june, 2007

june 25, 2007

we managed to obtain some media preview tickets to playland for this week. it was a great night. we went with connie, justin and jenna [our neighbours]. each child got to pick a ride [aly - big wheel, toby - mini golf, justin - log flume, jenna - swings] and we did a couple of others. it was free rides all night, free popcorn or cotton candy, a free carnival game [aly was a superstar at the dart/balloon burst game - a bit of a strange choice for a balloon phobic!], free hot dog and free drink. we've never spent much time at playland when we've been to the PNE in vancouver because the rides cost so much, so this was a fantastic opportunity.

it's been a very hectic week or 2 as school wraps up for the year.. PAC [parent advisory council] lunches, teacher appreciation days, concerts, sports day, end of year kindercare party, end of year out of school care BBQ, field trip to the beach, 2 field trips to swimming pools etc. etc. not to mention the giant yard sale we held at work this weekend. i'm still aching from carrying furniture books etc. around for 2 days.

anyway, here are some highlights from sports day..

toby was in the lulu lemons team

aly was in the great green grapes team [the theme was nutrition]

quotes from the children over the past week or so:

[upon finding out that the movie 'ratatouille' wasn't in the theatre yet as we were just leaving the house to go and see it...]
aly:"you should really check the movie listings before promising people to take them to the movie theatre."
she did have a point, so we went to see 'surf's up' instead

aly: "toby got bitten by some kid at school today."
..later on..
sascha: "aly how did you get that scratch on your face?"
aly: "toby did it."
sascha: "why, what did you do to him?"
toby: "she bit me."
hmm. her conveniently-omitting-the-truth skills seem to be coming along nicely. scratching, biting... what are they? 2 yrs old again?

toby: "is that a newborn hotel over there?" [points at a construction site]
peta: "maybe they are just renovating the building"
toby: "yeah.. 'cos in the olden days they used to paint the buildings in really bad colours and now they have to fix them."

june 13, 2007

whistler was great. very relaxing. lots of hot tubbing, saunas, swimming, shopping and sitting around. perfect. the company was, as ever, great! [even if they do wake me up earlier on a sunday morning than my children do!] a little break does the world of good. i'm appreciating the children so much more this week :-)

shannon falls

karlene, paulette, debbie, peta, laura, and connie

the stay at the delta hotel was made even better by the fact we found a hair on the sofa bed, complained, and then got the room for free. yippeeeeeeee!

aly graduated from sparks to brownies last night in a very cute ceremony. i was very happy to be there to see her since i was supposed to be working. aly was very upset that i might not be there and angie very kindly agreed to work in my place.

june 7, 2007

i'm excited about heading off to whistler this weekend with some girlfriends. i don't know where we are staying and don't really care - i'm just going to hop in the car and enjoy myself. one of these years i'm sure it will be mine turn to organize but until then i'll happily go with the flow!

aly's camping trip went well last weekend, although she's not sure if she wants to go next year because "it was a big too much effort to pack and unpack". HA, it was me standing in the lineup at 10.10pm on friday night getting together all the things for her camping trip, while sascha sat at home labelling everything she owned! maybe she's a girl after my own heart - camping IS all a bit much effort!

jenna and aly in their sparks uniforms

sascha and i got to go and watch the police last week. colin kindly came over to babysit. the concert was great and even better was the fact that the audience in our tier remained seated. i'm far too old to be standing up for 2 hours.

speaking of concerts, aly was in a performance at school last week. i had to work so missed it, but colin, sascha and toby got to go and enjoyed it. she was leading the group in with a looney tunes song - there was some top hat/stick twirling involved and by the looks of the video she did admirably.

last week was really hot and i finally conceded to buying the children some sandals [in fact it's probably my fault that it's been drizzling for the 4 days since we bought summer sandals!]. they both wanted to put them on as soon as they got them and as they were putting them on in the car, toby ripped off his socks, threw them over his shoulder and shouted "goodbye socks, see you in september"

toby has set up a grocery store in his room this week. the interesting thing is that he decided to price all the food according to how healthy it is. the even more interesting thing is that the things that are healthiest are the ones which are cheapest "so that people can buy more of the healthy things." it's amazing when you find out that something you've been droning on about every mealtime for 5 years has actually been absorbed! yeah for me :-) it would be handy if prices worked like that in the real world.

june 1, 2007

so toby is on a sleep-strike at the moment. it had been going on for quite some time, but the cruise seemed to break the pattern a little. now he's back in full flow. he finally goes to sleep around 10.30 or 11.00pm then has to be up for school by 7.30am. 7.30pm is their bedtime [well, that's the time they both have to be doing something quiet in their rooms]. aly is usually asleep around 8.00pm [she's always been a big sleep fan and needs at least 11 hours] but toby....

we usually catch him under the covers reading, doing math, studying the maps on his walls, counting the minutes down on his clock, calculating how many minutes and seconds have passed since he last calculated how many minutes have passed etc. etc. when he can finally feel himself falling asleep he panics about dreaming and shouts to us asking us to keep him awake until 5.00am so he doesn't have to dream. it's all been a bit of a dilemma. he obviously doesn't need anything like enough sleep as his sister, but only getting as much sleep as us doesn't seem right either. then there's the question of how much do we believe he's scared. he never seems all that upset. is he just trying to stay up as late as possible? he's definitely a night owl [as are sascha and i].

we've tried lights, music, stories on CD [as well as the regular stories], writing down any worries he has [and to be honest, he couldn't really come up with anything], reading a 'go away monster' book before bed each night... you name it, we seem to have tried it. i don't think i've tried so many random methods of trying to get a child to sleep since toby was about 8 months old!

this week was a no tolerance week to see if that approach worked - no coddling, no getting out of bed and stories/lights off at 9.00pm. i desperately needed a definitive approach to try because i knew i was being inconsistent [alternating between being all sympathetic and giving big snuggles then getting fed up and trying to ignore him] which wasn't getting anybody anywhere.

anyway, this weekend we're taking the desperate measure of getting him up at school time even though it's going to mean sacrificing some of our own sleep [it takes a lot for sascha and i to give up any sleep because we're both extremely lazy!] to make sure that's not at the root of the problem.

wow - what a lot of waffling about sleep! on a completely different subject, i'm feeling very self-righteous because i finally managed to take AND use my reusable grocery bags for 2 weekly shops in a row. the first time we bought them, the guy carefully packed them in a regular plastic bag and sascha had to persuade him that that wasn't really the point. after that i forgot to bring them [twice], the next time i only remembered they were in the car when i was at the checkout - doh! i HATE plastic bags hanging around the house and since earth day i've been on more of an environmental push than usual [i've even filled up the composter we inherited from the previous owners] so fingers crossed i can get into the habit of using them in the future.

right, i've bored myself unconscious - all this talk of grocery shopping, compost and sleep. i'm off to bed..i can hear people deactivating links to my site already.

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