Expensive Toys Not Required

Yes, a cardboard box and some leftover packaging from office furniture can make for plenty of fun for a busy toddler, especially with someone new around who can think up different, fun and creative ways to play with them. Tina and Dale's visit was very popular with our two little munchkins, (and their parents)!
I plan on scrapping this picture of Eric and Dale but have to share now because it's just too cute! Sometimes I lament that Canada is such a big country...it's a LONG way to Manitoba (and BC, and Saskatchewan!!) If we lived in Europe we'd be traveling through 4 countries if we were driving 15 hours to see someone, sheesh. But I shouldn't complain about space and wide open landscapes, should I. I'll just be thankful for airplane travel, blogs and long distance plans! We love and miss all of you out there. And we are very happy when you come to visit!!

Kid Canada

Jack is starting to like to play pretend, it is really fun to see his imagination develop. Go Jack Go!

Lazy Morning

It's 9:30 and I'm still in my pajamas, Jack is watching Kids CBC, Eric is playing in the excersaucer and I've been scrapbooking for the last hour. Yesterday I had a horrible migraine and I'm still feeling not quite myself so I've been taking it easy and just puttering. Usually it is Darrel who has the migraines around here but yesterday I was miserable. I phoned Darrel and he thankfully came home from work to take care of all of us. Thanks honey! I haven't had a headache like that in probably a decade and I'm not eager to experience one again. Good thing I had some Tylenol 3s left from when I had ear surgery. They are a good good thing! (Bless Dr. Garber who gave me a full prescription even though I only needed a couple, they've come in handy!)
Jack has dumped the toy box and is using it like a boat to sit in and watch TV. He's starting to get more and more imaginative. This morning Darrel came into the bedroom and told me that Jack had "told" his first joke. He followed Darrel into the bathroom, shut the door, said "uh-oh" and then turned to Darrel and started laughing. It is so interesting to watch your child's personality emerge! I guess though it is time to get a move on and clean up (me and the house!) There's the customary laundry, dishes, and floors to do and I also have high hopes of sewing some kitchen curtains today. I've had the fabric for over two months and have been trying to find an hour or two to actually sew them. I think I'll just have to skip cleaning the bathrooms today (oh darn!) and do the curtains.

Keeping Up

Ok, how do people with many children keep up their scrapbooks! Ahhhh, I'm sooo far behind!!! I have yet to scrap November in Eric's baby album, and I had promised myself I would stay caught up on that one at least. Yikes...honestly how do you girls with 4, 5 and 6 kids do it? Does your youngest have any pages of their own???


CRAP!!!! I just noticed that in my tired scrapbooking frenzy I have circled 22 as Jack's birthday which is wrong, his birthday is 18th, and Eric's is the 22nd. It's already happening, the mixing up of children. Some days I feel like I should be that woman in the Dr. Seuss book, "who had 22 sons and named them all Dave"! Oh, I'm too tired, I should be in bed, I'll fix it tomorrow!

Happenings...

So, it's been a few days of firsts around here.

1. Yesterday Eric had solid food for the first time. He's been making like he's starving lately and his growth has dropped off and being only 3 days short of being six months old, (the age that doctors now recommend starting babies on solids), I decided to take the plunge. As it is with all babies, he was not enamored with the rice cereal the first go around, nor on the second time today. But I'm sure he'll soon be gobbling like it's going out of style.

2. We bought a new table today at IKEA. We have been using the table Darrel had prior to our marriage. While it is a perfectly nice table it's rather smallish and hard to fit more than two people if you want to actually serve the food on the table. So, we ended up going to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and buying a gi-normous table. My mom joked that it would serve our family for many years to come, and I said yes, we'd have to have A LOT more kids to outgrow the 10 people that it can seat. (Darrel is laying on the table for demonstration purposes only, we don't normally recline on the kitchen table.) As you can see, it's pretty darn long, and that's WITHOUT the extra leaf. Now we'll just have to save up for chairs so we can seat everyone!

3. Jack said his own name for the first time today. He pointed at Darrel and said Daddy, pointed at me and said Mommy, and pointed at himself and said, "Ja". What a smart lad! It was highly cute, and we tried to get him to repeat it but nope, no go. You know, you really have to be vigilant as a parent to catch all these developmental things. Children like to throw them out there like little bones. You think you are teaching them but really they are training you. "Hmmm, let's see, if I say "Ja", they'll clap and laugh, say I'm the smartest boy ever, and hang on my every move for the next 20 minutes, what else can I make them do?"

A Birthday in Our House

Mr. Jack turned 2 yesterday. It was a pretty fun day. Mommy, Jack and Eric went to the mall and visited the pet store. Jack loved watching the fish and was also very interested in the birds, bunnies, ferrets and puppies. What a great way to spend a winter afternoon! When Daddy came home we had chicken fingers and french fries for supper and then cake and presents. As you can see, Jack still has a healthy respect for fire, there was no enticing him any closer to that sparkler.

I discovered that birthday cakes are a lot more difficult than I could have possibly imagined. The two lumps on the cake are SUPPOSED to be balloons. Good thing I didn't attempt the Thomas the Train cake that I was planning earlier in the week. That would have been a huge disaster. I had also attempted to make a cake from scratch using egg replacer. Yeah, um, not so successful. The cake is not light and fluffy, more reminiscent of pound cake in texture. And as Darrel aptly described, "tastes like pancakes." Probably because egg replacer is a lot of baking powder and baking soda mixed with some other leavening agents. Yeah, so the cake was not so great on a couple of fronts. Oh well. I think store bought theme cakes are in this family's future!




Nan's gift of the Talking Elmo toy was/is a big hit. It's chattering away this morning as Jack takes it from room to room. The front loader, (or just Truck as Jack calls it), is also popular, all of the Noah's ark animals have been rounded up and dumped a number of times.

Tag, I'm It

Lily tagged me with this challenge:

1) Grab the book closest to you
2) Open to page 123, go down to the fourth sentence
3) Post the text of the following 3 sentences on your blog
4) Name the author and book title
5) Tag two people to do the same

The book closest to me happened to be a cook book I was browsing to make Jack's birthday cake. The no egg, no dairy restrictions in our house kind of limit using cake mixes. So I am attempting one from scratch. Lo and behold page 123 is actually not full of recipes but a description about fruit. I have to say that for a cookbook, the Rombauers write extremely long sentences! Their knowledge on everything culinary has made, "Joy of Cooking" somewhat of a bible and so I guess they can run on as much as they like!

"Shown above, in addition to Twain's irresistible watermelon, are such staples of the world's diet as bananas and dates -and in more northerly climates, the pear; a papaya, whole and halved, next to a compote of kiwi. A spray of litchi and a Japanese persimmon contrast with the sweet-sour carambola, shown whole and in starry cross-section.

Today's menu-builder often takes herself too seriously and tops off an impressive edifice with a disastrously rich dessert, forgetting that fresh fruit, with perhaps a cheese, would be a far happier conclusion of the meal for all concerned."

Joy of Cooking, by Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker

And even though they do not have blogs I tag Marta and Dale to be the next to do the challenge. They are always reading something interesting. You guys will just have to email me your "posts".

What Song Lyrics Do You Identify With Right Now?

I have been listening to the Jann Arden CD 'Blood Red Cherry' the last couple of weeks as I drive around. I had forgotten how much I like that album. It reminds me of living in Vancouver in the fall of 2000 as that's when I bought it and I was fairly obsessed with it and played it non-stop. I was telling Darrel that the song'Taste of This' makes me happy because it reminds me of all the good in my life that I have. While day to day life can be crazy I am immensely grateful for our little family and the security and love that I have with Darrel.
A couple of months ago our Bishop asked to meet with us just to get to know us better and during the course of the conversation made the observation that 'you guys look very devoted to each other'. Darrel's response was that in me, he had finally found someone that cared as much about him as he cared about them. And I would have to say that I am blessed to have the same thing in him, and that is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Simply Me Challenge

I was browsing a scrapbooking site today and they had a list of questions to be used to create scrapbook pages about yourself...instead of only scrapping your kids. So here's mine for today.

Remembrandts

So Karly asked a while ago what the name of my business is going to be...and tada, from Darrel, the name is Remembrandts...with the slogan being, Making Masterpieces of your Memories. I love it, Darrel is a marketing genius. (As long as people clue in on the Rembrandt tie in...and can remember how to spell it when they pass my website along!)

I have made a couple of sample albums using Erika's wedding photos...which are beautiful, thanks sis!
My idea is to have a number of different samples on my website to give people ideas of what is possible/available.

So here's some pages from the first style of album:






And these are some pages from the second style of album:






The books are going to be printed in an 8x10 (landscape) hard cover, bound book. I can't wait to have one done to see how they turn out. My next steps for my business are to finish up these sample albums, build a website (really give Darrel a clue as to what I want so he can build a website, lol!) and get the technical/legal stuff done (ie, visa/mc merchant??...I would like people to pay me of course!) So slowly but surely things are coming along. yay!

Getting Organized

I love the New Year and how it makes you want to get into gear. Last weekend we (well Darrel) hung the sign that Karly made us for Christmas. I love it, it serves as a daily reminder to me to be a peacemaker and that I need to work at creating the type of family I want. Thanks Karly!

Darrel also did some re-working of the laundry area in our basement. It's really nice to have the washer and dryer side by side instead of 8 feet apart! Also soooo handy to have a counter and shelf to hold supplies. He is now working on plumbing in the new laundry sink. We've really missed having one as we did in our old house. They are so handy for messy cleanup jobs. So I guess I can't really take credit for these projects as it has all been Darrel! LOL! Thanks honey for all of your hard work, you are great!

New Year, New Goals, or same goals re-resolved

I saw a neat idea on an online forum to create a layout with journalling centered around one main word. As I've been thinking of new year goals I came to realize that rather than the "more" I usually want, it's really less of some negative things that I want for my life this year. All put together it really comes down to the fact that I want MORE meaning and purpose in my life. Rather than living to make it through the days, weeks, months and year I want to embrace life and live each moment with the prpose of being happy, in the now and long term.

A Christmas Layout

Here's some pictures from Christmas scrapbooked in my new 8x10 page size. (I can't wait to publish my own blurb book at the end of 2007 with all of my layouts for the year -genius I tell you, genius!)



I know that the journalling isn't readable even when you click on the picture...sorry. If I leave these two page layouts bigger than the files are too large to post. So a synopsis: the large picture is everyone gathered at Anne's, (Nan/Mommie Dearest), for Christmas Eve Supper. On Boxing Day we had another present round with Grandpa Dan and Carol. Carol made these wet hair towels for the girls...it took some demonstrating for us to figure out how to use them! And most of the smaller photos are from our Christmas Eve $5 gift exchange. Darryl Galey was "lucky" enough to get the mask this year.