Hanging out

Here's Emma in her PJs playing some PacMan!lol

We went to visit with Carolyn and Rebecca yesterday...here are the girls.

Come say Hello!

We started this blog as a way for family to keep up with us while we were in China. After we got home, we kept it as a way for our family to see the kids on a regular basis - the grandparents love that! This is still a pretty private blog, but the readership continues to grow and I'm getting curious as to who's out there since very few people leave comments. As most of you probably know, the blog owner can get some information as to who is visiting and where they're from and such. Most people checking us out are from Canada and the US, although I noticed visitors lately from Iceland, Israel and Italy (yeah, what's with the "I" country theme!!lol). Anyhow, I've just added an "Email Me" button so if you'd like to drop us a note and introduce yourself, please do so!

Emma singing

I've tried to videotape Emma singing, but well, she's not very cooperative!lol But, there's the best I can get...she's drinking and singing in one, kinda singing Twinkle, Twinkle and at the end starts off with ABC in the other...you get the idea!lol

A little ham with that...

Now that she's talking more and more, I'm getting the impression that Emma might be a bit of a comedian, or at the very least a big ham!!lol I do a carpool with Thomas and a 7 year old girl. Emma loves to come along for the ride. As we were driving home from school today, there was a squirrel very slowly crossing the road and I've stopped the car and am saying "c'mon squirrel, cross the road, don't want to hit you now" and Emma yells out from the back "throw squirrel cheese" now where she's gotten the idea one would feed a squirrel cheese is beyond me, but the kids start laughing and you can just see her glowing at having made them laugh and she starts throwing out all kinds of nonsense to get them to laugh more, all the while finding herself quite amusing!!lol It is just so darn fun to see the wheels turn in her little head!

TV

Well, the new TV season is upon us and I'm bound and determined to find at least one TV show that I enjoy watching. The fact that the last "new" TV show I remember getting hooked on was West Wing which has now ended its run of many years should tell you something about my TV watching habits... not to mention that given the choice of watching pretty much any show currently on or Mary Tyler Moore, Mary will win 99% of the time!lol Most of my TV watching these days is done on HGTV - I enjoy design shows.

Anyhow, we've now entered the current century when it comes to TV technology and have gotten our cable company's equivalent of TIVO. This means I can press a button and a show is magically recorded - no more rifling through a bunch of tapes trying to figure out if it's okay to tape over or if I'll be taping over the only existing copy of my wedding video; no more hoping there's space on the tape and no more hoping while I'm out that I even remembered to put in a tape!

So, with this new ease of taping, I've been taping a ton of shows, some new, some old, most I've never heard of but am willing to give 10 minutes of my time to in order to see if it's something I might actually find watchable. So far, I've taped everything from Brothers and Sisters (haven't watched it yet), Smith (also haven't watched yet), Help me help you (haven't watched yet - you see a theme here??lol) I'll get back to you on those once I've had a few minutes to watch - or if you've watched them, please comment!! I have watched Boston Legal, a show someone put me on to last year, and I'm enjoying it. I rented Season 1 over the summer and look forward to watching the current season and renting Season 2 when it comes out shortly.

The next thing I watched, unbelievingly enough, was "Gene Simmons Family Jewels"... who knew Gene Simmons from Kiss had a show... who knew he was even still around!!lol I'd read on a China blog somewhere that someone had enjoyed this show and when I saw it on my listings, set to RECORD. You know what, the 2 episodes I taped were actually kind of amusing... I might even set it to tape again.Then came Amazing Race - fun show which we can watch with Thomas and it's always nice to spend that one hour a week watching TV together. We've been fans of this show since the beginning and have watched most of it except for the family edition - that one was unfortunately terribly boring!

And then we come to my very fave new show so far: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I had high hopes for this show since I loved West Wing, enjoy both Bradely Whitford and Matthew Perry and generally enjoy Aaron Sorkin's style. I've seen the first 2 episodes and I'm liking it a lot...let's hope that continues. So, that's my TV recap so far - if you've seen a new show you like, please tell me about it!! And finally I should add that I do not watch medical shows. I know House looks really interesting and I hear Grey's Anatomy is great, but medical shows gross me out...I don't care how much of the show is about relationships and not medical stuff, there's enough medical stuff to gross me out and I can't watch them, they're simply not enjoyable for me, they stress me out!lol

Oh, and on one last note - Thomas votes for "Loonatics Unleashed" as his fave new show and Emma is just now beginning to sit and watch a minute or two of TV...so far, she seems to like Go Diego Go - who knew Dora had a spinoff!!

Language Explosion

In the last couple of weeks, Emma has had an amazing language explosion. She turned 21 months this weekend. She's been using single words for a few months now and makes her needs known quite well, but she hadn't started putting words together until a couple of weeks ago. She now speaks in pretty full sentences: "Emma sit here", "Emma eat cake", "Give Emma fork", "Emma eat muffin, Toby(cat) not eat muffin", "Throw Toby ball, Toby chase ball" etc. As I'm sitting here typing, I hear her ordering Gary around at the dinner table (we ate already, he got home late from work). I hear "Daddy no look paper" (Gary was trying to read the newspaper while eating), "Daddy, more cake peeeeease", "Emma eat, more cake, cake all gone"... she's really hysterical and I can't believe how much she's talking now. (Her please is hilarious...it's a really long Peeeaaaase said with a very sweet "I'm too cute for you to say no" look on her face!) She also sings "Twinkle, twinkle little star" pretty well... I'll have to get her on tape in the next few days. This is really one of my favourite stages. I know soon she'll be using her new found vocabulary to drive us mad, but for now, it's just amazingly cute! :-)

McDonalds and Gender

Thomas LOVES Lego, pretty much any kind, but he's particularly fond of the whole Bionicles series. McDonalds' Happy Meals now come with a Bionicle toy. Thomas loves Bionicles but he can't stand McDonalds so he asked me this week if maybe I could go to McDonalds and buy some Bionicles. Sure, no problem. It's his birthday this week and I thought some McDonalds Bionicles would be a nice little addition to his gifts. So, this morning Emma and I drop Thomas off at school and we go to our first McDonalds in search of Bionicles. Since we hadn't had much of a breakfast, we walk up to the counter, order a muffin and ask for any Bionicle toy they have in stock. The clerk comes back with a Little Mermaid toy. No, that's not what we're looking for I tell him, do you have the Bionicles. He tells me no, this is what they have. I then ask why they have a big Bionicles display if they're not selling the toys. He says, oh, we have them, but you want a girl toy....um....I do??? Well, after having him shove this Little Mermaid toy at me again (c'mon folks, most of these are NOT for under 3 kids anyhow, so why are you trying to hand one over to my 21 month old!!) I ask if he has any Bionicles. You want the boy toy he asks - yes, I want the "boy toy", and it's okay, it's not for her, it's for her brother. Finally, he pulls out the Week 2 Bionicle and we're off to another McDonalds to look for Week 1's Bionicle.

Emma and I enter McDonalds no. 2. We walk up to the counter and order some apple slices (yes, I know we don't have to order to get a toy!!lol) and ask if they have the Bionicle toy from Week 1 of the promotion. The woman comes back with, you guessed it, the Little Mermaid toy. I again ask if they have any Bionicles toys and she says, no, this is all we have for her. I then say I'm looking for the Bionicles toy and it's not for her - "oh, you want the "boy toy"... yeah, guess so!!

I don't get it...I didn't say "do you have a toy for her", I specifically asked for a Lego Bionicles toy and both times, they totally ignored me...weird... anyhow, we did end up with both toys currently available and I'll be sure to go look for number 3 either on my own or with Thomas, not Emma!lol

Thomas and Emma

Parade of Homes

This week, Shannon is doing yards in the Parade of Homes. We had our backyard landscaped 3 years ago...it was a big mudpit before!lol There's unfortunately not much to do with it, it's tiny and while it has gorgeous large trees, there's no sun so it's practically impossible to keep grass alive back there and after trying for a few years, we ended up bricking a lot of the yard. It's a great yard, but not for a family and the main reason we'll soon be moving... we'd love to have play equipment and maybe even a pool... not happening in this yard!!lol One of my fave things about this yard though is that we have a gasline that goes directly to the BBQ - we can hook it up on the deck or at ground level. It's so nice not to have to lug those gas tanks to get refilled and you never have to worry about running out of gas!

This is the view from our upstairs bedroom window.
This is the deck from the family room to the yard. Because it's high, I wanted some privacy but still wanted light which is how I ended up picking these frosted Plexiglass panels.

First day of school!

Here's Emma ready to head off to her first day of school... okay, not so sure it qualifies as first day of school since it's one morning a week and I stay for the whole thing, but close enough!lol

Recipes

Someone was just asking me for the muffin recipe I'd posted about somewhere along the way on the blog so I thought I'd post it for all since it's so yummy. I also just got a potato salad recipe from another friend which we also all love so thought I'd post that too. Here goes:

Banana Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Muffins

2/3 cup sugar
3 TBSP vegetable oil
3 TBSP peanut butter
1 large banana, mashed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 tsp soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup 2% plain yogurt
3 TBSP semi sweet chocolate chips (the mini size works best)

Mix all ingredients, pour info muffin cups, bake 15-18 minutes at 375.

I usually triple the recipe, these go quickly!!


Red Potato Salad

2 3/4 lbs of red potatoes, cut in one inch squares (peels on, baby red potatoes work great)
1 red onion
5 slices of crispy bacon, finely chopped
3/4 cup mayo
3/4 cup plain yogurt
3 green onions, finely chopped
Salt and Pepper

Boil potatoes, let cool, mix in other ingredients, let sit in fridge at least 2 hours before serving.

Go Thomas Go!

Just a little brag. They had a sports day at Thomas' school yesterday and they had various activities for the kids to try out. Thomas beat the previous Junior (Grades 1-3) basketball record of 9 by making 10 baskets in 60 seconds. :-)

These boots were made for walking!

A lot of our girls seem to like wearing their siblings or parents' shoes. Emma takes it one step further!! Here she is wearing a big pair of rubber boots we got for Thomas' camp sleepover this summer...the boots are big on Thomas, so you can see that they fit Emma quite well!lol And yes, I know, she could use a haircut... we just can't decide what we want to do with her hair so for now, we're going for the messy look!lol

Parade of Homes - Week 7

This week, Shannon is looking for us to post "bonus rooms", basically any room that hasn't been seen yet. Well, most of our "not as yet seen" rooms will remain that way as they're more junk rooms than anything else!lol I have some old pics of the playroom though, so I thought that' s what I'd use this week. This is our basement TV/playroom. It's changed a bit since these pics were taken - the computer has moved upstairs and we've had built in bookshelves installed all along the walls behind the couch for Gary's books - his library used to be Emma's room. This was how it looked "before Emma", now there's a ton of baby stuff, not to mention a treadmill, filling the room. I'd take pictures as it looks today but it would take me a week to clean the room up first so that's not happening!lol

TV/toy storage area

Sitting area, which one of our cats is taking advantage of. If you've seen other pictures of our home, you might have noticed that I love red. So, this is my BIG red sectional sofa... the fact that it's dark enough so that the kids can spill pretty much anything on it without it showing is a bonus!lol

Our other cat (there are 2 cats, they're both black and white though so they look like the same one unless you look closely!lol) is enjoying the window view - they like sitting in that window since it's at ground level and they can "chase" the squirrels more easily than the upstairs windows!lol

What changes one year brings!

I got this idea from Ruby's mama who posted pics of Ruby with her referral pic on her one year anniversary...we're a few days late, but I thought it was a great idea so I copied it. Here are Thomas and Emma, holding Emma's referral pics which we got on September 3, 2005. We all fell in love with her immediately. Our agency called to say they were e-mailing the pictures and we all ran to the computer and it seemed to take forever for her little face to pop up, bit by bit, second by second. She was gorgeous, and just looked so very familiar from the very first moment we three saw her beautiful face.

Ummm...

It looks like Emma's not too sure what to make of this particular park bench!lol

What do you want Emma?

Look at Emma, what is she trying to get her hands on...she's on her tippy toes as far as humanly possible!
C'mon folks, this is Emma, you knew it had to be food related!!lol Yup, she's trying to steal (borrow?) Thomas' slice of chocolate banana cake. When we were visiting my family last month, my father nicknamed Emma "Seagull"... anytime anyone had food she'd run at them with her mouth wide open yelling "food" or "eat"!!lol Subtlety is her middle name!lol

What's Emma doing?

We're not big on video games here...we don't have any of the standards like Xbox and such. Anyhow, last week I was at TRU and saw this cheap game that you attach to your TV and it was PacMan - the one video game I loved as a teenager. Anyhow, we picked it up and Thomas and I have been playing (I can get to the 6th screen so far!lol) and Emma insists on having her turn as well!lol

Dresses everywhere!

Gary and I had a date night this weekend and we went out to dinner and a movie. Well, the movie was at a mall and we got there early so we - okay I - did a little shopping at a new childrens clothing store. Emma now has all the dresses she'll need for fall and winter! Have you noticed I'm not much of a "frilly dress" kind of gal... I like "clean lines" in everything from clothes to architecture!lol

Emma and Rebecca

We've all been so busy, it's been a few weeks since Emma and Rebecca got together. Here they are enjoying a beautiful end of summer day.

Cutie Emma

Just a cute picture of Emma. :-)

Parade of Homes - Week 6

This week, Shannon is looking at bedrooms. Here are some bits and pieces of our 4 bedrooms... the rooms were too messy and I didn't have time to clean up, so these are just little snapshots of the neatest parts of some of the rooms. For instance, we do have a dresser in our bedroom, but there's so much junk on it, I wasn't cleaning it for the picture, nor was I sharing what a clutter bug I can be with everyone!lol

This is the little reading nook in our master bedroom.

This is Thomas' room. If you look closely, you'll see that on the floor, he's building a zoo and you see a little bit of it here... there are all kinds of animals, including some aquatic ones in plastic bowls!lol There is currently barely any space to walk in his room as the zoo takes up most of the floor!

This is a little bit of Emma's room, taken before she joined us, so it's quite neat still... if you saw it today, well, it's a different story - I don't think the quilt has actually been in the crib since she started using it - it's always lying beside it, not to mention that she thought the bumpers were useful climbing gear and they've since bitten the dust!lol

This is a picture of our bedroom, Toby the cat is the model. I love our room, it's so soothing and relaxing.

This is a painting on our bedroom wall. It's one of my very favourites. If you're thinking it's a lovely painting of Thomas - you'd be wrong, it's not Thomas, but it sure could be. A couple of years ago, we were in San Francisco. I love art galleries, and wandered into this one gallery. The artist had just dropped off a few paintings, they were just sitting on the floor and I immediately fell in love with this painting. We have a picture of Thomas from a couple of years before this, he's walking on a beach on one of the barrier islands just outside Charleston, South Carolina and I swear this picture is him. I went back a couple of times to look at the painting but left San Francisco without it. I just couldn't get it out of my mind though and a couple of weeks later, I called to find out if it was still available and if they'd ship it to me - it was and they did. :-)

First day of school!

Thomas started school this week. It seems like it was only yesterday that my baby was a baby...he's growing up so fast!! He was perfectly fine with the first day of school, no butterflies or anything, but I was a little emotional. And to add to it, as I was driving him to school, what comes on the radio but Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle"... now come on radio people, don't play that when we're taking our kids to school!! Anyone else reading this blog old enough to know this song??lol Anyhow, I held myself together and he even let me take a picture of him at his desk...soon enough, he won't even let me walk him to class I'm sure!lol

Future gymnast?lol

Emma is now greatly entertained by her attempts, as far as we can tell, to do the splits. This little one has so much personality, she's just hysterical. So here she is attempting the splits, with a piece of naan bread in one hand and blankie in the other - life is good!lol

Off...again!!!

Because apparently having pretty much crossed North America from coast to coast and practically from North to South in the last couple of weeks wasn't enough for us, off we went again a few days ago. Well, I decided I wanted to stay in a cool boutique hotel, not the family based suites hotels that we now most often book these days . The fact is, these suites hotels are the most convenient, but they're not the most interesting. However, it's tough having just one room with kids...what do you do after they're in bed?? I remember once a couple of years ago, we rented one room only and Thomas was in bed by 9:00 and Gary and I were sitting in the bathroom reading!!lolol Anyhow, so Thomas thought this was the coolest room we've ever stayed in because it was on 2 levels. The service was also impeccable - I can't remember feeling this pampered at a hotel in a very long time. It's just the little touches: the plants and orchids were real (I really dislike fake plants... would rather have none than plastic!), we requested a crib for Emma and it was in the room when we arrived (yeah, this should be an obvious one, but trust me, I've had to make many a call and wait for hours for Emma to get a crib at other hotels), there were a bunch of complimentary water bottles in the hotel, as well as a basket full of them by the front door of the hotel so you could pick up some water on your way out exploring; chocolates on the pillows and when the valet brought your car, he referred to you by name, etc... just a bunch of little things, but they just make you feel like they're on the ball at this hotel. Also, it's not a kid based hotel, but the staff went above and beyond and out of their way to speak with the kids and make their stay enjoyable as well. My pics really don't do it justice, but here we go:

Gorgeous and huge bathroom which included a soaker tub and a separate toilet area.

Here is something I don't think we've ever had in a hotel room before - our very own washer and dryer, not to mention all supplies at hand. If I'd known this, I would have packed much lighter!lol

Thomas heading upstairs for a tour.

The main floor living area which included an office area, a TV area, a kitchen area and another bathroom.

Referral

One year ago today, we got our referral for Emma!! I can't believe it's been a year already!! For those of you still in the waiting stages, there are just no words to describe the moment you find out about your child and the first time you see their picture. I felt totally spaced out for days after... I kept joking with Gary that I was as out of it the first few days after we got our referral as I was after I physically gave birth to Thomas years before... becoming a mommy, no matter how, just does that to your brain cells. :-) Also, in the next week or so, we hit another milestone of sorts...Emma will soon have spent more time with us than she has with anyone or anywhere else. :-)

Parade of Homes - Week 5

Here are 2 of our bathrooms. This house is the first one we've had (it's our 3rd house) where we have a master ensuite and I love it. So, love the big tub, love the huge shower, love the double sinks...I'm very much a bath girl and this room is really soothing. Also included is a pic of Thomas and Emma's bathroom. A few years ago, Thomas asked when we were painting the bathroom if we could do a jungle theme... no problem, turned out really neat. :-)