David's Christmas Concert

During the last week of school before Christmas break David was in his first school Christmas concert. He was so excited and the weeks following up to the concert he would walk around the house singing his class song. I loved hearing him practice his song in French. It is wonderful to see how happy David is being in school and how much he loves learning French.

David's Christmas Concert

A good start

This is how my kids spent one of their first days of Christmas holidays together. It seemed that every time I turned around they were doing something else. 

This was their first activity. They were building a ladder out of books so that superheros could climb up to the T.V.

Then David decided that we needed a wreath in our house so he made one.  

Here is our new spiderman Christmas wreath. 

Then they made a fort.

So they decided to at least pretend to sleep for a few seconds before they moved onto the next thing...

After that it was time for a train ride. They loved taking turns and yelling out "choo-choo, chugga, choo-choo". 

I surprised the kids by making a special dinner for the kids. We called it the "Tent Restaurant" and Chris served them grilled cheese and nachos. They both thought it was wonderful. 

All in all I think that today was a good day for them. At bedtime tonight they both said they were excited to see what they could make/create tomorrow.

A good start

Comics

How many of you have read comics as children or have grown up with them in your house? Or how many of you have spouses who have read comics as kids (or now)?

I grew up in a house full of boys. All of whom have been quite into comics at one point or other. Because of this close proximity, I picked up quite a bit of knowledge about the comic universe and a lot of the main story lines, and would even read a few comics when they were lying around. I might not have been jumping into the conversations, but as any other sister of a comic book fan will admit, you get a bit of a heart for that world.

I can remember the debates: Which superhero was the best; What villain was the worst; and of course Which was better, DC or Marvel? You may be asking yourself what DC and Marvel are? Lucky for you, I can give you a quick lesson. 

DC is the comic line that writes about Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash and Wonder Woman.

Marvel writes about Iron man, Thor, Hulk, Black Panther, Spider man, X-Man and Captain America.

Over the last year we have been introducing the kids to superheros. It started with Batman and Superman, then moved to Green Lantern and the Flash. I guess you could say we started with DC. This was the comics that my brothers were more into, but there isn't much out there that is not too dark for little kids.

Then over the last couple of months we have introduced the kids to The Avengers.  They are part of the Marvel comics and more of what my husband was into when he was young. It also is a bit lighter for some of the stories.

We found the carton series of The Avengers on Netflix and have been going through the shows with the kids. Its amazing to me how much my kids love superheroes. I know that when I was a kid I, along with my brothers, loved reading about them and watching different shows with superheroes in it. I guess I never really realized how much of a classic Superheros really are until now.

I realized how strange this might sound when I was having a conversation about the Avengers at Best Buy and the people that worked there were giving each other strange looks as my 3 year old daughter was talking about Thor and Iron Man...it was funny.

Comics

Smile

Yesterday I took out the camera and took some fun pictures of my children. It is one of the ways where you can tell how are kids have different personalities. These days, when I take out the camera to take pictures, Jaclyn will make lots of faces and want me to take pictures of her all afternoon. She will then want to look at every picture taken and then try again. David however, has a different reaction. For him it is almost like pulling teeth to get a pictures of him with him looking up at me and not hiding his face.  A full out smile looking at the camera is only possible when he is in the right mood, no matter how much you might try to talk him into it. This time I managed to get a few pictures of David looking at the camera.

Smile

Kindergarten

This post is a little late but I still wanted to post about David's first day of kindergarten. 

As some of you may already know I was planning on homeschooling our kids. We were thinking that because of Chris' work schedule with homeschooling he would be able to have a larger part in their life, this along with other reasons we were all ready to start the school chapter of our lives with homeschooling. 

However over the last year my health has not been the best and both Chris and I decided that instead of  homeschooling it would be best for David and Jaclyn to go to school. The kids and I were away on a trip for most of September and so we were a bit late for getting into a school when we got home. Luckly the school was up for working with us and we enrolled David into kindergarten at a French immersion school. He was a little sad to be away from me at first, but then he heard he would be in class with his best friend in town he started to get excited. Because of David's late enrollment it took him a little while to get as comfortable with school as his classmates were. 

He now loves school and looks forward to going most days (sometimes he wants to stay home because he thinks that he might miss something happening at home). 

David really loves his teacher and looks forward to playing with his friends. His favorite time of day is, not surprissingly, recess. He has also been teaching the rest of us French, he is doing really well now that he has adjusted to his new schedule. 

Here is David on his first day of kindergarten. 

I still can't believe he is old enough to go to school. Crazy how fast time has gone.

Kindergarten

First Craft of the Season

Both David and Jalcyn love being crafty. To them this could mean anything from coloring to creating with different materials or even make fun pictures with stickers. They just really enjoy being creative. This afternoon after they were warmed up from playing in the snow they wanted to do a craft. So I pulled out some of our craft supplies and let them create this years first winter craft. 

First Craft of the Season

Snow Day!

Winter is now upon us and it looks like it is here to stay. I have a love hate relationship with the winter months. I love how the ground and trees look after a fresh snow fall and I love how excited my children get when they see the beautiful snow outside our window. As much as I love the winter months the winter months do not like me. I get so cold that I feel chilled to the bone all the time which can hurt. As my husband pointed out this afternoon, I spend most days walking around the house with a blanket wrapped around me just trying to stay warm. 

Today Chris took the kids outside to play in the snow. They had lots of fun playing together. Jaclyn has been talking about making snow-angels for at least a month now and David has been looking forward to building a snow fort in our backyard.

Snow Day!

Clothes

Jaclyn loves clothes and picking out exactly (right down to the socks and underwear) what she is going to wear everyday. 

Here she is modeling one of her many outfits.

Clothes

Toothless Princess

When Jaclyn started to get her teeth 3 years ago, we noticed that she had an extra tooth overlapping two of her front teeth. After the "three in one" as we started to call them came through, I brought her to the dentist to see what we could do to help her. I was told then by that dentist and then by two others over the last three years that she was too young to have her teeth removed or we should wait until she is older (6 or so) until we remove any teeth. 

Over this time I have lost track of her fat lips due to her teeth sticking out in the front. Then last Christmas she broke off a part of the extra tooth and I was still told to wait. 

I was starting to get really tired of hearing I had to wait until she was older while at the same time having my daughter tell me that her teeth were hurting her.

So in August I requested again to see a pediatric dentist. They called back when I was away and then within 24 hours of calling them back I had her in.  After taking a look, we were told that she needed to have them removed immediately (and should have had them removed earlier) because of the teeth basically dying from being too close together.  So she was soon booked in for the removal of her "three in one". Actually she was booked for the next morning!

After waiting three years to get a straight answer of when we would remover her "sick teeth" as she called them. I waited a total of three days from my phone call to the removal. 

Three cheers for pediatric specialist!!

Here are some pictures I took of Jaclyn while we waited for her mini surgery.

She was a real trooper through the whole experience. 

Here are some pictures of her now that her "sick teeth" are gone.

My toothless princess!

Toothless Princess

Hair

October is coming to a very quick end and there has been a lot going on around here, if only I had the time to write about them. I have all these blog posts that I have planned, but none written. However, I don't have access to a computer very often, so I will be trying to put some more posts up in the next little while when my husband is home.

For now I wanted  to post this picture of me that Chris took tonight. Over the years, do to time or finances, Chris has been willing to do some extra things such as cut my hair. He has done it a few times now, and this evening he dyed my hair for the first time. Unfortunately, I did not take a before photo. But before the dye, I had a lot of blond highlights throughout my hair, but I had roots that were over three inches so it was time for a change. This time I went for something a bit more simple (and less frightening for my husband, who was already nervous doing one color) so now my hair is all fairly close to my natural color and is all in the same color family.

Hair

Stumbling Into Grace: Confessions of a Sometimes Spiritually Clumsy Woman - Book Review

Stumbling Into Grace: Confessions of a Sometimes Spiritually Clumsy Woman a book review.

When I received the book Stumbling Into Grace by Lisa Harper I picked up the book and read this on the back of the book.  

“So, today I’ve been thinking about...things that bind us. The thought flitted around my mind and then landed for a while, likely because I was wearing a pair of too-tight jeans.”

This made me smile; actually it made me laugh out loud. After reading that one paragraph I was intrigued even more and was really excited to read this book and discover how Lisa uses her life experiences and her interactions with Christ’s love as a “part diary, part devotional.”

Throughout this book, as you read it, Lisa will have you laughing out loud, bring tears to your eyes, and smiling like a little school girl, but most of all it will show you how God’s grace is all around us and in our daily lives.

Each chapter of this book is broken up into five parts. The first part is where Lisa tells a part of her story, where she uses humour, uncertainty, trust and sometimes a little sadness to tell how Jesus has shown Himself to her throughout her life.
The section after that, has a specific focus on scripture relating to the life of Jesus called: Jesus and ________ (this part changes with every chapter).
After that, we get into a great section, which is one of my favourite parts, where she looks deeper into the passage. I love to jump into the background and find out more about passages so I really appreciate how she takes the scriptures and gives them more meaning and depth.
The final section is called Hope for Our Ongoing Stories, where she helps to apply the bible passage to our everyday lives. Then at the end of each chapter there is a section where you can either do a personal devotion time with questions or a group devotion. So as you can imagine from this list Lisa Harper manages to pack a lot into each chapter.

I enjoyed every part of this book, I found that I learned a lot about myself as I looked at my life in some of the same ways I read about Lisa’s life and saw how God has given me Grace so many times even if I felt like I didn’t deserve it. It's as if I was taken on this journey while reading this book and Jesus showed me once again how much He loves me and gives me grace and wants to have a deeper relationship with me. 

I really loved this book and would recommend it to woman of all ages who are looking for a fresh look on the grace that Jesus gives us everyday. Throughout this book Lisa will use her life as an example of how we as woman can be stumbling through our everyday lives and how Jesus is waiting for us around every corner.

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Thomas Nelson Publishers has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book for review. 

I am not required to give a positive opinion but I am required to give my honest opinion.

Stumbling Into Grace: Confessions of a Sometimes Spiritually Clumsy Woman - Book Review

Wedding Bliss

Nine years ago I met a wonderful woman who later became my sister-in-law. I have gotten to know her through the years and have been blessed to call her my sister. Tara is an amazing woman and real woman of God. We have been praying for the man that she would share her life with.

This last weekend we were blessed to spend the weekend with Tara and Ben as they were married.

Flower girl.

Ring bearer.

Love them!

We were there too.

We all had a wonderful time at the wedding. Both David and Jaclyn loved being involved with their aunt and (new) uncles wedding. 

Congratulations Tara and Ben we love you both and look forward to watching your love continue to grow over the years to come.

Wedding Bliss

Cupcake Creations

This last week David asked me if we could make cupcakes. We didn't have a lot on our schedule and I was having a "good" health day, so the children and I gathered all the supplies we needed and then had fun making a mess in our kitchen. 

This is what happens when mom gets a call as we are setting up.

 "Look mom, they are all separated!"

 Tasting chocolate chips....yummy

 The best part of making cupcakes

 is licking the batter

 yummy!!

 Me and my little chefs

 They even managed to pull dad away from his office for a snack

Final cupcake creation. David called it our "cupcake family".

Cupcake Creations