We are having such a great time on our vacation. I have tons of pictures to go through and I promise to share some eventually. Here is a rare photo of my son and... ME! Being on the other side of the lens is more fun, but sad to go through my archives and see no decent pictures of me with the kids, etc. Remind me to let Chris take the camera more often..
Here is my boy:
He is wearing the same outfit that both his big sisters wore, at or around the same age. He doesn't like me, currently he likes his father. Fine by me, expect, well, when I have to take care of him all day long, every day. When his Daddy stops by for a visit, he vibrates. When he leaves, he throws a fit. It's fun.
Today was Chris's last day of work before we leave on vacation. We are taking off on Sunday to Calgary, and then on to Vancouver for our annual summer escape. We are all looking forward to it for our own reasons. Mine are: passing the children of to others, spending time with my husband ALONE, and well, I guess enjoying the children. After today, I am ready to leave them behind. Little mini arseholes sometimes.
Here is my dog:
She is very, very happy. Why you ask? Because her owner put up a fence, and now she can run around like a crazy dog without scaring the crap out of innocent bystanders. See our nice fence in the background there? It's nice. Really nice. It took Chris and a friend 2 weekends of very hard manual labour, but it's done. I am pleased. So is the dog.
So news. Big life changing scary news. Chris is leaving his job, and starting work when we get back from holidays with another company. This has been on/off for months now, and it is officially official as of today. Signed, sealed and delivered. We are excited, it is a move we carefully considered, but it wasn't as pump our fists in the air as we thought it would be. He has been with hiscurrent company for 10 years. They have been good to him, to us, and we will miss them. Apparently, they will miss him also, after numerous phone calls today from different biggies in the company asking him what he needed to stay. Super great on the ego for him, but bittersweet at the same time, ya know?
I will definitely update a few times while we are away, but we really need this break to be as stress-free as possible, as the last few months have taken their toll. So no pressure. On me that is..
Soccer is over. Phew. Although both girls really enjoyed themselves (ok, one of them did, they other one tolerated it, can you guess which one??), I am glad the 15 minutes we had to eat between practices is no more, we were all getting really sick of eating subs on the fly.
Anyhow, I took some pics last night in honor of their last official practices. None of Isabella's turned out (that's what happens when you send your husband with the camera and stay home, no offense honey), but I got a bunch of good ones of Sydney and her friend Mia to turn out nice. So here they are..
Here is Mia, sometimes more interested in picking flowers than playing soccer. I keep telling her mom that Sydney was the exact. same. way last year, also her first year. Next year she will be more into it. She makes good pictures though, so cute.
Sydney is contemplating a run at the ball. She really is pretty good, for a 4 year old twerp.
Scrimmaging with a teammate. Just look at that stance! What ball control!
Mawwwwwmmmm....
Mia, mia, ballerina...
Perfect soccer pose..
I love this picture of Mia and the coach. He is trying to entice her to come and play, her stance is more than clear for an answer...
A flower for her Mama.. What a sweetheart!
And that concludes Soccer Season, 09.
Well. We've been keeping very busy over here, now that Summer seems to be in full swing. Let's see..
Chris and I ran a 10k race last weekend. It was awesome. I ran it just over an hour (my goal), Chris came in a few minutes and 10 people faster. I am hooked. We are already looking for the next one we can do, perhaps in Vancouver this summer. Sooo much fun.. Then we came home and Chris spent the rest of the day and all the next digging holes for fence posts. By Sunday night I think it is fair to say.. he was beat. This weekend will be another full one, being the last before we leave for Vancouver.
The girls are busy doing.. the things they do. Playing outside alot. Making themselves dirty and bug-bitten. Having a grand ol time. Soccer season is already coming to a close, and I have yet to snap one picture of either of them. (note to self: bring camera tonight and snap pics.) They are both sporting a healthy looking tan already.
Jackson is busy growing teeth (back molars.. huge!), learning new things (nodding his head for Yes, feeding himself with a spoon and fork, and a few new words), and trying his darnedest to stand up by himself. We caught him last night on video.. poor little dude. Time to LEARN TO WALK.. sheesh.
Yesterday, Isabella and a neighbor girl realized that if they duck down tight in Sydney's escalade, they can ride right underneath the trampoline and come out the other side. They all took turns, ducking and laughing as they entered one side, and came out the other.
Today, this same neighbor girl decided to try it again, without asking first, without Isabella being there, with Jackson in the passenger seat. Chris was sitting on the back deck watching, only realizing too late what was about to happen and yell fast enough to make her stop. Thankfully, he only received a nasty looking goose egg on his forehead. I shudder to think what could have happened. He screamed, held his breath, and was comforted by his father before I could even make it outside to see what all the yelling was about. Poor little guy. I did take some pictures of his sad looking head, but to be honest none of them really did the bump justice. Poor baby.
This is my foot. I reserve the right to post icky pictures of my foot, because this is my blog.
Let's, for a moment, ignore the fact that I have truly, ugly looking feet. A fact I didn't come by, until this picture was taken (by myself, thankyouverymuch) last night. Let's ignore that fact that I obviously deeply need a pedicure (who has time for that? And I run. Pedicures don't last when you are stuffing your newly polished feet into running shoes 5 days a week). Let's ignore the fact that I need to start using sunscreen on my feet to prevent those god awful flip flop tan lines. Instead, let's focus on the important part of this photo. Now that the pain is slightly less than crippling, I am proud to show off my beautifully purple colored (and most likely broken, but who has time to go sit in Emerg and get an X-ray and then have them tell me that yup, indeed it is broken but nothing can be done so go home and cry about it??) toe.
So instead Internet, I will settle for sharing this lovely photo with all of you. And also, to let you know that the next time you come over to my house? And see all the bed legs/tables legs/corners of walls removed? Yes, it's a shame I was born with 2 left feet. Especially when they look like that.
It all started a few months ago. I was fed. up. I was tired of cleaning the girls room, and returning only hours later to discover Hurricane's Isabella and/or Sydney had hit again. I threatened. I bribed. And finally I quit. I thought it would get bad enough, that they would decide to clean it up themselves. So then I quit doing their laundry, citing the inability to enter their room and decipher the clean from the dirty anyhow. They started wearing dirty clothes. Sydney started sneaking Isabella's underwear. They would laugh and scoff at the idea of cleaning it up.
Then it hit me. My brilliant idea. I took an afternoon, cleaned it well one last time. I told them the same rules still applied, that was it, no more help from Mommy and they were once again responsible. This time, there was a catch. If it got bad enough, and I got fed up enough, I would go in, and empty the room out. Clean. Everything. Gone. They still.. didn't listen.
Yesterday afternoon, the time came. Isabella left for a playdate, Jackson was napping, I asked Chris to please take Sydney out for lunch, and not to come back for at least an hour. What followed was an hour of lugging huge bags of stuff crap down the stairs. Frantically digging things from under the bed, dumping drawers of papers, pens, lip balms, etc. Unplugging the cable, all the movies.. gone. I locked everything up, vacuumed and dusted, and waited. With a huge smile on my face.
Sydney took it in stride, at first. In fact, I think she even thanked me! There is so much room in here! I can play dancing (without music, hehe)! And build forts! She got alittle sad that all her dollies were missing (although several hundred other dollies still reside in the playroom) these were her favorites. Then she told me Isabella was going to beat me up for taking all her stuff. Hmph.
I picked up Isabella from her playdate. We walked into the house, and she went directly to her room. She went in, shut the door, and didn't come out for a few minutes. I pictured her frantically digging around her pillows looking for all her "secret" stuff. All gone. She came out and casually asked for her wallet. I told her it was gone, for now, and if she needed to buy anything (?) that she could ask me first and we would talk about it. She slowly went back to her room, not saying anything. I followed her in, and all 3 of us had alittle chat. She was MAD that I went through her "personal" things. Sydney was mad because Isabella was mad and wouldn't play with her in her new found space!
I told them the "new rules". They need to make their bed in the mornings, and put their dirty clothes away in the basket. That's it. That's all they have! If they can do this for a week, with little to no reminding, they will get 1 (one) item back next Sunday morning. With this one new item, we repeat the following week with the same rules, and so on and so forth. If they don't play by the rules, we will go backwards and take an item away the following Sunday. At this rate, I bet I will be having a massive garage sale by Christmas. We'll see.
Big sister eating breakfast. Little brother begging for a bite.
Daddy, Sydney, Moo moo sandwich..
A pictorial.
Hmm Mommy left the fridge door open... What can I get into here?
What's that?
Oh Hi Mommy, it's just you. I'm not in trouble.. right??
Don't these buns look tasty?
This is the point where I put down my camera and got Trouble out of the fridge before he broke/ate/demolished something he shouldn't. And yes, his new name is Trouble. With a capital T.
