to eat the cupcakes made by Auntie Heather (thank you) and open all of her gifts.  It was actually a nice way to spend a Mother’s Day morning….aside from the howling and shut down portions.

Our girls before the service:

The prayer shawl that was given to Elspeth in honour of her christening:

The scrumptious looking cupcakes:

 

Doesn’t Elspeth look even more angelic now?

An outing and the final skate of the season

On Thursday, Katrine had a great opportunity.  She skipped school for the day to attend university.  Well, sort of.  She spent the day at the Take Your Child to Work Day with Glenn.  She had a fabulous time.  First she explored Glenn’s work space (as you can see in the diagram below, he works in quite a small space).  Then she walked around with campus security learning about stranger awareness and sitting in their patrol car .  Next it was off to thespider lab for a workshop on spider communication.  Her big learning was that female Black Widow spiders are larger than males.  Who knew?  After a lunch date with Baba (does it get any better?) it was off to the gym to learn about healthy eating and do some circuit training.  The day ended with her favourite event of the day: a visit to the chemistry lab.  They made ice cream using dry ice and got to eat it!!!!! Someone knew what they were doing when they planned that experiment.

Today was our last skating competition of the season.  This means that we no longer have to listen to the Annie medley. :-)   However, it was also the last time that little miss gets to wear the outfit that I put so many hours into.  😥 I suppose that it will soon be time to get started on the next outfit…maybe something in black and gold so it is super shiny.

Anyways, we were at the Ursula Leming Skate in Scarboro.  It was really well organized and we had a lot of fun.  My parents even drove in because they have not been able to make it to any other competitions.  They got a treat.  Katrine decided to finish the season with a bang.  She skated her tush off and brought home a second.  You can see in the photo how proud of herself she is.

Do we get a break from skating now?  Ha!  Her club lessons run until the end of May and then there is a break for June meaning happy mummy before summer camp begins.  Five weeks this year as opposed to last summer’s two.  I am not happy about the driving but I am looking at it as more time for Elspeth.

Princesses everywhere

We survived.  I mean that.  The evening of the party I was in bed asleep at 7:30 and didn’t get up until 7:00 this morning.  Were they evil princesses?  No, just active and loud.

I think that there were a few party highlights:

-nail salon (we had my super awesome and nail artist niece come to do the girls’ nails and they were super excited)

-touchable bubbles (a friends from skating got them for us from Hong Kong and they could not get enough of blowing, holding and tossing them)

-candy (this set of the squeeling)

All of that aside, fun was had.  Katrine was content and it is over for another year.  Any great ideas for fun and easy parties for a 9 year old?

 

How did Elspeth like the party?  Glenn took her to Big Al*’s fish store.  She supposedly was totally enthralled by all of the fish and walked around with huge eyes.  The people at the store gave her a special treat and let her feed their koi.  She came home and told me “EB fish snack. Fish snack yum!”  Guess that was the high point of her outing with dad.

We have an 8 year old

It is official we have an eight year old.  Took some cookies to the arena today because she is not to old to enjoy sharing her birthday with friends.  Her party is Saturday.  A princessy thing with nail polish, crafts and treasure hunts.  I will post photos after the event.  Fingers crossed that it goes well.  Tonight was a family dinner after skating with cake and gifts.  I think that Katrine was pretty impressed that having a new sister meant an extra gift.  Elspeth though was a bit confused as to why there were only gifts for Katrine (is that a meltdown I see coming on Saturday? ).

Her favourite gifts? Her Angry B*rds t-shirt and super fluffy new pillows.  Yes, she actually asked for new pillows.  You see, Glenn gave me new pillows for my birthday and for the last four months she has been suffering from pillow envy.  Well, no longer.  Tonight she went to sleep with a huge, satisfied sigh.  Love it when gifts are simple, practical and won’t clog up the house.

My favourite part of the day?  The hugs.  Apparently, Katrine still holds firm to the belief that on one’s birthday they must pass on copious amounts of hugs to their mother and who am I to dissuade her.

Didn't Glenn do a great job of decorating the cake? Lots of girly sprinkles made for happy girls.

Thornhill Fun Skate: Day 2

I am so very happy that Katrine got to wear her blue outfit again.  It is just so cute.  Her and her “secret agent” team mate took second for team elements.  It was also much calmer without the side kick.  Two days down, one to go and then we are out of skating competitions and into dance.  Sigh.  At least dance competitions are usually outside.

Thornhill Fun Skate: Day 1

If you have seen Glenn’s status update on facebook you will already know today’s results.  For those of you who haven’t…skip to the photos.  Summary of the day?  Elspeth was exhausted and spent a good deal of time crying.  As a result, Glenn and her will be skipping tomorrow’s event for Father-Daughter bonding without drama.  Katrine was super nervous this morning but calmed down after spending time with her coach (which freed me up to spend time with Glenn, his mom and cranky toddler).  She skated really well.  A few things to work on  before the final competition of the season in two weeks but we are proud of her.  Fingers crossed that tomorrow goes well.

 

She got third!!