Fun science

Since Cole has started preschool, I have noticed that he really does love learning.  He particularly seems to enjoy the science experiments they do at preschool.  Those are always the ones he tells me about when I pick him up.  He loved learning about the 5 senses by getting to sample some foods, among them, M&Ms.  He was also very excited to see what happened to the wishbone they had put in vinegar, an experiment which we have decided to replicate at home as well.  We just put the wishbone in the vinegar yesterday, so far, not too much has happened.

So, I have started doing some science experiments with the boys at home as well.  They are always very excited for them and thanks to Pinterest, I have found some really fun ones! Today we had some fun with food coloring.  First, we learned about absorption, using an experiment I found  here.

First, we put blue colored water into one cup and yellow colored water into another.  Then, we rolled up 2 sheets of paper towel and stuck them into the cups of colored water, with the other end in the empty cup in the centre.

  At first, the boys were quite excited to see what it did and had fun speculating what was going to happen.

 However, the experiment took longer than I expected, and longer than my 4 year old's attention span lasts! The end result is that the colored water is supposed to travel up the paper towels and drip into the 3rd cup, where it will combine to form green.  The boys were able to hold out long enough to see the water travel up the paper towels and the blue begin to drip into the third cup. (With the help of another experiment in the meantime)  And then C got impatient and just dumped both cups into the third cup!  He was pleased to see that the water turned green though.

He then spent the next half hour or so playing with the cups and paper towel and making it into a bunny!

The littlest one figured he needed to get in on the fun too and found the bottle of yellow food coloring that I had dropped on the floor.  And so our unplanned experiment - "What happens when the baby finds a bottle of food coloring?"  Ooops!  Hope I can get that out of his overalls!  I like those overalls!  (So far, Oxyclean seems to be doing the trick, and a good bath took care of my baby looking like he was in liver failure!)





While we waited for the colored water and paper towels to do their thing, we decided to see what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar.  Always a favorite experiment!  I decided to spice it up a bit by using colored water and a turkey baster.

 The boys were quite impressed with the fizzing.  Once they had used up all the colored vinegar, they wanted to get their hands into it.  Somehow, all our science experiments and art projects - or any involving paint, anyway - end up with a couple pairs of hands splashing around in them! Must be because I have boys! :)

  And that was how we spent a chilly Thursday afternoon.  It occupied a good hour or so of our time, and despite the splashing, didn't make too much of a mess.  Well, other than on the baby!

Oh, and see that overabundance of toys in the background of the last picture?  Yeah, we could open our own toy store!  One of these days, I need to do something about that!  Maybe that will be a future blog post...

Yo Ho Ho Ho, A Pirate's Life's for me

Wow, it seems like I am just really not good at this blogging thing!  I blame the fact that I do most of my computer work on my tablet and I can't upload pictures from there, so have to use the desktop for that, so I often don't get to it during the day.  However, right now, while my youngest is napping and my older 2 aren't fighting (knock on wood!), and I'm trying to attach pictures of clothes I'm trying to sell to an email, I have a few minutes!  So, I want to finally post some pictures of my middle son's 3rd birthday.  He turned 3 at the beginning of September.

Z is very much a typical middle child, I think.  He is happy and very active and full of life and is developing quite the silly little sense of humor.  He currently loves to joke by replacing the first letter of words to make up silly nonsense words. He is sweet and snuggly and loves to snuggle up and tell me, "My love you, Mommy."  He idolizes his big brother and loves his little brother.  And yes, he can be a bit of a pest at times! :)  He is a wonderful addition to our family.

Z started out wanting a Mickey Mouse birthday party. He loves Mickey Mouse!  But, that was what we had for his 2nd birthday, so Mommy wanted to do something different.  So, after discussing a few different options, we settled on a Pirate party.  He was soooo excited!  For weeks before his party, he was asking, "When is my Pirate Birthday Party gonna be?"  He still talks about it and asks when he gets a pirate birthday again.

Jeff made a pirate ship for the kids to play in.  It was a big hit! 

I love planning parties.  I literally spend hours on Pinterest and on party-planning sites (Catch my Party is one of my favorites) looking for ideas.  I have huge plans in my head for my kids' birthday parties!  Unfortunately, reality soon hits and I realize that I do not have an unlimited budget or time for throwing birthday parties!  I still found some really cute ideas that I was able to implement though.  My favorite, and a big hit at the party, was that I managed to talk my husband into building a pirate ship out of a couple furnace boxes.  Z was sooo excited! We had fish and chips and hot dog octopuses (hot dogs with spaghetti stuck through them) to eat, and I tried to make a watermellon shark.  Alas, I cut it wrong, so it was kind of a fail, but funny anyway! I'm pretty proud of the cake, which was a pirate ship and island.  Z was thrilled with it.  For favors, we did pails and shovels with some pirate goodies in them.  We also had hats and eye patches that the kids could take home.   All in all, even though I ran out of time for a lot of my ideas, I'd say the party was a success!  Z told me several times, "This is the best pirate party ever!"  So, without further ado, some party pictures!

We has supplies to decorate pirate hats and eye patches. 

You can't see it very well, but I hung a banner made by a friend of mine in the trees. 

Pirates Cove

The boys checking out the food table. 

I made some "Captain Hook" hooks out of chocolate.  

The Birthday Boy blowing out his candles. 

Opening presents.  I got him and big brother pirate outfits to wear, on the condition that they will wear them again for Halloween.  I don't think it'll be a problem getting Z into his, he wears the pirate hat everywhere! 

Big Brother in the pirate ship. 

(Pre)School Days!

It is a little hard for me to believe, but my oldest is 4 1/2 and is headed off to junior kindergarten this year.  This is his first year in school, as we chose not to do preschool last year, believing it would benefit him more to have more time at home.  In our province, he actually could be starting kindergarten this fall, even though he is barely 4 1/2, but to be honest, I thought that was a bit ridiculous.  He is still so young and active and busy and not at all ready to be stuck behind a desk.  And he has so long to be in school, why rush it?  So, to preschool, or, as they call it, junior kindergarten, he goes.  We found what I hope will be a great preschool just up the hill, a 5 minute drive from our house. Since I am running a day home and have to transport all the kids with me, it was important that it be close to us.

Wednesday was our preschool orientation.  We met the teachers and other kids and got to experience the classroom.  There were a few anxious moments for me when the teacher couldn't find Cole's name on the list or any of his paperwork!  But, after filling it all out again, I got a call that night that everything is sorted out and he is good to start on Monday. Still not sure what happened, since he was on some of their classroom lists, but at least it all worked out!  Cole was oblivious to all this and was very excited to explore his new classroom.  He was particularly pleased with the Cars stickers on the wall!  He told me several times that his preschool was the most fun place ever and the best place ever and asked me how long it was until Monday.  It's fun to see his excitement!  Let's just hope it lasts when he realizes he has to follow directions and do a little work in addition to all the fun things to play with!


I expect that I will probably cry on Monday when I take him to school.  Watching your babies grow up is rather bittersweet.  But his excitement will make it a lot easier.  He is at a stage where he separates quite easily, as long as the environment he is going into appeals to him, so I think he will do just fine!

Back to blogging

My poor blog has been a wee bit neglected for the past year and a half! I don't have much excuse, except that life with 3 boys keeps me busy!  Our youngest was born on January 24, 2012 and has rounded out our family very nicely!  I will do a blog post about him later. The bigger boys are enjoying having a baby brother and he adores them.  No one can make him laugh like his big brothers can! I have been trying to get a day home up and running, as I felt that with 3 boys, finding time to do the 20 or so hours of paperwork required for home assessments was just going to be too much.  We've had some challenges in getting kids who are a good fit in our home, so it's been a slow start, but we have a 4 year old boy right now who we really enjoy and are hoping will stick around! 

In other news, Cole is starting Junior Kindergarten this year and my Zachers turns 3 tomorrow!  So I have lots of blog fodder.

I have decided it is time to return to blogging so I will have a chronical of our lives for my boys.  Even if no one else reads it, I'd like to have a permanent record of our activities, the sweet, funny, and challenging things they say and do, and our journey together as a family. 

365 days of photos

I have seen a few friends do this, and decided it was a good idea.  I love taking pictures, and maybe if I focus on taking at least one a day, my photography skills will improve.  I decided to do it on January 1, thinking that was a perfect day to start, but didn't actually get a picture taken that day.  So, we'll go from Jan. 2, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012.  I'm sure most of my pictures will be of my kids.  It will be fun to watch them change and grow day by day through the pictures!
The only problem is that I seem to be physically incapable of taking only one picture at a time!  So, by the end of the year, I am going to have not 365 pictures, but probably 36500!  My husband, who already thinks I take far too many pictures, will be so pleased!
So, without further ado, here are the pictures for January 2 and 3.
                                             The boys playing tickle monster with daddy.  They sure enjoyed having him home for over a week at Christmas!

                                          Cole says he's taking a nap under the tree.  No, we haven't taken it down yet.  Cole loves it.  He says it's still Christmas and it should be Christmas forever!

25 Days of Christmas

I have seen this idea on a couple of other blogs and Facebook pages and decided I want to adopt it.  Some people do it in place of a traditional Advent calendar, but I love the Advent calendar tradition, so I'm going to do it in addition to that. (Although I am still waiting for the Advent calendar I ordered from Stampin' Up to arrive!)  Anyway, the basic idea is that for every day of December leading up to Christmas, we will do one special Christmasy or family thing.  I saw a really cute idea on a blog, which I will have to find the link to, where the mom made 25 decorated envelopes and put the activity of the day into them and then hung them from a clothesline with mini clothes pins.  Next year I'm going to do that!  However, this year, since I didn't decide I wanted to do this until yesterday - Dec. 1 - and the boys are still pretty young, I am just going to make a list of 25 activities and we will pick one each day.  Hopefully, I will then blog about what activity we did that day, with some pictures!
I just decided to do this last night, but we did actually do a couple of Christmas activities yesterday.  We went to Walmart to get Christmas pictures of all the cousins together - minus the one who lives in Seattle.  We missed her!  Our 5 kids range in age from almost 8 months to 5 1/2.  Getting a good picture of them was an adventure!  I put on a lovely show for anyone walking by, singing "The Hot Dog Dance" from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, to try to cheer Zach up, after he was a bit freaked out by the photographer trying to position him.  We have several pictures where someone is looking away, making a funny face, picking their nose... Cole spent a while blowing rasberries, so about 5 pictures have his tongue sticking out!  And he has an epic scowl in one of them! But we did manage to get a couple of keepers.  I wish we could have ordered all of them, just to laugh at!  Some were pretty funny!  It's fun for the kids to have their cousins so close by and be able to do things like this!  Afterwards, we went and bought the boys their special Christmas ornaments.  I am getting them each their own ornament each year, so they will have a nice start on a collection when they move out on their own.  Cole is obsessed with Disney Cars, so he got a Lightening McQueen and Sally ornament, and Zach got a Tigger one.

Here are the ideas I have for the rest of the month.  Most of them are borrowed from other people.  We probably won't do them in the order they're listed.
1. Make some Christmas crafts.
2. Make a gingerbread house.  Should be an adventure with 1 and 2 year olds!
3. Make and decorate Christmas cookies.
4. Put up the tree and decorate the house. (Planning to do this on Saturday)
5. Go for a ride in the sled.
6.  Go to look at the lights.  Hopefully, weather permitting, we can go out to the Festival of Lights in Airdrie.
7. Buy a gift/gifts for a child who wouldn't otherwise get any.
8. Have a family movie night and watch a Christmas movie.
9. Make a snowman.
10. Take Christmas pictures - once the decorations are up.
11. Write Christmas cards and color pictures to send with them.
12. Make homemade Christmas gifts for family.
13. Go play at the Santa's workshop at the mall.  Maybe this will include a picture with Santa, but the boys are at that age where that might result in more tears than it's worth!
14. Have a special family Christmas breakfast.
15. Go to daddy's work Christmas party.
15. Read Christmas stories.
16. Sing Christmas carols.
17. Act out the Christmas story.  The boys might be a little young for this, but it'll be cute to try!

Those are all the ideas I've come up with so far!  I'm open to suggestions! 
I'd like to go to Once Upon a Christmas at Heritage Park, but our weekends are pretty busy, so I'm not sure if we'll squeeze that in.  Last year, we made fudge and took it to our neighbors.  This year, we don't know our neighbors very well, but that could be a great way to get to know them, so maybe we'll do that again.  Less fudge this year though, because that was a LOT of work!

Anyone have more ideas for us?  What do you love to do around the holidays?

Growing Up

My boys are growing up.  Cole is potty training, and doing a pretty great job of it.  We're giving him cars from the movie Cars as rewards for going all day without an accident.  So, every time he goes on the potty, we can be sure we'll hear a very loud, "I want a new car!"  He doesn't quite get that he has to wait until bedtime to get one!  Sometimes, he'll tell me, "but it is bedtime!" in the middle of the day.  He loves his cars!  Every time he gets a new one, it becomes his constant companion for the next few days, even sitting on the floor with him while he goes potty! 
He also had his first sleepover at Grandma and Grandpa Hansen's house the other night.  It was all his choice too!  We were over for supper and his cousins were there and were going to sleep over.  When it came time to go home, he didn't want to go, so we asked if he wanted to sleep there.  He said yes!  I fully expected a change of heart when we left, or when it came time to go to bed.  But he did great!  Mom and dad said he went to bed without a fuss and slept through the night - even when his cousin got sick right next to him! 
I'm excited at the prospect of getting a break every now and then.  It was sure nice to only have one baby to get to bed and then have some time to myself!  But, I have to admit, crazy as it may sound, there's a little twinge of sadness, realizing my little boy does not need me 24/7 anymore.  He's approaching 3 so fast, and his independence has just been growing by leaps and bounds lately!  He used to scream when we dropped him off at Sunday School, now he walks in and heads straight for the toys without saying, "see ya later!"  He wants to do everything himself these days.  I think our most common phrase now, besides "NO!" is, "I'm going to do it!" (or, "I was gonna do it!" accompanied by a wail, when I do something myself!)  Now, if I could just get him to feel that way about picking up his toys...!  Strangely, he never had any objection to me doing that one by myself!
And then there's Zach, who took his first steps yesterday.  It was so cute.  He was holding a shovel in one hand and a hoe in the other (plastic toys, of course), and they seemed to give him a sense of security to venture a couple of steps.  I think we'll still have a few weeks before he's walking all over the place, but he's headed that direction!  As much as I love those first toddling steps, I'm dreading it!  The child is already a menace!  He's really going to keep me on my toes when he can walk!  Haha! He climbs like he's part monkey! 
Yes, my babies are growing up.  And as much as I enjoy their developing personalities and increasing independence, it makes me sad too.  I love those little snuggly baby days!  I enjoy the dependence - and the inability to talk back and argue with me! But, grow up they must!  Every day is a new adventure!
I have been a bit remiss in picture taking lately.  I'll post some new ones soon!

Patience, grace, and unconditional love

I was a terrible mother tonight.  My son, who was overtired and overstimulated from an exciting, fun, but busy and napless day of playing at Grandma and Grandpa's and trick or treating, was having a meltdown as we were getting ready for bed.  And instead of being a kind, supportive, understanding mother, I lost it and turned into a monster.  I screamed at him, put him in his room and turned off the lights and shut the door.  No stories, no cuddles, no "I love you."  Just harsh words.  Then I went into my own room, slammed the door so hard it tore a strip off the casing, and burst into tears.  It's been a long, difficult week.  But there was no excuse for my behavior.  I'm the adult, and I'd just had a temper tantrum to rival that of my 2 1/2 year old.  Listening to the sobs of my baby boy, I immediately felt terrible, and went in to make things right. 
And here is the wonderful, amazing thing.  Within moments of me walking into his room and sitting down on his bed, he stopped crying and snuggled up to me.  He immediately accepted my apology and told me he loved me.  Within minutes, we were continuing to get ready for bed, talking, playing, and snuggling, as if my monsterous behavior of just a few minutes ago had never happened.  All was forgiven and forgotten, and he just wanted to be with and play with mommy. 
What an amazing picture of grace and unconditional love.  I fall short of being the perfect parent so often.  I lose my patience and snap at them.  I ask them to wait on me because I'm doing something far less important than spending time with them.  I get irritated with their demands and tell them to go away for a few minutes.  And yet, they love me.  They want to be with me.  They treat me like I'm their whole world.  And they are my whole world. 
I always thought that as their mother, it was my job to guide and teach them.  Turns out, they are teaching me just as much!

Come in the tent!

Ever since we played "in the tent" in our bed on my birthday, Cole has been loving playing "in the tent."  He has actually been asking to go to bed early, so he can get in his bed and play that he's in the tent under his Lightening McQueen blanket! And of course, anyone who happens to be in his bed with him has to come in the tent as well!  He wants Zach to come in the tent, but Zach prefers to crawl out! It makes getting him down for a nap or to sleep at night quite a lengthy process!  He likes to pretend he's driving his tent...not sure where he got that idea from!  He has quite the imagination, my boy!  We usually drive to Sobeys in Tuscany.  He loves grocery shopping!  Actually, I think he just likes Sobeys because he gets a free cookie there!  Anyhoooo, today we decided to make a big tent in the living room.  Cole and Zach thought it was great, but Cole was not so pleased that I was taking pictures of them in it.  He told me today that he didn't want any pictures.  I took them anyway!

In other news... we had a fun, busy weekend.  On Saturday, we took the boys to see Sesame Street Live.  Cole loves Elmo!  He was quite excited about it, and I think it lived up to his expectations.  Although he did find it a little long.  Maybe because he was excited because Daddy had told him we were going to go look for a new "jeep car" (powerwheels jeep) for him after the show.  I thought it was very well done, I was quite impressed with the staging, and it was fun taking the boys to their first show.  Zach really enjoyed it too - he was clapping and dancing along!  I'm quite pleased that both my boys really seem to enjoy music.

As promised, we did go shopping for a new jeep car afterwards.  The boys have a third hand Power Wheels jeep that seems to be on its last legs and no longer runs, and Cole has really been wanting to drive it.  After I think over an hour of deliberating, we ended up with a John Deere pick-up type vehicle.  Cole had great fun trying it out later that evening.  He's not the world's best driver! He got stuck in the trees, almost took out our fence a few times, almost ran me over, ran into his slide... I dread the day he gets his license! :)

A few pictures of Sesame Street

Cole's favorites, Elmo and Abby Cadabby

Trying out the new jeep.  Zach's not too sure about his brother's driving...

Hmm, actually, I guess this is kind of fun!

Of course, he may have thought twice if he'd seen this before he got in the car with big brother!

My littlest one is becomming quite the little monkey!

He's already figured out how to get up the slide!

Hey, where'd my chauffeur go?

Loves chewing on those fingers!

And yes, he climbed into the sandbox by himself too!

Thirty-four!

I turned 34 yesterday.  Yikes! That means it has been 17 years since I was 17!  !7 years since I entered my last year of highschool.  My last year of my childhood, my last year at ICA and in Africa. (aside from the year I went back to work.)  Some would say that I'll hit middle-age next year, but I disagree!  I plan to live well past 70, so I figure, I won't hit middle-age until I am at least 40.  Maybe 45.  :)  As my husband says, age is just a number.  And, aside from not being in as good of shape as I'd like, I certainly don't feel like I'm in my mid-30's.  I still love to get down on the floor and dance around, being silly with my kids.  I love to make up silly songs and rhymes and make ridiculous faces.  For my birthday, I went to the amusement park!  So, pbbbbbbt to getting older!
I had a wonderful birthday, starting on Saturday night.  Since my sister and I have our birthdays just 4 days apart, we decided to celebrate together with some of our girlfriends.  We had a great time eating chocolate, talking - as moms do, mostly about our kids! - and playing Taboo.  The last people left after 1 am.  That's the latest I've partied in quite a while!  On Sunday, we enjoyed a pancake breakfast at our church.  One of the perks of having my birthday during Stampede week - I can almost always get a free pancake breakfast on my birthday!  Then we went to Calaway Park, our local amusement park.  It's no Disneyworld or Six Flags, but we enjoy it.  It seems Cole is shaping up to be quite the little daredevil!  He loved the rides, even the scarier ones!  He even went on one all by himself! We'll definitely be going back again this summer.  Then we had supper at Moxies, which has my favorite dessert in the whole world, the White Chocolate Brownie.  Mmmmmm!  So, that was my birthday cake! :)  As we were leaving, we got caught in a hailstorm, with marble-sized hailstones!  Poor kids were pretty terrified, getting pelted by the hail as we were trying to get them in the truck!  And we were all soaked!  So, when we got home, we stripped off the wet clothes, dried off, and snuggled in our king-sized bed for a bit to warm up.  Cole and Zach had a blast crawling under the comforter and pretending it was a tent!  I think that might've been their favorite part of the whole day!

I'll close this post with a few pictures, but before I do, I've been reflecting on some of the things that I've done in my 34 years.  So here you go:
I have lived in 4 different countries - Canada, Mali, Niger, and Cote d'Ivoire.
In Canada, I have lived in 4 provinces. 
I have moved 13 times between cities/provinces/countries/continents.  That doesn't include moves between houses in the same city and the numerous moves back and forth between ICA and home.  (Since we had to pack up all our stuff each time we left ICA for vacation, it really was a move.)
I have visited 6 provinces, at least 17 states, (I might be forgetting a couple), and 10 countries. (not including Canada and the US)
I've ridden a camel out to the sand dunes in Timbuktu.  Yes, it is a real place!! It's in Mali.
I've swum in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Carribean, and the North Sea. (Brrrrrr!)
I have shared a room with at least 2 dozen different people - I can't even count all the roommates I've had!
I've had six different sets of  "parents" - not including my actual parents, of course!
I've lived in dorms, done room and board, lived in a basement suite, lived in 2 apartments, lived with roommates, and owned 3 homes. (none of them by myself though.)
I've jumped out of an airplane- twice!
I've gone skinny-dipping, a few times. ;)
I've eaten goat, camel, frogs-legs, crickets, and flying termites- yes, all on purpose!  Probably several other bugs not on purpose, and likely other meats I'm happy to remain blissfully ignorant that I ate!
I've learned at least 10 words of 6 languages besides English, and greetings in 3-4 more besides that.  The only other one I can actually speak anything resembling fluently though is French.
I've married the love of my life.
I've had 2 wonderful, adorable boys.
There's much more of course, but I don't want to bore you! 
All in all, it's been quite a ride!  I feel so very blessed to have had the life that I have had for these first 34 years, and I look forward to seeing what God is going to hand us over the next 34 - and hopefully more - years!

And now, here are the pictures:
One of our friends, Sara, made us these very lovely and delicious birthday cupcakes!

Cole getting ready to drive his car at Calaway Park.  He loved this ride!

Cole and Jeff flying the airplanes together.  Jeff doesn't do rides, so it was pretty special that he went on one with Cole!

Zach's only ride - the carousel.  He loved it!

Driving the car again with Cadence and Jordan.  You can tell from Cole's face how much he loves this ride!