Some Things Never Change

When I was an elementary school student, it was just conducted in regular old English. Since Laina attends French Immersion where they speak and learn entirely in French, sometimes I feel like her school experience will be very different from mine. But tonight at dinner time while she was telling us about her day at school, I realized that some things never change....

.... 8 year olds (okay, and some 31 year olds) will always think that flatulence is funny...

.... teachers will always try to suppress the immature outbursts of toilet humour...

Her story went like this:

"Today during class we heard this big brrrrrrrrpffff" (I apologize for this, I really don't know how to spell a mouth raspberry noise?) " and then So-and-so kept saying, "Qui a pété? Qui a pété??""

With this, Laina dissolved into fits of giggles at the dinner table until tears ran down from her eyes. She collected herself enough to gasp out, "and then Madame shouted, "Ce n'est pas ton affaire!")

Adam had no idea what was going on since he doesn't speak much french so I translated: So-and-so was asking, "Who farted, who farted?" until the teacher got mad and shouted, "It's none of your business!" Doesn't it just take you back just to hear that exchange? I don't know why I find it so comforting but somehow, I just like knowing that despite how much the world has changed since I was 8, some things just never change!



Completely shifting gears, yesterday we went apple picking at a local farm that puts on a big fun family experience every fall for apple picking and pumpkin season. It was a very blustery day, but we had a great time picking apples, doing a corn maze, and going for a hay ride.

There was goats, pigs and bunnies at the petting zoo.

I couldn't resist this :)

Evelyn wasn't happy to be deposited on this vintage flat deck truck for a photo opportunity.

But it was better once big sisters hopped up with her

And so far with my apples, I have made two batches of these muffins, plus 15 mini apple pies (which I am SOOO doing for my next party! These little guys were so cute and yummy!) I froze some other apples to use for making apple sauce and more pie, plus I intend on making some apple cinnamon scones. I like baking and I like eating it even better!!

Little Red Riding Hood

Halloween is one of my favourite times of year because as I am sure you all know; I LOVE dressing my kids up! We have so many costumes cluttering up our play room, but I can never resist buying or sewing more.

Evelyn is the only one that I get to choose a costume for this year. Laina has already decided on her own that she wants to be a vampire and Mylie wants to be a witch. It makes me a little bit sad that they won't let me pick cutesy costumes out for them anymore, but at the same time I am glad that they are so excited to help me bring their "vision" of their costumes to life.

I decided that Evelyn was going to be Little Red Riding Hood, and Adam has agreed to be the big bad wolf (I tried to convince Mylie but it was a no go). I used patterns from my favourite pattern-designer, Little Lizard King . as well as a little attempt at designing my own skirt. The hooded cape pattern is here and it is a super versatile pattern because I am just going to modify the hood into a collar for Laina's vampire cape and Mylie's witch shawl. I intend on lining all of them with fleece to make the costumes warmer for our chilly October nights. The pattern could also be used for making a little boys superhero cape! I used this pattern to make the puffed sleeved under shirt, and this one for the reversible corset (I did black on the other side but haven't tried that combo out on Evelyn yet). I made a pretty standard twirl skirt and then made a 3 layer tulle pettiskirt to give it volume. The final product wasn't fluffy enough for my liking, so I layered a hand-tied pettiskirt tutu that I made for Evelyn last Christmas (orignal post is here)

Anyways, pictures! She was very busy, and the light wasn't great (it ended up pouring after about 15 minutes of pictures so we had to leave), but I did get a couple that I liked.

And one from the gag-reel... she was running across this bridge to me when her tutu fell down around her ankles...

A Country Celebration

My mother-in-law and I took the girls to this fun country fair type thing at our favourite park today (you know the one I mean.... the one where birds eat out of our hands!). We had a fantastic time and better yet, most of it was free.

There was pony rides... (Evelyn was freaked and I had to hold her on, while my MIL deftly handled my DSLR on manual!)

Oh, and I have to mention, Laina's shirt stood out in these pictures like NEON. I don't know why! I had to desaturate the color in her shirt in these pictures and it is still practically glowing! I swear it wasn't that bright in real life!

Bales of hay to play in....

Pioneer chores to be done, such as: pretend cows to milk...

Potatoes to dig out (if I tried to get my kids to do this at home, they would NOT think these things are fun!)

Eggs to collect:





Clothes to scrub!









And let's not forget to iron them!



Water pails to fill:



And with that, they were done their pioneer chores!

But before I go, I must make mention of the girl who brought her bunny on a leash... it was the cutest thing!

House Reflections

Adam and I renewed our mortgage today (exciting right?) which marks 5 years since we bought our first and only house. When we moved into our house (we actually moved in here 6 years ago but didn't buy it until a year later), the house was brick red and the 1/3 acre yard had absolutely no grass on the property... just a wild overgrown "jungle" of trees, shrubs and weeds. It was beautiful but untamed and it's "low-maintenance" yard was one of the reasons that my grandmother (the previous owner) was attracted to the property in the first place.

Back of the house 5 years ago

Back view of the patio... all of the brown bare patch on the ground was covered in silver nettle and sweet sicilly that was about chest high! And the wooden patio was rotten, so in this picture we were in the process of tearing it out and replacing it with brick pavers

And here are a couple that show how it looks now;

still very natural and a bit wild, but with with pretty garden beds for my girls to pick strawberries and flowers from,



and flat paver patios for them to play hopscotch and ride their bikes on...

Being new homeowners, we were anxious to dig in and starting making the place our own... the house where two of our babies came home from the hospital to; and the place where the day we moved in here, Laina made the transition from crib to "big girl" bed. It was here that we also made a home for my aunt Katie who had suffered a brain injury after being struck by a car at the age of 8 until she died of leukemia only one month after Evelyn was born. I am still so thankful that she hung on long enough to hold Evelyn... she loved kids and especially mine, more than anything in the world.

Here she is holding Mylie wearing one of her funny hats after her chemo from the first cancer - uterine cancer

So for the last 5 years, we have mainly focused on getting our backyard ( and some of the house) into our vision for our family to live and play in. This spring was the first time I have begun to tackle the still very overgrown front yard. There are a lot of things we can't do in the front yard due to eight 100+ ft cedar trees plus the placement of our septic tank (yup, we live in the boonies enough to be on septic rather than sewer, yuck!) So I started small this year and fought back against the overgrowth in one fairly small area and turned in into a flower bed.

A very young Mylie and Laina... the overgrown foliage behind them is where the newest garden bed sits

And this one, the mess to the left of them is indicative of what our entire yard looked like 5 years ago (although this picture was probably only about 3 years ago)

Well today, after we had our appointment to renew our mortgage, we finally put the finishing touches on the bed by encircling it in rocks to start a new pathway through the yard. Big rocks like this are expensive to buy, but a really nice guy was giving them away on craigslist, so my kind husband lugged them home in the van. So to finish off this long and sentimental post, here are some pictures from today of the new garden and my family that I love so much! (Okay, minus Evie because she was napping right them)

It doesn't look all that fantastic from this angle, but I didn't even notice at the time that Adam was being a goof and doing a "who the hell are you" (it was a feature in FHM magazine where people sent in pictures they had taken where some random person they didn't know had hopped in the picture and posed) Can you spot him? Amazingly enough while I was taking this picture, I did not...

And from another angle where you can see the rocks :)

This is the creepiest picture I have ever taken of one of my cats!

Fashion Show

In an effort to get myself back into the habit of taking photos everyday, I have been hauling my camera around with me again... and it weighs a lot! So imagine my surprise when I uploaded the pictures for the last couple of days thinking that surely I would have some worthwhile shots of our daily life and all I came up with was a bunch of pictures of my kids "posing" for pictures as though we were doing a fashion show or clothes try-on! Am I that shallow that all I take pictures of is clothes? I guess so! But I can live with that for now, I think, because they look pretty darn cute if I do say so myself!

Here is what I got:

Okay, actually I lied, this photo does have context... Evelyn is finally actually riding her tricycle instead of just performing death-defying stunts on and around it. Normally she does wear her helmet (I promise.... if I had my way, DaredEvelyn would wear her helmet 24/7) but we had just stepped outside for a minute and she hopped on to ride. But since we are looking, she is wearing a Gap dress (I want to say this was Bleeker Street? But can't remember...)

And the next day, same little cutie, this time in Janie and Jack Strawberry Fields and See Kai Run shoes

Laina in some Gap Outlet True Colors and some brown boots from Sears that she will NOT stop wearing... with every outfit... regardless of whether they "go" or not.

This was Evie's version of a pose today...

And Mylie in Gap Portobello and Joe boots

And that is about it! TGIF!