Thursday, April 30, 2009

Another Birthday. Soon

It will be Brooks' birthday in a few days! He has the age right "2", but still only puts up one finger. Here are some pre-birthday cupcakes to celebrate with his class on Wed night at church. He was very excited. He graduated up to that class a few weeks ago, just a little early. The nursery is full of actual babies at this point, and all his friends were already in the 2 & 3 class, so he was feeling very left out. Didn't help that Kenna would announce that he could "go to his baby class now", he would cry and say "Noooo. I a bee-boy (big)". The nursery workers would always throw him over to the other side so he could do story time...and so we decided it was time to make the switch! He adores his new class and his crafts.

I ran out of regular cupcake papers...so I had to make a few star shaped ones. Thankfully there were no fights. We made these 'white' cupcakes 'blue', for boys. They turned out rather greenish instead of blue, but it was close.

Summer Tuesday

It was a gorgeous day! We went for a long walk, blew some bubbles, ate ice cream cones, got very sticky and got all cleaned off in the sprinkler.

I asked him to turn and smile at me, which he did...somehow this was the expression just before the smile. Too cute.

It's going to be a great summer!


Thursday, April 23, 2009

Shoe Mountain

I asked Kenna to tidy up all the shoes (which means put them away), usually the grown up shoes go on the shoe shelf, and the kids shoes go in the basket. Later on I noticed this mountain and said "Wow, you sure did pick up those shoes! Look at that mountain!!" Naturally, she wanted a picture taken. And naturally she's a goof:-)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Blue Lagoon

Yesterday Brian had to do a side job at a house on the Sandbridge beach, and we all decided to go for the ride. The kids love the water, and I knew there was a swingset there...it's about a 30-40min drive to that area.

The house is called the Blue Lagoon. It's a duplex actually, and it's awesome. It's a rental house for summer vacationers. Right now it's for sale for 800k, but is actually worth 1.2M. It makes about 60k a year. Brian has all the info as he WANTS to buy it. Of course it will be a long time before we could afford that! He did a lot of work on it last summer, and I helped out too...painting decks. There are a thousand decks on this house. That was a long hot day!


2 bedroom, 2 bathroom on the lower floor. Connects to the upstairs by a stair case (with a door). There is another 5 bedrooms on the upper two floors and 2 baths. And an outdoor shower. Love it!

The pool, not quite ready for guests yet!

The lower floor kitchen

Main floor kitchen as seen from upper balcony

"This could be my pink bed!" - Kenna

You can pull your boat right up into the garage. The only house in Sandbridge with this feature, apparently.

View from the back. The back of the house is on the Bay, across the street in the front is where the "tide & beach" ocean is. Gorgeous and serene views!!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

More Outside

Sorry to bore you with more yard/outside shots. But I just love how pretty it looks now. It used to be so dreary, but thanks to Eunice we have our own little botanical gardens!



He has to smell everything, of course.


My Pets

Yesterday as I was cleaning up the kitchen, in come the kids, dragging pillows and blankets. "What are you guys doing?" and I was met with "Ruff Ruff" from them (with the occasional "meow" from Brooks, he's a confused puppy). They are really starting to get into the world of imaginary play. Kenna was dedicated to her doggie role and didn't say any actual words for maybe 20 min or more. Yay for me! Although, after a point I do wonder if barking, panting and pointing at things are really that much better than talking:-)

She organizes the games, and they love to play Bolt & Penny...I sometimes get to be the eye-eyed man (green-eyed man). And they love to play Dad & Mom. Usually Kenna hangs herself upside down from the back of the couch. Then she calls "Help! Help! Rescue me. Daddy, rescue me! Rescue me before I fall. Daaaaaadddddddeeeee" A few times when Brian has been home he's come running and I have to stop him...she's not talking to you, she's talking to Brooks. The only problem with Brooks is his memory and attention span for the game at hand are much shorter than hers. Her dedication is unwaivering though, and she will call him to rescue her for the better part of 15 minutes (or until I have had enough of the rescue cries and tell her it's game over. Brooksie doesn't understand how to rescue you, or he doesn't want to, either way. Shhh). Most of the time he doesn't get the "Dad" thing though, you have to say Brooksie Dad, then he will come, but she doesn't like to do that.

My pet puppies, sleeping on the kitchen floor

Monday, April 20, 2009

Skating

Saturday evening we rented an arena to play broom hockey with the youth group. Before that there is always a free skate to rough up the ice, since we run on our shoes on the ice, so we were all able to go an hour early and skate for free. I decided to take the kids for that first hour and see how they did. It was late...didn't start until 8:30, so I think that contributed a little bit, since they were quite tired...but Kenna did amazingly well, despite a few little whiny issues (I love bedtime!). Brooks was a little too young for it still, but he LOVED Brian to skate him around "really fast". We started to pack up at 9:30, Brooks cried and cried when we left because we didn't play hockey. I tried to explain skating is part of hockey, to no avail. They both fell asleep on the drive home (SO rare), they were zonked!

Kenna, doing quite well skating/walking on skates:-) Her friend Libby is behind her.

Daddy skated them really fast. All the other Daddy shots I have are really blurry:-/

Brooks would stand on the rubber floor, but would not take a step. On the ice, he could feel that it was different and would just crumple his legs, not even trying to stand up. He'll do better when he is a little older I think!

Outdoor Weekend

We had friends from NC visit this weekend (Thurs to Sat morn), and we had so much fun! They have two boys, 4 & 2, so all the kids got along very well. On Friday we went to the beach and had a blast, but I forgot my camera:-/ We got a little sun on our faces!

After they left the kids had some fun playing outside. Brooks was in a mood, thanks to lack of sleep. He stayed in the swing for more than an hour until naptime.



Whoosh! And she's off!

A little garden trying to grow in our side yard.

She's a fast peddler now!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Floor update

We are very pleased with the results. Now to rid the house off all that dust! We still have the caulking to do, and some scraping of the tile, the old floor was almost an inch higher from all the layers.

For Grandma's

I started to make these last summer. Lol. Better late than never!! I am mailing my mom's, but she knows it coming, so no surprise ruined:-) These are Grandma Bolgers handprints. My friend Chani (amazing artist) painted the stems on the flowers for me. I thought it was a cute way to preserve a handprint "memory", aside from the typical clay impressions or whatever. Can you tell it was very difficult to get Brooks to do this nicely. It took quite a few tries before we had a couple 'clean' images.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Bathroom Floor

Brian is finishing the bathroom floor this weekend. All the other floors were done this past summer, but we hit a little crisis with the bathroom floor and left it linoleum until now. We discovered there is in fact real wood under 4 layers of other flooring (we thought there wasn't), and Brian tore it all up and is now finished sanding and filling...we are actually going to paint it with a floor/outdoor paint. For a variety of reasons, one being the poly dry time for repeated coats is longer than we are able to go without a bathroom (for staining). Anyway, one day this bathroom will be getting a huge re-vamp, including tile floor, so this will work for now, look good, and last a few years until we are ready for the remodel. So by tonight, ALL our floors will be gorgeous! Except in the garage. But that doesn't count!

Fun Day

At Botanical Gardens. It was such a gorgeous day! By the time we left we were regretting wearing pants...it was way too hot!

Pretty tulips. So vivid, they looked fake.

It 'mells goooood! Brooks is a smell guy. He loves to smell everything...flowers, handcream, food...

Pointing at the waterfall. Wow.

Meghan is here for Easter! Showing Kenna the goldfish.

There is a bald eagle family that lives there (wild). We were in the area of their nest and were looking up trying to find it (figuring it would be pretty large). And there he was! I think it's my first time to see an eagle that is not in captivity.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Mushroom Salad - Recipe

This is a cold salad/side dish from my Great Aunt Elinore Moody. It's very tasty! One of our favourites. We are having a roast beef dinner for Easter, complete with Yorkshire Pudding, and I am making this to go along with it. We did this last year with the Bolgers, and it went over well, so we decided on a repeat performance:-) I don't think they'd ever had Yorkshire Pudding before, which was a favourite growing up. Like Apple Dream Salad at Thanksgiving. Yummy stuff!

1/2 C vegetable oil
2 T vinegar
2 T lemon juice
2 t salt
1 1/2 - 2 t basil leaves
1/4 t dry mustard
1/4 t pepper 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Quarter mushrooms and refrigerate in sauce. Make at least 12 hrs in advance, stir every now and again to make sure it's well marinated.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

If

This is one of my favourite poems. I have had it in my day-timer for at least 10 years now. I hope you like it too.

If - by: Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting, too
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or, being lied about, don't give way to lies
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken
And stoop to build them up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except His will which says to them "Hold On";

If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you but none too much
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance - run
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And - which is more - You'll be a man, my son!

Lots of Chores

Random - showing how we do situps everyday. They love to help me work out. We always do everything in groups of 20 so they count right along.

Today we had to make laundry detergent and baby wipes. Thank goodness for my helpers! They love chores. This is after we were done with the first step in the baby wipes process. I will do the rest myself! They were each blowing into each end, but I missed it with the camera.

Practicing her pretty and "natural" smile. lol.

"My macra-sone" (microphone)

Helping me make a very neat pile. Haha. I guess it's not bad for a 3 and almost 2 year old!

Brooks' turn

Brooks does this with his sunglasses...same as I do. And Kenna pushes them up on her head, just like me. They are hilarious little copycats!


Mochachino Sparkles

My little fashionista in her new sunglasses!

Kenna is a sparkle shoe girl...or Mommy was, and it caught on. This is her 5th pair of sparkle shoes...the first pair that aren't really shoes but sandals. The usual is the ballet slipper style, but she needed some flip flops, and I thought this was the perfect solution. Her old sparkle shoes are missing too many sparkles to be presentable anymore. I painted her toenails in my fave new nail colour, Mochachino. All dressed up with no where to go!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Somedays

Some days I have little angels for children. Some days I do not. We started our "Sad-da-day" morning with a trip to Walmart for toilet paper, sparkle shoes, sunglasses, and mushrooms:-) We checked the redbox when we went in for a movie, and they didn't have anything. Kenna immediately fell apart. She wanted to see Kung Fu Fi-tee-ing (she says it like the song:-). For some reason, today was the day that no explanation as to why we can't rent something that isn't there would suffice. We came very close to leaving the store for an attitude adjustment. She settled down in the nick of time.

Kenna's sunglasses from last year got broken and as the weather has been turning to summer, she is in dire need of some. That girl has the ability to go from perfectly fine to an emotional wreck in .001 seconds. One minute she's singing happily in her carseat and the next she is SCREAMING at Mr Sun to leave her alone (annoying screetching and drama aside, it is pretty funny to hear her tyrade). The sunglasses were a definite must, and they had a few choices, so we were trying them all on. Now it was Brooks' turn to freak out over the fact that he didn't get any, nor could he touch them. He loves to pull on the arms just a little too hard:-) MINE, MINE! As he tries to grab everything in sight. Quickly, on our way to the checkout I grabbed a big bag of animal crackers on sale in the main aisle. "I hode it?" Brooksie asks? Sure you can hold it. By the time we reached the register, as I unloaded the other items he managed to bite through the bag and grab 2 massive handfuls. He was shoving his little mouth so full, as if he'd never eaten before. ARGH! Somedays nothing goes right. And somedays nap time comes a little early!! :-)