July arrives with sun and rain

Katrine and I have been enjoying our summer vacation thus far. We have been busy. Katrine finished her Preschool A swimming lessons the second week of July. She passed which surprised us because she was quite dependent on Glenn when they took the Parent-Tot class this past winter. Anyways, she was delighted with her badge and loves to show it off to everyone who comes into our house. We have enrolled her in one more swim class in August. We have also signed her up for Sportball soccer with a friend of hers. She LOVES it!! It is hilarious watching her chase after the ball like a mad-woman only to freeze when a beautiful(usually a dandelion) catches her eye.
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I have also been using my vacation to take her to a variety of playdates and outings. We have been to the ROM to see the dinosaurs, the farm to pick strawberries, the zoo and Science Center. Katrine’s favourite outings have been the playdates, she really is a sociable child, and our visits to the park. Her favourite park is the one with the spider web of rope to climb on, but then again she is a monkey.
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This coming week Glenn is off because we are laying laminate floor upstairs in the last three bedrooms. We are planning to go to the Royal Botanical Gardens next weekend as well as the Shriner’s circus. In honour of our 9th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, Katrine is going up to my parents in Victoria Harbour for two days. She is pretty excited about it.
Well now you are up-to-date with the family in Canada so here is some news on Elspeth in China. Our dossier is now in the review room. That means someone is looking at all of our paperwork to ensure that we meet China’s guidelines. Once they are done we move to the next phase….waiting…again. The backlog of dossiers is still quite extensive which means we still have a long time to wait until we will receive our referral. We are helping to make ourselves feel better by painting Elspeth’s room while we wait. Glenn has chosen a lovely pale, sage green paint. I think that once the floor is down in her room and the walls painted we will feel another step closer to her. Maybe I will even begin to unpack the baby stuff and set some of it up. Our wait? We are not expecting a referral until 2009 at the earliest but this is China and things change all the time.

May in Review

May began with a trip to Niagara Falls for a reunion with Katrine’s orphanage “sisters”. We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge; which is absolutely awesome! Katrine had a great time splashing around in the wave pool and playing with her friends. She also like the kiddie water slides once she saw some of her friends going down them. She was really impressed with the falls and just wanted to stay and watch them inspite of shivering. On our way back home we stopped at the Botanical Gardens and Butterfly Conservatory. Katrine loved the butterflies. I was actually able to get one to land on me!! Others got them to land on their hands while I had to settle for my shoulder…oh well. We had a lot of fun wandering through the gardens and looking at the spring flowers. One of the highlights was when Glenn and her found some frogs beside a wee pond.

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Looking at frogs.
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Perched amongst the cherry blossoms.
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At the wave pool.
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By the falls.

Glenn’s birthday was over Mother’s Day weekend and we were lucky enough to have my parents staying with us so we were able to go out with some friends to celebrate. On Sunday morning we went with my parents to visit my nana and enjoy some treats. Nana is doing quite well for 95. In the afternoon, we had Glenn’s family over for a barbeque. It was fun seeing everyone and a special way to combine the festivities of the weekend into one. I got a lovely card from Katrine that she made at daycare (it made me cry) and Glenn got my favourite photo of Katrine and I from last weekend blown up and framed. I have included it below.
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This past weekend, we journeyed down to London to do the Tomlinson family birthday thing. We spent Saturday at Storybook Gardens. The kids had a great time playing together and climbing the various play structures. Katrine’s favourite part was riding the carrousel. On Sunday, we stopped to visit another one of her orphanage “sisters” and her adorable new baby sister. The girls had so much fun playing with Thomas and making necklaces, that Katrine didn’t want to leave and come home. Today, we planted our garden. The soil is excellent and it has us believing that this might acutally be the year that our vegetables grow (we never got much at our last house). We planted beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and cabbage. Katrine got to wear her cute Dora garending gloves and helped to plant the seedlings and then water them in. Hopefully our local wild bunnies won’t eat everything on us.

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Katrine and her cousins
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Helping Baba!

Katrine turns 3 tomorrow!

Can you believe that Katrine turns three tomorrow? Time has passed but she is ready to be three. Other than her birthday party this past Sunday, the most exciting thing about turning three is that you get to eat gum! I am not sure where we came up with that arbitrary rule but we did. So, as of tomorrow she can chew gum.
On Sunday we played host to 10 of Katrine’s friends and their respective parents. We decided to go with a pirate theme because there is a lot of fun things that you can do with pirates. We created “The Purple Pirate Tattoo Parlour” in the kitchen which was a big hit. I mean, every true pirate has a tattoo right? Katrine loves to show off her smiley face tattoo. That was about as piratey as she got. No wait, she briefly wore her hat. Some of the other guests came all decked out in lovely pirate costumes with hooks and swords but the most we could convince her to wear in terms of a costume was a white t-shirt, the hat and her tattoo. Oh well. Glenn made lovely paper hats for the two of us, so we were somewhat dressed up.

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We set up a “Beanbag Booty” toss and “Pin the Pirate on the Island” games in the hallway. Both gained in popularity as the party wore on and the kids loosened up. The craft table was a pretty big hit. At least half of the guests sat down to glue and colour. That surprised me as they are a pretty active bunch and I thought that it would have been more chaotic. By far the most popular planned activity was the Treasure Hunt. Katrine’s cousin Dalia and I hide 48 little plastic eggs full of pirate booty around the main floor. Once the hunt started the kids let loose and were running here and there grabbing eggs and putting them in the communal treasure chest (I give a friend credit for suggesting that this might help avoid crying. As we told the kids, good pirates share their treasure). The most popular unplanned activity? The dress-up box and play kitchen. Our family room was full of kids serving food and trying on costumes. At one point and time, we actually had a pirate-princess-viking outfit created.
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I have to say that I am quite proud of her cake. I give Glenn credit with suggesting I do something with cupcakes instead of cake because it would mean less work on party day. When I saw the Fisher Price pirate ship on a trip to Toys R Us one day, it was inspiration and I knew how it would all come together. The cupcakes provided the kids with just enough icing to lick off and an easily disposed of mound of cake residue. Katrine practically beamed when Glenn carried the cake to her.

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I have to boast about how well she did having everyone over at our place playing with her toys. Aside from grabbing back her Sherman the Worman (she named him after the Backyardigans character) one time, she shared really well. Took it in stride more or less. She even greeted each guest at the door and handed them their craft project (Glenn folded a hat for each guest and I made each a toilet-roll telescope) before running off to something else. Then when they were leaving she handed each their loot bag and said “thank you for coming to my party. Happy birthday!”. It was pretty surprising.

Easter Weekend Fun!

Katrine began gymnastics classes on Thursday. She had a wonderful time. They got her up on the balance beam and trampoline which she thought was fabulous. They also began to teach her how to do a cart-wheel (she has been asking for a while but neither Glenn nor I can do one). Our favourite part? She left the class exhausted and slept like a log that night!!
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On Good Friday, we went up to visit my Nana (she’s 95!). Katrine was excited as we haven’t been able to go and visit in a while as they have been under quarantine. We sat around visited and enjoyed ice cream sundaes. Much to Katrine’s delight, Nana had managed to get Katrine a small egg full of jelly beans which she devoured after polishing off her ice cream.
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Sunday morning began with Katrine searching through her Easter basket to see what the Easter bunny had brought. The fat pencils were among her favourite items. (Yes, our Easter bunny likes to bring non-candy items). Then it was time to run around the living room searching for treats which the fluffy gift-giver had hidden. Then she had to sample some with a sigh before beginning to draw with her new pencils. Next, we went to visit Glenn’s dad and mom. Katrine is feeling some Grandparent withdrawal because she hasn’t been able to see her Attwood grandparents as often due to Glenn’s dad’s surgery. Anyways, visits are a huge hit with her. She insisted on taking her Easter bunny purse and stickers as well as some “homework” as she likes to call her connect-dot-sheets. Well, she entertained everyone with her gymnastics exercises and songs. Plus, she managed to scam some chocolate off of her Grandpa. After consuming some more chocolate, it was time for turkey dinner. We were lucky enough to have Glenn’s mom join us. We were going to have gluten-free rice krispies shaped like carrots but the green gummies that we had set aside for the leaves had mysteriously vanished. Hhmmm, a hungry Easter bunny or a little girl?
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Easter basket booty

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Today, Easter Monday, Glenn had the day off and we drove out to Puck’s Farm in Nobleton for their egg hunt. It was a wee bit cold but we all needed some fresh air. She had fun looking at the baby animals and going on pony rides. However, the highlight of the day was, by far, finding the small plastic egg and then trading them in for more candy.

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Sigh, just think. This coming weekend we are having a Pirate Third Birthday Party complete with candy and a treasure hunt. I think that our family will sail through the rest of this month on a sugar high.

Muffin the bunny cake

Today Katrine and her Grandma went to Loblaws for a cake decorating class. Their assignment: to create a bunny cake. Now Katrine has been looking forward to this all week and checking her wee calendar daily so she was all set when they reached the store (once she realized that they were not there to shop that is). They had a blast making the cake. In between eating the decorations and icing Katrine finished her cake (I think that Grandma must have helped). She even gave it a name: Muffin. Upon arriving home she gleefully announced, “Okay! Let’s eat Muffin.” And that was the end of Muffin.

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The proud baker

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Actually resembles a bunny

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Muffin’s demise

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Katrine looking cute at the Maple sirop festival. This has nothing to do with Muffin but I like the photo and thought to include it!

March Break

On a highnote, we have mailed off Elspeth’s immigration package. Not that there is any rush, but it certainly makes us feel another step closer to her. The wait continues to grow and right now we are predicting that she will join our family, tentatively, in the fall of 2008.

Closer to home, we have all been off for the break. It has been nice to simply have time to spend together. Katrine stayed up at my parents over night on Sunday and did remarkably well. She is already making plans to go back up and sleep in the “big bed” (they let her sleep in a double bed so she was in heaven). What did Glenn and I do? We went out for dinner and worked on Elspeth’s immigration stuff. Oh ya, then we slept in!!!!

We went on smaller outings the rest of the week: to a Backyardigans craft session, to visit family, to the park, to meet Dora. Our biggest trips were to the zoo and the shoe museum. The zoo had various bug displays on for the break. She was fascinated by all of the creapy crawlies. We made sure to steer clear of the bug brittle table though, just in case she decided it looked good. We are all for enriching activities, but we have to draw the line somewhere. The Bata shoe museum was running a pirate program this week. We went with one of my friends from Teacher’s College and her daughter. Katrine had a blast decorating a treasure chest, playing dress-up and icing cookies. Her favourite part was the treasure hunt. She kept talking about how she is going to have one for her birthday(we are having a pirate party for her). Oh ya, she also loves her jolly roger tatto. Aside from her refusal to nap when she obviously needs to, it was fun.
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Climbing around burning off steam

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Just looking cute

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Helping to bake lemon pie

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Decorating her pirate booty

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Tomorrow it is back to work and daycare for us all. Tuesday she has her first dentist appointment. Wish us luck!

Celebrating the New Year

Let me begin by wishing everyone a happy Shrove Tuesday. We don’t actually do anything for Lent but today gives us the excuse to eat pancakes for dinner. This year we actually managed to enlist Katrine to help mix them up before swim class.

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This past weekend saw my Nana turn 95 and the arrival of the Year of the Golden Pig, which in our house has also become known as “The Year when Elspeth will likely be born…maybe”. We had dinner in Chinatown on New Year’s Eve with two other families from Katrine’s travel group. We had all gone to see the Chinese New Year children’s symphony at Roy Thompson Hall. It was not quite what we expected and Katrine was not that impressed; probably because she was required to sit still AND quietly. The only part that she truly enjoyed was when a piece was presented on traditional Chinese instruments. Then they had her full attention. The girls really enjoyed seeing each other.

Sunday was a quiet day at home full of tobogganing in the backyard, puzzles, crafts and of course Dora’s Around the World DVD (we must watch it everyday). Then we cooked Chinese food for the three of us before Katrine opened her Hong Bao. Much quieter than last year’s family banquet but more in tune with our lives over the past few months.

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Tomorrow is our 2nd Gotchaversary. It is hard to believe that two years ago today we were on the verge of meeting our little fireball. That day was certainly a blessing. Katrine has brought us a lot of laughter and joy. It has been wonderful to see how she has grown and learned these past two years. We will be going out to dinner and skating (weather permitting) to mark the occassion. Then on Saturday, we will be getting together with alot of the families who we traveled with so that the girls can play together and get re-aquainted. We will miss our families out west but we will be thinking about them.

February Fun Begins

We have had some fun mixed in between viruses. Yesterday afternoon we took Katrine out to the backyard and broke out the toboggan. As you can see, we have a MASSIVE hill leading into the yard. The perfect size for a two year old.

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In the evening we headed out to the FCC (Families with Children from China) Chinese New Year banquet. The actual new year’s eve is not until this coming Sunday but we started early. We were joined by a group of families who we traveled with which helped to make it even more special. We ate a full banquet, were entertained by singers & dancers and also a lion dance put on by some of the girls. Katrine was especially impressed by the red envelopes that she received. She told me tonight, “We eat Chinese. My tummy full. I like play my friends and see Aie’s. I get red money and chocolate.”

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Doing her own Dragon Dance

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Can you believe that she turns 3 in April?

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Welcome to February!

Two years ago this month we were packing and flying over to China for Katrine. Time flies.

The past month we have spent trying to get Katrine use to her single blade skates. It has been really fun watching her give it her all. She has no fear of falling, in fact she thinks that it is funny. More importantly though, she has no idea that learning to skate is hard work. To her it is simply another game. We have been very blessed in that. She is making remarkable progress. She is quite comfortable in her skates and is actually able to propel herself forward a little bit before falling down. She is also teaching herself how to regain her balance when she starts to fall. That is taking a bit though. She is really good at pushing off with her right foot (can you tell which is her dominant side?) so she tends to go to the side as opposed to straight but she is only two. She was impressed by how the boys playing hockey could “run” on their skates and that seems to have helped motivate her —either that or the fact that she gets to spend one on one time with mom or dad on the ice.

Enjoy the photos!

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