Happy 4th Birthday Kyle!!

Yes, this is my little boy at 4 when I told him I could take a picture of him and put it on the computer! Silly thing that he is!

We've already had a hilarious conversation too! I was telling him how 4 years ago today, I was in the hospital and he was born. I told him how happy I was and that I cried when he was born because I was so happy. He then proceeded to ask one "the" questions: "Well, how did I come out?". I wrongly assumed that the the quick "I went to the hospital and the doctor helped me" would work! Nope! The next comment was "I want to see where I came out of you." I told him that we'd talk more about that another day! Guess it's time to get a book from the library with a little more information! Oh to be 4 and curious...

Well, I'm not even sure where to begin explaining how much I love this little man or how wonderful he is. Of course, there are "those" days when he seems to drive me crazy, but that's generally more about me than him. He asks a million questions these days and is a real parrot, so you need to be careful! I love hearing the stories he tells himself when he thinks no one is listening! He's still into trains (Thomas the tank Engine), planes and a newer thing is dinosaurs. He loves pre-school and reading and forever wants to go to the library to get Curious George books. He loves Shrek these days as well. He'd still rather be outside that in pretty much any day!

I also know he loves fireworks, so here are some for your birthday my little buddy!

I did a little interview with Kyle and these were his answers:
Favourite colour: Red
Favourite movie: Cars
Favourite TV show: Curious George
Favourite food: chicken
Favourite toy: Balloons
Favourite thing to do outside: Help Daddy
Favourite place to go: McDonald's

Happy Birthday Kyle!!!! Have a wonderful birthday and enjoy your 4th year!



Love,
Mummy

So much to catch up on...

I'm afraid this is going to be a quick one and I'll have to come back and update when I have more time. Kyle, George and my dad had a great time on Friday doing the "Day Out With Thomas" thing and I have pictures I'll post later too. Yesterday was a full one for me with a trip to the dentist (YUCK!) and a looooong lunch with some old friends from high school! Will fill in the details later!

Today, I'm off to work at the scrapbooking store for a bit and the it'll be home for a relaxing evening I think. I did a bit of scrapping Friday night too and came up with this for the Unpubbed Challenge.

The journaling was done a while ago as part of a blog entry actually and it reads:
What is it about that first cup of coffee in the morning?? I just love it! There's the wonderful smell of the coffee after you grind the beans and then there's the sound of it running through the coffee maker. Of course, we have an older coffee maker, so it's a bit noisier than most I imagine. It's all part of my morning coffee experience though! Then, you pour that hot, dark liquid into the cup just anticipating the taste. I only use one of 2 cups for my coffee - the one in the picture and another floral one that's even bigger. The size and weight of the cup is important! I also need to make sure it's a substantial cup as I don't want to be running back and forth for more right away.

I add my French Vanilla creamer to the coffee and stir gently. The anticipation as I bring the cup up to my mouth and get another smell of that wonderful brown liquid. And then there's that first steaming hot sip that seems to permeate every part of you and really means the day has started (whether or not I've already had a shower - which I usually have by the time I get my first cup!). Yes, I really do love my morning cup of coffee and can't imagine going without it!

Well, guess I'd better run this morning and go get ready for work! Have a wonderful Sunday everyone!

Cheers,
Colleen

Scattergories

I lifted this off Anilu's blog from yesterday and wanted to play! I love Scattergories and used to make my ESL students play too when I was teaching!

The game is SCATTERGORIES...it's harder than it looks!

Here are the rules: * Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the questions.
* They MUST be real places, names, things...NOTHING made up!
* If you can't think of anything, skip it.
* You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Name: Colleen

1. Famous Singer/Band: Cranberries

2. 4 letter word: Carp

3. Street: Columbia St. (local)

4. Color: Crimson

5. Gifts/Presents: Candles

6. Vehicle: Cadillac

7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Calendar

8. Boy Name: Chris

9. Girl Name: Carrie

10. Movie Title: Casino Royale - the last one I saw!

11. Drink: Chu-hi - Amazing Japanese drink!

12. Occupation: Carpenter

13. Celebrity: Chris Isaak

14. Magazine: Cosmo

15. U.S. City: Carlsbad, California

16. Pro Sports Teams: Calgary Flames

17. Fruit: Cantaloupe

18. Reason for Being Late for Work: Car accident

19. Something You Throw Away: coffee grounds

20. Things You Shout: Careful!

21. Cartoon Character: Chicken Little

as for other things going on around here...it's a big day because Kyle is going to "A Day Out with Thomas" with Grandpa and Daddy! He's more than a little excited and has been asking me to show him when on the calendar all the time. He's been telling people everywhere he goes lately too! I hope they have a good day and that it doesn't rain.

Nathan and I have the day to ourselves as a result, so I think I'm going to try and get a few things done that I couldn't otherwise since I'll have the car today too. Might try and get a little scrapping in at some point too if I can - maybe when Nathan has his nap. I'm sure the house will be calling me to do a little cleaning/picking up too especially since I worked the last 2 nights and that doesn't usually bode well for the house I'm afraid.

We did manage to get out of our jammies yesterday and went for a walk in the drizzle. Couldn't go to the park since everything was wet, but it was good to get some exercise and fresh air. A we're walking, Kyle says to me "What do you want to be when you grow up?". Well, I stifled a giggle at the question and nice to know he thinks I'm not grown up yet! Anyway, this is some of the conversation that ensued:

Kyle: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Me: A mummy
Kyle: NO! Really!
Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Kyle: A player
Me: (insert giggle) What kind of player?
Kyle: A spin the wheel player.
Me: Oh you want to be a game show player!?
Kyle: YEAH!! What do you want to be when you grow up? (question again!)
Me: A teacher.
Kyle: No way! Are you a teacher?
Me: Yes. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Kyle: A soccer player.

This conversation went around and around about 5 or 6 times and every time I asked what he wanted to be, I got a different answer. I love these conversations that just pop up.

Well, better run for now! Have a great day!
Cheers,
Colleen

A Thursday morning...

Well, it's another rainy morning here. Not sure what the forecast is for today, but the last I heard, it wasn't very good. It doesn't really matter in the sense that we don't have much planned other than maybe a walk or a trip to the park if it clears up a bit. Might be a "jammies day" if things don't improve out there!

Well, I worked last night after having the kids all day. It's funny, but I don't ever really feel tired until I get home. I guess because they're such different types of jobs, that when I go to the store, it actually can be a great feeling for me. It was really busy last night too with the 40% off cardstock that's going on right now. I probably spent an hour helping two women that were friends that were looking for different colours of paper! I work again tonight too, so I hope it's the same. Makes for a quick night!

Kyle had a great day yesterday because they had a field trip for preschool. They told the kids about this a couple of weeks ago and he's been asking ever since! They went to the fire hall and apparently it was a great success. Some of them got in one of the trucks though Kyle passed on that. They showed the kids what the fireman looked like all dressed in his gear with a mask and everything. They spent a bit of time talking about fires and what to do and watched a little movie. Kyle LOVED it! The funny thing is that after all that, George set off the fire alarm with the toaster last night, so Kyle and I had a talk about that this morning and why we have it!

I managed to get another layout done for the team challenge at Scrapperie. I'm also hoping to find someone to fill in for me while I'm gone so that my partner doesn't suffer from me being away on vacation for a bit! Have to see what I can do! Any takers for a scrap proxy?? hee hee

This is the layout I did and the only requirement was that it had to have 5 pictures. I had a couple more pages to scrap of our Canada Day last year, but here's one anyway!

Well, better go get a couple more things done and grab my coffee since it's done now before Nathan wakes up and Sophia gets here. Kyle's busy having his breakfast!

Gotta run, but have a great day!
Cheers,
Colleen

A New Day...

I never realized how important the half hour from 6:30-7am was until yesterday! I get up at 6am when George leaves for work and Kyle is generally up about that time too (much to my dismay and not for lack of trying other things to get him to sleep in!). I get him breakfast and then have my shower and start getting myself ready and make a cup of coffee. In that precious half hour before Nathan gets up and Sophia gets here, I generally sit in front of the computer and have my coffee and putter. I guess this is also my way of getting ready for the day too though because Sophia was here early yesterday and changed my routine.

Apparently, Sophia was not cooperating and was making it hard for Brian to get ready. Tracy had a meeting downtown to go to and had time to drop Sophia off, so I got a 6:30 phone call about doing that and 5 minutes later, they were here. Well, I'm afraid Sophia was about the same here and was for the rest of the day! I think she's teething and just isn't herself, but in all of that, I really missed my half hour to get ready for the day. That teething made for a long day though. Missing that time yesterday made me appreciate it all that much more this morning even though Kyle's been singing since he got up!!

I had a wonderful mail day though! I got a note that there was a package for the the day before, so after we'd had lunch, I packed up the kids and we headed off to the post office. I was so excited to see that it was a box of scrapbooking stuff that I'd won from Toni over at 2Peas on one of the challenge threads. Thanks Toni - I love all of it! So much fun stuff with stamps, chipboard, ribbon, etc! Can't wait to use it!

I also did some more scrapping last night for the challenge over at Scrapperie. The challenge was to do a layout with 1 circle, 1 square, 1 rectangle and 1 star. It was really fun! Here's mine:

This was the Challenge at 2Peas: Write about your whys/why nots for commenting on other ppl's blogs. Why do you leave comments? Why do you read something and choose not to leave a comment? Why do you comment on some blogs, and not on others?

I generally do try and leave comments on people's blogs if I'm taking the time to look. If there's really nothing I can relate to then I might not, but I'll even then post something like "Sounds like a a busy day" or something like that. I like getting comments on mine and it doesn't take that long if I'm looking anyway. If I have time to look, I figure I have time to comment.

Well, better run for now and do a couple more things before my day really begins here. Kyle's going to preschool today and they're off to the fire hall, so he's been excited for a week! Too bad it's raining though for our walk!

Have a great one!
Cheers,
Colleen

Catching up...

Let's see...where to start? I know it hasn't been that long since I blogged, but it feels like it for some reason! Guess we had a busy weekend and maybe that's why.

Friday was our anniversary, but before we had a night out, the kids and I had a busy day! Mum came early and we got ourselves all packed up and headed off to the local Children's Festival. We were glad we went early because it was a hot day! Laurel and Alexander and Claude and Even came to pick up Kyle in the van since I can't get all three kids in the car. After getting there, we found out where the preschool area was and the kids played in there for ages. There were things to climb, bounce and play on as well as a sandbox. There was a kite making station too, so I helped Kyle do that while mum watched the little ones. It was great to have her there and it meant I could do a few more things with Kyle too.

We decided we needed something to eat and a drink, so we went and found all the food stands. Mum and I had the obligatory mini doughnuts and a drink. Kyle, of course, didn't want any! hee hee I'd brought snacks/drinks for Nathan and Sophia too thankfully, but Nathan wanted doughnuts as well. I also got kyle a piece of pizza since he was going to be there a while. Mum, the little ones and I packed it in around 10:30 since they needed a nap and Kyle stayed with Laurel. They saw a concert after we left and Kyle ended up on stage dancing! They also went and ran around in the water park for a while too, so Kyle was more than happy!

Of course, on Friday night, George and I had an evening out to ourselves. We were lucky enough to have mum here to watch the kids, so we went to Anducci's for dinner. It's great Italian food if you've never been. The portions are ridiculously huge, so we decided to order a salad first and share a pasta. We also had some garlic bread and even between the two of us, we didn't quite finish everything! We popped over to the mall across the street too because we needed a wedding gift for Saturday and it was nice to walk around holding hands and be able to do things at our pace without having to answer a million questions or deal with Nathan trying to squirm out of the stroller. It was nice just to spend some time together and we need to do it more often!

This is the card I made for George as an anniversary card:

Saturday was a fairly relaxing day and we really didn't get up to too much. I scrapped a bit and Kyle and George washed the car and did some weeding. We tried to get Kyle to nap since he was going to be up late, but no go! We'd been invited to an Indian wedding and though the invitation said 6pm for the reception, we were told to come about 7pm, so we did! Well, it was a reception for about 400 people and there was hardly anyone there when we got there. The hall was stunning though complete with an ice sculpture and the whole bit.

We found a table and eventually saw some other people we knew. A lot of people showed up between 7:30 and 8 and by about 8pm, they put out appetizers! The food was fantastic though some people at our table found it really spicy. Some had never had Indian food either and were asking lots of questions. The couple showed up about 8:30 maybe and they cut the cake, there was a dance performance and a slide show and then the first dance. While that was all happening, there were plates of "finger food" coming around to the tables - all of it amazing. By about 9:30-9:45, Kyle was getting really tired and they were still doing some dancing. It was going to be a while until dinner, so we ended up going and picking up Nathan at Tracy's. As it was, by the time we got home, it was almost 10:30 - a late, but fun night for Kyle!

Sunday was a relaxing day for the most part. Did a little grocery shopping and went for a drive out to the store I work at (so I could pick up a couple of things), but not too much going on!
I did manage to get some scrapping done in the last little bit and these are a couple I did. The first was for a challenge at Scrapperie to use a TV show name as a title for a layout and this idea immediately came to me as something I'd been thinking about scrapping for a while and hadn't. It's a layout about mum and how thankful I am that she's an amazing cancer survivor along with being everything else that she is.

This one is for the One Little Word Challenge that was inspired by the Ali Edwards blog challenge at the beginning of the year. Had fun with this one and got to use a blurry picture of Nathan. It's all about how he seems to be in a perpetual state of motion these days and doesn't like to stop!

Well, better run for now, but hope everyone is having a great week!

Cheers,

Colleen

5 Years Ago Today...

It's hard to belive that at this time 5 years ago I was probably having my hair and make-up done for our wedding! It seems like only yesterday that we were getting ready and enjoying a gorgeous day like today!

The reality is that it's been a jam-packed 5 years. We've moved into our own house and had 2 lovely little boys. I'm now staying at home with them rather than teaching and who knows what the future has in store for all of us. I can only say that with each and every day I truly do feel very lucky.

I love you George and thank you for being a wonderful husband.
Colleen