Easter in Vernon

This past weekend we went to Vernon to celebrate Easter with Grandma and Grandpa. Gary was able to take some time off work so we ended up staying for almost a week. As you can imagine, there were many many pictures during that time so I've done up a slide show for them. I'm going to post it directly from the host site so it'll show up on it's own, I think. Highlights include the hunt for Peter Cottontail, Elijah cross country skiing for the first time and LOVING it, meeting up with another Erin and her kids Noah and Jacob to feed the ducks at the park and just hanging around with Grandma and Grandpa!

Our Olympic Post

Yes, this is long overdue, but I'm finally putting it together!

Despite feeling pretty ambiguous about the Olympics coming to Vancouver originally, we caught the fever like many others and ended up doing quite a bit to see it.

Charlotte and I participated first. We were invited by Yvette and Avery to go see the torch relay in New Westminster. It was a beautiful day and parking was reasonable. We walked a little way from the parking lot and met up near the stage in Queen's park. We didn't have long to wait. There was a huge stage and lots on entertainment. Unfortunately, Charlotte was due for a nap and we discovered she REALLY didn't like the noise of a cheering crowd. Also, I was distracted, when the torch came. I was trying to get a picture of all the workers on a nearby building and almost missed seeing the torch entirely! Yvette got some better pictures and posted them on her blog, so you can see them here. Here are the good ones I got.






Then it was Elijah's turn. Gary was away for work and Helen offered to take him downtown on the skytrain for a little taste of the Olympics. I dressed him up in his Olympics gear (thanks Uncle John!), gave him a Canadian flag to wave, a dino backpack to carry things and sent him with Helen. They both had a lot of fun. Here are the pictures I took before he left. There are more pictures from Helen here.




I really wanted to watch the opening ceremonies on tv so that night I made a "special" dinner of natchos and set up a little table for Elijah to eat in the tv room. He was excited about that too. It was a very long dinner. :D Kinda fun but kind of a lot of work to get the kids to sit for so long. Thank goodness for the PVR. :D I ended up watching the end of it after I put the kids to bed.



A couple days into the Olympics (a Tuesday) Charlotte and I took the skytrain downtown to meet Gary for lunch and wander around a little. Was fun to see all the people wandering around and check out all the different things going on. Got some pictures as well, the same ones you see everyone else taking! You know, the zip line, the CTV booth, the countdown clock, the buildings with ads on them. Oh, and Charlotte at the beginning and the end of this little adventure. I think we wore her out. :D


The next thing we did - Gary and I went to watch some short track speed skating! We bought the tickets from a brother of an ex-coworker of mine. (Thank goodness for Facebook!) It was pretty exciting. It was also the first time we left both kids for an extended period of time. We got 2 babysitters for this special occassion. :D (Thanks Helen and Shirley). The short track was at the Colliseum, not the Richmond Oval, which was too bad. Other than that, it was pretty fun. Line ups were not too bad for security. Transit was easy to use and well organized. All in all, a really good time. The events of the night were the Men's 1500m and the Women's 1000m races. Unfortunately, although there were some Canadians in each of the finals, we didn't win any medals that night.

The last direct participation I had with the Olympics was a hockey game! No, it wasn't a Canada game, but it was the quarter final between the US and Switzerland. Very cool. My wonderful, thoughtful friend Liliana invited me last minute. It was a Tuesday I think. Gary was at work, Elijah was at daycare and Charlotte was home with me. Liliana called me at 10:30 and by noon Gary was back home to watch Charlotte and I was just making through security to meet Lili. Very cool. Lots of fun! Thanks Lil!

So, that's the Olympic experience of our family. It was great. I'm pretty sure the children of Vancouverites will be more patriotic than we ever were. Elijah is now excited every time he sees a Canadian flag or even a Maple leaf symbol and he, along with many other kids, chant "Go Canada, Go!" a lot more than I ever did!

Continuation of my second (or fifth?) career

Those who knew me in university, know I'm a pretty mean Cardboard box furniture carver. Yes, I had some pretty stellar stuff carved out. Well, today I had opportunity to resurrect that career and apply it to a new problem. Fort building. I'd been thinking about it for a while now and the boxes were sitting ready. Finally got to it. The result is a two storey masterpiece with multiple windows. I have one more box, which I was going to add in some wonderfully crafty way but Elijah is content with pulling it up to the entrance of the existing and using it as a second room. Good enough. I think he likes it. :-D

Wobbly but determined

Remember how just last week we posted about Charlotte pulling herself up to her knees? Well, she's got a new trick.

Gary saw the first instance of this on Wednesday. She's been doing it continuously ever since. Pretty daring too; trying the one hand stance, jumping, looking around. Crazy girl.

Charlotte is 9 months

Yup, I'm 3/4 of the way through this mat leave. Hard to believe, that's for sure. Here are some recent pictures and videos of the little one.

She's learned to pull herself up from a sitting position to a kneeling position in her crib. Now that's all she does!

She also really likes to dance for some reason. It's pretty cute. There's a video of it at the end of this post.

On Tuesday night I attempted to cut her bangs again. They were getting so long! It was pretty easy to do, in the bath, but once it dried I realized I needed to cut more because the hair from the center of her head comes to the front. Oops. So, Wednesday night I fixed it and it looks pretty cute. Today I put her hair up in little pigtails for the first time - super duper cute! Here's a shot of that!

A note about Elijah: Last night was a bad night for sleeping. He was pretty much up from 1:30 to 4:30 in the morning. Still not sure what it was - trouble breathing again or dreams. Anyway, it was a tough morning. But, we did ok and actually had a breakthrough today! Before lunch he told me he had to go pee, so I put him on the potty and he announced to me that he was going to do a poop too. In the potty. Hello? I told him sure, that would be a good idea, thinking he wouldn't go through with it. But he did! Yay! So, he got a treat; some candy. And what do you know? He's done it twice more today! (Plus a big one in his pull up, but who's counting that?) So, is this a breakthrough?? You bet! He was super excited about it and got candy for it, so I think he's game to continue doing it. Yay Elijah!!

Just another day

Yesterday we went to floor hockey again. I managed to get Elijah to play for most of the session this time. I bribed him. Yes, I will admit to using that tactic when necessary. It was a cheap bribe; chocolate milk for floor hockey. Whatever works, right? He had a good time, so it was worth while.

After the session we were on the bleachers having a snack. I was holding Charlotte on my lap and opening a granola bar. She was grabbing for it and I joked to Yvette that she was looking hungry. Yvette offered me a baby MumMum for her since Avery was eating them. I thought I'd try it out, thinking Charlotte would just play with it or gag on it or something. Nope. She ate it so fast I couldn't believe it! Then she ate a second bar, holding it herself!! Crazy child. Guess I have to start buying some of those for her now.

The sun was out yesterday morning too, so when Elijah and Charlotte were finished their snacks we went outside. One of Elijah's favorite things to do is run. So, he ran for a while. We have a game in the dirt field outside of the community center. He picks a post to run to and I follow him with Charlotte in the stroller. He loves it. We ended up at the playground, which I thought would be wet. It wasn't so he played there for a bit on the slides.

After all that, we went home. In the car on the way home we passed someone walking. That led to a discussion about relative speeds of things. Cars are faster than people walking and riding bikes, but sometimes motorcycles are faster than cars. So, he says to me, "I'm going to get big and Papa's going to get small. Then I'm going to ride on the front of the motorcycle and he's going to ride on the back. Then we can go vrooooom aaaaall around the roads. Wouldn't that be cool, Mama?" Yup, that's his father's son.

Taking a walk

On Sunday, another beeautiful February day here in Burnaby, we went for a little walk down by the river. We fed the ducks mostly, but also walked around a little bit and just soaked up the sun in general. Gary and I both had cameras so we took a lot of shots.