Instagram Dec 2013

 

Grey did this, and loves the way it looks, a lot. He will be sad when they mysteriously get repositioned. 

A little "midnight dinner" for my hard working man. Ain't nothing like reheating;-)

Spider-Man and Superman are playing very hard today

Tidying up the bookshelf:-)

Loving fall!! #countryinthecity
I guess it's technically winter now:-)

Pic - taken by Brooks

Souring my milk. And now we wait.

Ladies, are you ready for this? Tomorrow is the day we make coasters!

Sonny, making something for his daddy for Christmas...shhhhh!

Pizza party for Christmas!

It's Maisy Daisy!

Look, I have a beard!

The many faces of b.j.b.

Multiple personalities?

Lazy Monday breakfast. White chocolate raspberry coffee, with white chocolate drixxle, and biscotti. #homemade #delish

Jamberry experiment, just applied! Day 1 #jamberry #juliejams

Brian came home late, and I made him fresh salsa...then lost motivation to clean up after myself before bed. Good morning to me!

Kenna: how many more days before we can skate on the lake?
Me: Uhhh, never
It might feel cold, but it's not that cold!

Mini Christmas store - for Cubbies only. Fun is about to be had by all!:-)

My first loaf of bread in my new-to-me bread maker!

Jamberry nail wrap experiment, day 3. I'm pretty much sold on these things!

A weird pancake flip yields devilish results:-)

It's a little chilly today, but the ducks are out!
Which you can't see from this pic haha

May, saying cheese, eating cheese

My slave labour

Oh no, they're back! Perhaps I should issue a warning;-)

Mini quiches, coming right up!

Kids pic!

Kids waiting for their cue in the first of two performances. Christmas cantata time!

Pic from our Bible Study Christmas party on Sat

A little late getting them out this year...but getting it done!

A pencil in a cup of ice - what are you doing? "it's just my test, mom. I'm testing it out"

Christmas party conundrum. Decisions, decisions...

Bib necklace...target jewelry for Brian's work Christmas party

Go fish in the sun

Getting my party face on!

This is happening now:-)

Grey: Wow where did we get this huge can?
Me: it was daddy's
Grey: What!?! He drank from that girl can?
**pink is never for boys** ;-)

Mornings are about to get a whole lot more gooder 'round here

Ducks, this time, a better view;-)

A vintage Christmas village. Given to us by Brian's uncle & aunt (Bill & Jonne). They didn't have room for it when they moved. The kids adore it!

He does it better than me 

White hot chocolate with "whup" cream of course. In a favourite mug:-)

All our presents are wrapped and ready to go! We are blessed

Pancake Friday!

Ok, kinda gross. Grey sustained a little eye injury this week while playing with Sonny. It was just an accident/play getting carried away, but it actually was a real injury. I suspected over-drama at first, of course. This is above the colour part. The blood is fading, so I think it's healing well. He hasn't complained of discomfort for a few days. Praise the Lord!

@riekefamily all I did was make cookies...around 12:30. Haha. I would put my mess making abilities up against the best of them;-)

Snowman fun! #bigcookie

Merry Christmas!

And for my Canadiana...:-) Merry Christmas

Two blondies bathing...:-)

The peas cancel out the chocolate(s)

Every time I'm in East Beach a different house captures my fancy. Today, this is the house

You better watch out, Santa Claus is coming to town!

a quick pass through downtown on christmas eve:-) we love our busy downtown with all the cranes and ships

ice cream for dinner on Christmas eve!

Burning off Christmas sugar by making snow angels on the carpet:-)

If you can measure happiness by bags of trash, and I think you can, we've had a good day. So blessed! Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.

I love it so much! Thanks babe!

Epically moody child. Nap time?

Wish me luck! Vintage toy fun, coming up!

Oh boy! This is only about half the people...people only!! Yikes. This may be more than I bargained for!

Progress...

I did my first Jamberry nail application on myself today! Looking good! Lets hope I like this look for 10+ days:-)

Cake decorating

Halloween and Rentals

Well, the same thing happened this Halloween, as last years - we were preparing a rental house and didn't have much time to do anything fun for the kids. Have I mentioned how great these kids are? Last year we were very busy at Hugo house, and they didn't dress up - but did snag a few candies from Lauren (Aunt & neighbour!). This year they really wanted to dress up, so here we have...

A flag football player, Huckleberry Finn - the cat, not the literary character:-), and Batman

Practicing some cat makeup!

We didn't have a ton of time to fix up a few things - from Thurs night to Sat noon. So Thursday night, the kids slept at Aunties, while we scraped, sanded and re-finished the hardwood floors in the entire house, and fixed (put down new "floor boards") in the back porch area.

Cute little house! It's a two bedroom, but laid out very efficiently

From the front door - you have livingroom, dining room, and then into the kitchen. Bedrooms and bathrooms are off the dining room to the left

Friday afternoon and evening was PAINTING time! We set to work painting pretty much everything. All trim and walls needed to be washed, and then painted. It's been 3 years since it's been done, so it needed it. The walls throughout the entire house are Behr's "Ostrich" - it looks pure white on the chip, until you compare it to pure white (trim is Behr's untinted plain white). Brian had a few other little chores to do - switching out light fixtures, etc, but overall the most time consuming thing was the painting.

The kids played so nicely, in their costumes, waiting for us to finish our work. Around 7pm we decided to go have fun and leave the remainder of the work for the morning. We decided to go to a pizza restaurant, and then to a ice cream place (Cold Stone), and let them build their own ice creams! They have never been there/done this before, so we thought it would be a fun treat!

The bathroom - why did they always put windows in the showers?!? There is a shower curtain needed on both sides, to keep water off the window and molding. (The shiny look is the shower curtain that covers the window).

On our way to the pizza place, we got a call from a friend - "lots of candy, little party, come over" - so we decided (gave the kids options) to get pizza to-go, and go to party instead of ice cream place. We show up at friends house. No one is home. Hmmm. Phone call again - It had been neglected to be mentioned that they were not at their own home, but another friends home - 30mins away. By this time it was nearing 8 o'clock, so we just had to scrap that plan and have no party - but realizing it was now late for the ice cream idea - we let the kids trick or treat to a few houses in our friends townhouse complex, since we were already there, and we wanted to give the kids SOMETHING fun to do with their night! So it was a bit of a disaster, Halloween "fun family night" wise, but it worked out in the end. The kids each got a few candies, and we all got to bed at a decent time...because we had to finish at the rental in the morning!

The breakfast nook area - I previously had no pictures of this, so I made sure to snap one for future rental advertising

We got everything painted and ready to go by Noon on Saturday!

Flash back! The last time we "did this" at this house was in 2011. These kids are well accustomed to "helping" us by staying out of the way:-) Here is little Grey in the playpen. They really are rock stars and very patient when it comes to occupying themselves in an empty house and yard for HOURS.

Brooks' Catch

Football season is over now, and although it was a great year...I'm enjoying the "Breather" on the Mom side of things. Football practice was at 6 -7pm, immediately after piano lessons on Mondays. Cheerleading practice was 5:30 - 6:30pm Wednesday nights, immediately before church. Soccer practice for Grey is Thursdays night 5-6pm...so basically 3 days a week we ate picnics in the car. Thursday nights is the "easy one" with only 1 thing to do! Now that football/cheer is over, I just don't know what to do with all my free time! ;-) The other crazy thing about the schedules was Saturday (game days), soccer is at a different location than football, so on days that Brian couldn't make it (about 4 weeks), I had to drive back and forth and back and forth, picking up and and dropping off kids at their various scheduled game times. I am glad that is over now! It was a little nutsy to say the least, but it did work seamlessly, so no major complaints

I don't know if this is the best play Brooks made all year (he had a few outstanding "moves"), but it's the best play we managed to catch on camera! Another mom caught this catch on video - I wasn't at this game, as I was over picking up Grey from his game while Brooks played his:-)

Spartan Trifecta

Late last year Brian and a few friends were trying to be intentional - about making new friends, about accountability, and about living "real life" together - so they devised a plan of sorts. Kind of a crazy one, but it worked:-) A few good friends has turned into many good friends.

They decided to start training for the Spartan races. They used the church gym/property on Wednesday nights after church to train. It started with a few, but gained in popularity once other guys started to hear about what was going on, and what difficulties they were training hard for. It's also kind of a good outreach - people that would not come to church per se, at an invite, would come and work out at a church with a bunch of good men.

It's been really neat to see the bonding and relationships form over these training sessions, and races.

The Kings Own was formed, and they are a merry band of brothers, indeed. They had shirts made for all the people that workout together, and especially the racers (some people do not do the races, just the weekly workouts).

On the back of the shirts, with The Kings Own crest : Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king. (Which is from 1Peter 2:17) On the front: "trade what you cannot keep for what you cannot earn". (a version of a Jim Eliott quote)

Without further delay: Here are pictures from the Spartan Beast (The Beast is a half marathon with apparently 36 obstacles). {Posts from the Sprint are here and here, and the Super is here.}

Ready to run!

A funny story from the first race (Sprint), - as you can see, all racers go together, so you are often surrounded by people you don't know. There was a woman struggling to get over an obstacle. Nate, the Spartan hero, came along to help her out. Brian says, "all I could hear was, 'I'm going to put my hand on your thigh'", and of course, they will never let poor Nate forget about that one moment of heroic proportions. "I'm going to put my hand on your thigh" is a regular joke around here now;-) This photo pays homage to that hilarious moment in racing history.

Brian said he was able to do most obstacles this time - but not the rope climb (you have to get high enough to ring the bell at the top). It was just too slippery, and he only got halfway up (he's not in this pic)

Swamp creature?

This is nearly the grossest thing I've ever seen

Hilarious comments taken from facebook:
Darla: What on earth?! Brian feeding Ulys straight into his mouth? Haha
Brian: Okay, my hands were the cleanest at the time. I fed everyone, it was almost biblical

Run hard, Byron!

They all finish together. Always. They stick together as a team, and help each other out when necessary. The punishment for not doing an obstacle (not finishing or not doing it correctly) is 30 burpees per failed person. That can be a LOT of burpees when a few people fail at an obstacle, which will wear you out fast. But the load is made lighter when a friend (who didn't fail at that obstacle) does some for you. A friend that sticks closer than a brother...does lots of burpees in your place:-)

I jokingly and somewhat mockingly (..."and #hockeyhair over here...") hashtagged Brian awhile back in an fb status. It stuck. Obvious to all, he has pretty close to the most enviable hair on the planet. In either gender;-) So the #hockeyhair legend lives strong, as each pic is carefully poured over by all - just to see if the hair ever looks bad, in whatever state he finds himself. The hair. It's all about the hair.

Twelve guys finished in 4hrs 21mins. They finished 165th of 312 groups of people. They were very happy with their times, and were very happy at how "easy" it was - training success! They even rocked the javelin throw (which historically has been a hard one for them). The race they ran in August (the Super) is/was one of the hardest courses of all Spartan races, so even though it was not as long as a half marathon, it was much more difficult, due to the terrain/location.

Pledge of Allegiance

This is Grey, who is a very eager learner. He is doing so well in school this year, and hates to stop for the day, always wanting to do more. Here is his adorable version of the Pledge of Allegiance: