Happy Birthday Drewbot!!

Happy birthday Andrew! Hope you have a fantastic day! We love you!!!


(this is Andrew and davey back in November 2004).

Hmnnnn

For some reason Blogger hasn't let me post pictures all day today and yesterday. It says my connection has been reset. Andrew's out tonight, so I'll have to ask him to look at our settings tomorrow. Maybe.

Which is a shame cause I've got some cute pictures from Monday at the park and other misc. things.

Tomorrow is Andrew's birthday. His last year in the 30's. Hah hah hah. So, since I absolutely ADORE cooking, I've spent the day making his requested meal (meatloaf, mashed potatoes and veggies) as well as a trifle for tonight. I've got a delicious sounding breakfast "cake" (there's no flour in it, it's basically a frittata) for tomorrow's breakfast. This afternoon I baked cinnamon buns from scratch - for the first time ever. I've done bread maker dough (for bread) and I've made pizza dough, and I've made pillsbury's cinnamon buns, but I've never had to knead, roll and bake a bread product from scratch. At least, not since grade 6 in England. They look good.

The best part about all this food though, is I've got the stomach flu. So I'm having GREAT fun making yummy stuff, but I know I can't eat it. No temptation.

Back in January Andrew went to visit Scott and Chadya for a weekend. Scott got the new Nintendo Wii for Christmas and they had a blast playing it. So I've been looking at them and figuring out how we could get one too. Would you ever have guessed Air Miles already has them? YAH! So Andrew's very own system is on it's way here for his birthday. Apparently you get the Sports games with the system. Things like boxing, baseball...I'm looking forward to diving, swimming and gymnastics myself...(oooooh that was a really bad joke).

Well, the kids are enjoying a little Wallace and Gromit: A Grand Day Out and then it's time for bed and ANTM.

Later!

The Deluge Ceases!

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day. SO needed after all the rain we've had lately! So despite the fact that 3/4 of us were sick, we decided to go to the beach. Davey was very very excited. He kept asking me to sing his Little People Beach songs.

And the moment we got out of the car he ran straight for the water!


Once he'd waded in the water and thrown some rocks around, Davey took off running towards the Blackie's Spit end of the beach. WOW has ever gotten better at hopping these breakers. He hardly even stopped...until this one which drew him up short, "SPIDERS!!!" he said. Actually they were tiny little flies, but that was enough to make him decide he was done making a break for it.

Luckily there was a crab washed up on shore. Something else to take his attention for a moment.

As I mentioned before, all of us but Andrew have been sick lately. So you can tell Elisabeth isn't quite her usual beaming self. Looking a wee bit tired round the eyes too, here.

We stopped to feed the kids at the Wired Monk, then headed back to the beach for a few moments. By this time the clouds were rolling back in and it was considerably colder. So Elisabeth and I stayed closer to the village while Davey decided he was going to wade through the water. "Come back Davey! You're the only one with rubber boots on!"


I think you could tell that Davey had been cooped up inside for several days because he was just bouncing from one place to the next. Here he's been climbing all over the driftwood and he's about to start playing in that charcoal.

And since his hands were already dirty, he decided to add some sand to the mix.

And then test dad's ability to walk, carry Elisabeth AND be a tunnel all at the same time.

Fun with Faces

Got the idea for this great timewaster from Stefanie. You can try it for yourself HERE.

First we have Andrew (with some filler of his freaky wife):
1. Andrew now.
2. Andrea as bride of chucky
3. Andrew as baby
4. Andrew as child
5. Andrew OLD
6. Andrew African
7. Scary wife again
8. Andrew E. Asian
9. Andrew El Greco

Then we have little Davey. Sweet little davey:
1. Davey old with strange discolorations on his face.
2. Davey now
3. Davey as sullen teen
4. Davey as old politician
5. Davey African
6. Davey E. Asian
7. Dave W. Asian
8. Davey Botticelli
9. Davey Manga


And Moi. Seriously scary cheek/eye combo going on in some of them!

1. Andrea baby
2. Andrea old?!?!?
3. Andrea African
4. Andrea Asian
5. Andrea W. Asian
6. Andrea as Andrew
7. Andrea Modsomething or other.
8. Andrea Manga
9. Andrea Botticelli

We tried tinky too, but it wasn't funny. There's something weird about a bald little old lady. The scary thing about me is I remind myself of people I know in almost all of them. And Andrew looks good no matter which he's at. Davey is going to be one cute little old man!

"Take a picture of me!"

And again when we were outside in the rain, "Take a picture of me! CHEEEEESE!"


But once we got up to the Big Puddle, he was all business.

"Oh no, I'm stuck in the mud!"

[insert title here]

Tomorrow Cody, Kathi, their kids and most of their complex are heading to the aquarium. I'm so jealous. First of all that they're going cause I've had a craving for the aquarium for ages. But also cause they're going with this huge group of parents from where they live. How awesome is that? There was one family in our old complex that constantly asked us to do things. Everyone else was all talk and no walk. Which is fine. I'm like that a good 70 per cent of the time too.

However, I'm unwilling to do anything fun until I get my camera back. So I phoned Canon today to see if they had received my camera and to make sure they were fixing it (because if it wasn't the recall problem that was making my camera not work, they weren't fixing it!) And we're a go on both fronts. They got it, and they're working on it! YA!

BUT, we have TWO birthday parties to go to on Saturday. Both with FRIENDS not family! So how exciting is that?! And we have no camera. Bummer. But I'll try and steal Dave's again. He's being very obliging with it.

Anyhoo, I have one sick, clingy little boy (who today is inserting "dear" into everything. "Daddy, dear daddy. He's at work." "Dear Mummy") and a hungry little bubba who is busy eating my Yves Rocher catalog as I'm typing. Time to go fix dinner!

Pictures courtesy of [favorite] Auntie Kat

This morning I was outside with the kids (davey playing with his trains in a big puddle, while Elisabeth was standing watching him) when Kathi pulled into the drive. She hopped outta the van and handed me her camera, "Go nuts. Just don't delete the pictures off my camera when you put them on your computer."

Well, dear readers, you know I didn't need any prompting. I grabbed the kids and ran, lest she give me any other restrictions on my picture taking...

Since it was such a sunny, mild day we decided to play in the backyard. We weren't even down the stairs before Ashlie and Jade were [mildly] bickering about who would get to push her in the swing. Boy do they ever love to spoil my girl! Jade won the "pick a number" game and got first push:

Davey decided to take a seat in front of the swing set and watch to make sure the girls pushed Elisabeth properly.


Here's a rare picture of all four kids at once. Too bad about the light, but at least you can tell they're all there. Elisabeth is wearing Ashlie's hat, Jade's fleece suit and Davey's old Cookie Monster slippers. I'm so glad we get to reuse some of our favorite clothes. It seems like you're just getting used to them and the kids are on to the next size. People keep telling me they slow down eventually, but I have yet to see that in any of these kids!




Yesterday when we were getting ready for bath time, I started singing "kitten caboodle" when Davey informed me he didn't want to sing that song, he wanted to sing "I am Not Afraid", which is off one of my worship albums. So today while we were eating and waiting for Andrew to get home we played his new Veggie Tales worship album. It guest stars Matt Redman and is really quite good!

Which reminds me, I've often considered doing a posting about all the things Davey has broken. When we lived in our townhouse, we were constantly finding things in the VCR. He never actually broke it, but if you couldn't find the remote, the first place to look was the VCR. Well that penchant for sticking things where they don't belong has continued. If I ever want to use my card reader in the printer, I need to tip it first to get the coins out; the printer does streaks through everything because of the crayons shoved in the rollers; and our 6 disk CD changer in the car stopped working around Christmas because of coins shoved in the CD slot (I've also found fries shoved between the door and the window in the car, trains in the dishwasher...)

Well I joke that our CD player was ruined when we left Davey alone in the car to play; the whole stereo unit was ruined when I left Andrew alone in the car. The other day I had to run into a store to buy something for my mum. I come out and Andrew decided to try to remove the whole stereo. And now none of it works (at least we had the radio before!) Thank God for my iPod!!
Ashlie made us all some very disgusting looking stone soup.
Meanwhile, Jade fed Elisabeth her cereal and blueberries.



Later I found Davey and Jade like this. They'd just finished going to the bathroom together, and now Jade was reading Davey his potty book while he made the appropriate sound effects, "EWWW yuck, Stink!"

Guest blogger

This posting on parenting was too awesome not to share.

I left Elisabeth and Jade alone for maybe two minutes while I ran to get E's pants. I came back and found them like this. Cuties. I hope they'll be good friends as they get older.


Jadey is awfully good with her. Bringing her toys, watching to make sure she's not getting into things she shouldn't, singing to her when she's upset. She's already a good friend to her little cousin!

Meanwhile Davey was feeling a wee bit rebellious today. He refused to put on anything other than this muscle shirt to go outside (he might have a bit of his mother in him!!) So I felt that tough guy bare arms needed a tough guy tattoo.

But speaking of kids being like their mothers, Elisabeth's latest trick is blowing dezerbits on my arm. She was doing this for about ten minutes this evening and having hysterics, I took her upstairs to show my mum and she demonstrated for her, then came downstairs and showed Daddy too. As far as my mum is concerned this is long overdue justice since she hates dezerbits so I used to torture her by giving really nasty ones.

Last night I went to a scrapbooking class at Clipper Street. I've finally been reinspired. I posted the project (or as far as I'd gotten) on my scrappin' blog.

Hi, My Name is Andrea and I'm an Addict.

I may or may not have stolen a camera, hurriedly snapped off a few pictures, furtively uploaded them to my computer then stealthily destroyed the evidence and replaced the camera. All the while hoping that not waking said owner from slumber would make up for the fact that I stole their camera. Fingers crossed.

Yes. I am an addict.

Well, I didn't realise how strange life would be without a camera. Before we got our digital camera, I took a lot of pictures. But in the two and a half years since we went digital I've averaged hundreds of pictures a month. I love the luxury of being able to take as many pictures as I want without worrying about the cost of processing them. I love being able to use the viewfinder and take pictures from any angle. And especially from close up. I love documenting every single solitary moment of our lives.

So you can imagine how strange life is without my trusty camera in hand. I think I feel more lost even than when I go out without my babies! In fact, on Monday when Davey and I went outside to play, I seriously had to stop and think about how to have fun. It's kind of sad.

So, I was hoping my sister would blog about this incident, but she has less time than me so I'm going to blog it: during one of the rain storms last week, she and Jade put on their rain gear and headed to the park. Rain coats, boots, rain pants...the works. They had a great time jumping in all the puddles, stamping through the rain...

At the park Jade decided to go down the slide. Of course she was wearing wet, plastic pants and the slide was wet, so she went shooting down faster than a speeding bullet and landed about two feet away from the bottom of the slide. Trying to avert a crying spell, my sister says, "WOW! Wheeee! That was awesome Jade!"

Jade looked at her and replied, "Yah. How about the swings next?" Crazy woman.

Since I have no camera (my film camera decided this would be premium time for the batteries to die, so I don't even have that) here's a picture of Davey from two years ago. He was five months old:

Some more snippets:

Yesterday Jade found a peanut shell in our yard. I told her it was probably from one of the squirrels.

"what's a squirrel?"

"well, it's a little animal that runs around the yard and jumps through the tree branches" [notice that she's looking very blank so I stumble on, "you know, they're furry and cute and I guess they're kind of like mice only bigger and they have furry tails" and the light goes on,

"My grandfather has a big furry tail. It's long and it comes out from him here [she indicates her bottom] and him have a big furry tail."

Even funnier when you consider my dad was standing not five feet from her and completely oblivious to the fact that he apparently is part rat...

***************************************************

Davey last March at 18 months:


As Kathi was taking Davey upstairs through grandma's house to my car, "I no want to go in car with mummy. I go with favorite auntie and play with Ashlie and Jade."

"You don't want to go get daddy?"

"NO! I no want to. I go with favorite auntie."

(That's two days in a row folks that he's refused to go with me and has insisted on staying at aunties house. It hurts. I thought I had at least a few years till he rejected me.)

******************************************

When we got back from Vancouver and went to pick Davey up, Andrew went to the door of the house while I got Elisabeth out of her car seat and gave her a quick diaper change. Imagine Andrew's surprise as he walks up to the door of Kathi's townhouse and through the glass in the front door sees Davey strapped into a stroller, eating a granola bar, smiling and waving away. Apparently oblivious to the fact that Kathi and Jade were upstairs and he's all alone in 'jail'.

When Kathi came to the front door Andrew charged her with a joking, "so this is how you treat my son when I'm not around?!"

But apparently there had been a big mess made outside involving a toddler in a wagon with cheesies and liquid, and while Kathi was trying to clean one toddler up, the other kept getting into things he shouldn't. So she finally had to imprison him while she tended to the other mess maker. Uh hunh. A likely story...

******************************************

This morning when we dropped Andrew off at work he went through his usual routine of kissing the kids goodbye through the opened windows of the car. As usual he went to Elisabeth's window first and commented, "Hey! What are you doing throwing all your toys away?" and proceeded to pick them up off the floor of the car.

Davey: "You'll never find that hat now! Ha HA!"

Me, thinking, is he talking about the hat Elisabeth sometimes plays with?

Andrew comes round to Davey's side of the car and says, "Hey, what's this hat doing outside the car?"

Oh yah, he'd thrown Elisabeth's hat outta the car. Not content with throwing her clothes and toys in the garbage, now he's trying to get rid of them out the car window.

While we were driving home he stole her soother, but I didn't realise this until we got home and I was getting him out of his car seat. One soother in his mouth, one in his hand. "So that's where Elisabeth's soother went hunh?"

He pegs it as hard as he can into the front seat, "You'll never find it now!"

***********************************

Kathi and I are going to pick up registration packages for David and Jade to start preschool in September. PRESCHOOL! Already! Now I understand why people have five trillion kids.

Hey Kat...check out this shirt...

'tho it really should have said "I (heart) my favorite auntie"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

My beloved camera is dead. After two hours of frantic googling, I finally found out that the US had recalled all of my models due to a CCD Image Sensory Advisory.

The good news is that if that's really what the problem is, they'll fix it for free.

The bad news is, I have to mail my camera to them, they'll fix it, then mail it back.

Meanwhile life seems somewhat empty...

Yet Another Busy Day...

I managed to catch the weather report today and since the rain wasn't actually supposed to start until lunch time, we dashed to the beach. Yes, we are beach addicts. That's why we live with the exorbitant house prices and higher than average gas prices and all the other yuckiness of BC...we love the beach.


Davey was so excited to be at the beach. He spent a lot of time throwing stones into various bodies of water. Most of the little old ladies on the beach today tried to engage him in conversation but he was tooooo busy. Luckily Tinker was happy to oblige.

As you can see.


I had also promised Davey that we would go down some slides today. Believe it or not, he ran down to the water and pronounced, I want to go down the slide!! (as in, you liar, you promised me a slide.) So after we'd had enough of the beach we went to the little park in the Crescent Beach area.

As Davey gets more and more fluent in the English language, his impish character shows more and more. We have a little tradition that either on Saturday or Sunday we'll go somewhere like the beach or the river, pick up some coffees and a few timbits. So today Andrew handed Davey the timbits and said, "Here, pick one...or two."

Davey grabbed three and said, "How bout three?!" and quickly stuffed one in his mouth.

I've also blogged about how much he hates it when his sister cries. Usually he'll yell, "It's Okay, It's OKAY" or "STOP CRYING!" Well, today when she started fussing a little (mostly falling asleep noises) he let out a big sigh and, "I don't want to tickle you today tinkie". And when that didn't stop her from crying (and I'd passed her a soosy) he said, "You soosy, stop crying now!"
That'll teach her!

We got home at about lunchtime, then Davey and I headed out to run errands. Those done we headed to Richmond to pick my dad up from the airport.

I did check to make sure his flight was on schedule before we left, but as we were approaching Richmond I called Andrew to double check for me. Sure enough it was delayed by about 45 minutes. So we made a detour to Richmond Town Centre.



I don't know what it is about that mall, but I really love it. Especially the baby gap. I found a cute pair of jeans for Elisabeth on clearance. I love clearance sales and thanks Dave for the birthday money to blow on something frivolous like Gap jeans for my daughter!

We left the mall and headed to the airport thinking that Davey and I could watch planes land for a while before Dad made it through customs. Shah right. Did you know there isn't anywhere in that airport where you can see the planes unless you're waiting to get on one!?! What a rip off!! So we wandered through the mall...but even their toddler play area is not there any more while they do renos on the part in between the International and Canadian terminals. If I'd known that was the case we'd have stayed at the mall longer. At least they have a pet shop and play area!!


Oh well, dad finally made it through customs (they lost a bag enroute, so makeup, coats, probably some other vital things got lost), but Davey was a trooper and did really well. And Andrew and Tink seemed to have survived okay too. So...time for bed!