Ride 'em cowboy!

Here's Thomas doing a little "riding" in the neighourhood!lol I know you can't really see his jeans, but I am so thrilled, I finally found a pair of pants that's long enough for him! I was at Gap yesterday and they had these cute jeans lined in a plaid flannel - ideal to wear around here for the next few months. Anyhow, they surprisingly came in a "slim" size (most of their pants do not) and I bought a pair to try out. Well, lo and behold, no need to adjust the waist and I think they made them longer so that you could wear them with a plaid cuff if you wanted, the length is actually good! They had 2 different kinds of these jeans so I went back today and bought another pair. You just have no idea how tough it is to find a pair of pants for my tall and slim boy! BTW, our family is at interesting heights right now - Gary is 6 foot 5, I am 5 foot 5, Thomas is 4 foot 5 and Emma is about 2 foot 5!lol

Cool toy!

We just found the coolest toy! Thomas was playing at a friend's house yesterday and his friend had just gotten this toy as a birthday gift so they opened it, charged it and tried it out. It was so cool, when I picked Thomas up, we headed to the store to get our very own. We went out to the park today to play with it and it's really fun outdoors where it can really fly. Thomas was kind enough to give good ol' Mom a few turns as he could tell I really liked it too!lol And let me add a big THANK YOU to Susan for showing me how to insert a link into a post!! Next thing you'll know, I'll actually be a proficient computer user!!lol

I love you!

Here's Emma saying "I love you"... okay, so maybe she's more concerned with sticking her tongue out at me, but you get the idea... and you might also be getting the idea that our Emma does NOT perform on command!lol

I love you!

As of yesterday, Emma has started saying "I love you". Needless to say, it's the cutest thing and it just totally melts mommy and daddy!

Service, what service??

WARNING********RANT********WARNING

Ever feel like customer service is a thing of the past?? I'm old, I remember when there actually used to be such a thing! I had a little run in with our cable company today. I'm not sure that there exists a more frustrating company to deal with. When it comes to cable here, your neighbourhood is assigned to a cable company, so short of getting a dish, you don't have cable options. Anyhow, there was a problem with that TIVO like thing I got a couple of weeks ago and the cable company, which we'll refer to as M.O.R.O.N. for the purposes of this post told me to take my fake TIVO, pack it up and bring it in to their store to get a replacement. Today, I drive 30 minutes to their store, wait 30 minutes while the one clerk, who is obviously not pleased at actually having to deal with real customers, ever so slowly and reluctantly does her job. Finally, it's my turn, hand in the fake TIVO get a new one, and off I go. Get home, set up unit...umm...I know technology is moving along quickly, but shouldn't unit need to be plugged to an outlet to work?? And if so, why isn't there a plug with said unit. Well, I then call M.O.R.O.N. to ask this very question and I'm told that of course, there's a plug with it... well, sweetie, it ain't in the box. Trust me, I've torn the box apart and there's no plug. Now here comes what I think is my reasonable request - given that I've already wasted over an hour of my time replacing a defective unit, do you think you guys could possibly just drop off a plug at my house in the next day or two or even mail one. Well, you'd think I was asking them to run through the streets naked!! No ma'am, we can't do that, we have to schedule appointments and there are no appointments available til next Tuesday. Umm...do you really think it's reasonable to wait a week to get a plug, all the while having no cable for which I am still paying?? I see your trucks in the neighbourhood all the time, what if you check the schedule, see what nice cable guys will be in the neighbourhood, and ask one of them to just leave a plug in my mailbox. Oh no ma'am, that's against procedure, there are procedures to follow. Okay, scratch the helpful cable guy dropping off a plug if that mere little fact would send the company into a tailspin, what if you just mail me a plug...I'll get it in a day or two and I can live with that. Oh no ma'am, we can't mail them, that goes against procedure. So, if I'm understanding correctly, anything that's even REMOTELY helpful goes against procedure - that sounds about right, doesn't it?? Now c'mon, expecting them to mail me a plug or have someone drop one off instead of me wasting another hour to go fix their mistakes - is that really asking too much??? (Apparently, it is!!) End of rant. :-)

Thomas Quotes

Through the years, my MIL has kept a record of funny things Thomas has said (which is more than we can say for his parents!!) and today she forwarded a bunch of funny things he said when he was little...here are a couple:

2.5 years old:

MIL: Remember when you were little and couldn't walk?
Thomas: Do you mean I had no feet?


Me: Do you want to go on the swing?
Thomas: No.
Me: Why?
Thomas: Because it moves, mommy.


Thomas spoke early but he's also always had a really good command of the language. His teacher this year was telling us she finds he has a really amazing vocabulary. The fact that he's a voracious reader certainly helps, but even before he could read, he really understood a lot of the intricacies and subtleties of the English language (sometimes better than his mommy but I blame that on the fact that French is my mother tongue, not English!lol). I remember being in the car with him when he was 3 years old or so and I'd made a "rude" comment aimed at another driver (probably something to the effect of "will you pick a lane" or "how much greener are you waiting for that light to turn"), and I hear from the back seat "mommy, are you being sarcastic?"!!lol

One of the things I hope this blog will give us is a little slice of the kids' histories as they grow... we forget so quickly!! For instance, not quite a year later, our time in China seems so distant and I've forgotten so much already. It's nice to be able to go back and read a bit about it, it does help bring back memories.

Emma, like Thomas, seems to be developing her language skills at a fast pace. She's speaking in short sentences and Gary is also teaching her some Mandarin words. I'm afraid she's leaving me in the dust already! We were out walking in the neighbourhood yesterday and she was sitting in her stroller and kept pointing to the lady and dog walking just ahead of us and saying "mommy wayba, wayba... I was thinking that sometimes I really don't understand her, that is until later that day when I heard her with Gary. They were looking at animal pictures in a book and she kept saying "wayba". I asked what that was - it's a tail Gary tells me. My sweet little girl, on our walk, was pointing out that the dog in front of us was wagging his "wayba"...too bad mommy is totally clueless!!lol So now, I'm having Gary teach me words as well so that when Emma asks for her "lau-ou" puzzle, I know to pull out the tiger!lol Oh, and you should just see her imitating wild cats... her meows (howls??lol) are just hilarious...she thinks she's quite ferocious!lol

Emma's very own style!

Here's what Emma would look like if she got to dress herself - a shirt, a winter hat, no pants and the one mitten she was wearing just fell off!lol She's still cute as can be of course - even with the green stuff coming out of her nose!lol

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