Our Garden & a cake

Let me begin by saying that Glenn finally got to have his birthday cake!  Everyone was well and in good spirits so it was time to break it out…once the girls had added their personal touch that is!

This morning was spent planting the garden.  We are using seeds this year (long story but basically we could not find the seedlings that we wanted at reasoable prices).  We planted turnips, beets, radishes, peas, beans, cukes and sunflowers in the main garden and then pumpkins were planted beside our strawberry plants.  Fingers crossed that something grows!

Garden Update & The Girls

The girls have been having a blast the past few days.  In between the bouts of rain they have been exploring our small berry patch in search of ripe berries that have been left untouched by the local free range bunnies.  Below is our first haul.  Not bad.  Unfortunately they are a bit on the tart side.  I have had to break down and mix them with sugar to get the girls to eat them.

Glenn had a fun Baba’s Day.  The girls woke him up with presents in bed.  Katrine with a hand made CD case card showing him getting a goal at hockey.  She was greatly relieved that he did not think that the puck was too large for the stick (she had been worrying about that since bringing it home on Friday).  Elspeth was super proud to be able to give him her hand made card along with the popsicle stick tool box.  “Baba, you have to put tools in it when you make tools.”  Not sure which tools Glenn will end up storing in it, but he can honestly say that he does not yet own a handcrafted popsicle stick tool box! (Don’t worry, his real gift was a bottle of wine and some beer)  Then the girls made him breakfast which meant that he was able to have a nice lie in before his bacon, eggs and veggies were ready.  The rain today also left our yard too wet to mow and the garden too soggy to work in so he ended up with a relaxing day instead of the planned day of chores!  Happy Father’s Day to my hubby and my wonderful dad.

Happy Garden Season!

It is that time of the year again…garden time!  The girls were really into it this year.  They actually planted the soil around Katrine’s tree baby (with minimal parental help on spacing the seeds).  They decided that this would be a good location to plant the pumpkin seeds.  Then they used the left over room for sunflowers.  Right now, all you can see is a nice crop of weeds waiting to be pulled.

The large bed?  Cukes, tomatoes, carrots and onions.  Nothing fancy but the girls can’t get enough of home grown cukes and I am hoping for a bumper tomatoe crop because I want to try my hand at home made salsa again.

And now for just cuteness.

Our pretty eldest.

Our cute youngest now has enough hair to put into a ‘bitg girl’ ponytail.  Along with her ponytail she has also figured out how to blow the fluff off of a dandelion.

A busy spring day in our house

The day started off with….what else? Skating.  It was Katrine’s last competition of the season.  She skated her solo the best she has thus far this season and she is very proud of herself.  It has been a rough season and I have to say that I am glad it is drawing to a close.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that the high points of a well skated solo and a newly acquired axel are pointing to a better season to come.  That is not to say that this season has not had its positives because it has.  Katrine has landed all of her single jumps, she passed Preliminary Dance and at least the first part of Preliminary Freeskate; it is just to say that a season without some sort of health issue (last year’s scarlet fever and this year’s concussion) would be greatly appreciated.

After a lunch at the local mall, it was back home to plant a tree. On Friday, Katrine brought home a sapling from school as part of the Stewards of the Earth program.  We were asked to plant said sapling and take photos.  Apparently, the class which returns that most photos of saplings being planted will get to meet the mayor.  This was an exciting prospect so plant we did.

And yes, that is a little wall around the sapling which the girls built.  And, being girls, the sapling has a name – ThornyBushTree (or some such thing).

A delicious steak dinner was followed by a family nature walk.  The girls watched frogs and birds…

…and then had the requist “sword” fight.  Gotta love my girls.

The rest of the week

Got some good news this week.  First our speech pathologist told us that if we brought Elspeth in today she would not be picked up.  Yes, she would be classified as normal!! From 12-18 month delayed to on target in 5 1/2 months.  Way to go Elspeth.  They will call us around her third birthday to double check her articulation and sound production but unless something shows up there we are d-o-n-e! I have enjoyed the playgroup but welcome having another free day.

This morning our new Early Interventionist came to the house and did a brief developmental survey on Elspeth.  In January she was borderlined delayed.  Well, not anymore.  Not in any area.  In fine motor and problem solving she ranked near the higher end of things too.  In two weeks she will be back to complete a sensory profile to make sure that we have not missed any sensory processing disorders.  I am hoping that we will have more good news and some of miss E’s quirks will be the result of lack of exposure as opposed to sensory issues.  😮

And now for some photos that show despite being woken up at between 5:30 and 6:00 each day this week (likely will disappear now that Glenn is back from his conference), we have managed to squeeze in some fun.

Hanging around while my sister skates.
The pony house is back and today Elspeth was introduced to it. This year it has a bath tub.
Crazy growing garden...with the exception of the beets and radishes that is.

 

Monday Fun

Yeah for less homework.  I am liking June.  Since Katrine didn’t have much homework we cracked open the science kit that she got for her birthday and she began excavating her dinosaur.  Think that might take a while.  As Katrine chiselled away, Elspeth started to colour in a bag that her Grammy brought her.  Me?  I continued to stitch away at Katrine’s next skating outfit.

After a quick dinner (love the new bbq) it was off to Katrine’s dance class and the park for Elspeth.  On the way back from the park, Elspeth decided that she needed to jump.  Guess all of the work at her gymnastics class is starting to pay off because she got some air.

Garden?  Well it is loving all of the sun and rain.  Everything is up with the exception of our sunflowers and beets.  We had a few radishes but I think that the local wild life has been nibbling.  Even some of my roses are out so I have been teaching Elspeth about the importance of avoiding thorns.

Katrine’s Fun Fair

 

Do anyone of you remember school fun fairs from your public school days?  I remember running up and down the halls of the school while my parents helped to set up various activities in the gym for the next day.  Bean bag toss, ring toss, haunted house.  That kind of thing.

Each year, Katrine’s school has a Fun Fair for the kids in May.  Have I mentioned that I love the Parent Council at her school?  They rock.  Their fun fair was a bit more high tech than that of my youth.  Instead of the simple games there were jumping castles, hockey games and a DJ dance party.  There was however still the piles of junk food which the girls consumed in large quantities – popcorn, bake sale, cotton candy….MMMMMM!  The fact that it was a perfect day, being neither too hot nor too cold while still being cheerfully sunny, made it all the more fun.  Both girls fell asleep very quickly tonight inspite of all of the sugar.

Katrine’s favourite part was socializing with all of her friends and the giant dance party.

Elspeth however, loved the visiting fire truck the most which is not surprising as she has currently been putting on the dress up firehat and carting around her Fis*er Price firetruck.  She also eventually got in to the dancing.  Looks like she is break dancing doesn’t she?

Oh, our garden?  Started to grow!! Very excited.

 

Long Weekend

And what a long weekend it was!

We had a wonderful time at Katrine’s China family reunion and then finished it off by working on the garden.  Throw in the great weather and who could ask for more….well, maybe a working bbq (but that is another post).

I love reunion weekend almost as much as Katrine.  She says that it is one of her favourite holidays.  Who can blame her?  A weekend with your China sisters and brothers (we missed a few this year. 😥   ) Throw in candy, games, a ton of swimming, giggles, teasing and even loot bags and what kid wouldn’t like it.  For us adults it is about reconnecting and seeing how everyone is doing.  These are some amazing kids I have to tell you.  Even Elspeth had a great time.  She tried hard to keep up with the big kids (who were really good with her) and was quite the ham around the adults.  Can’t wait for our next reunion with Elspeth’s China family in July!

Our garden is looking good.  Glenn and I have been talking about digging in a border for years and this year he did it.  It looks great and might even help to keep the grass at bay.  This year we are growing, well trying to, sunflowers (hoping to dry the seeds this year…unlike last year), pumpkins, white patipan squash, banana potatoes, shallots, beets, radishes, cucumbers and two types of heirloom tomatoes (too bad that I am still reacting to tomatoes or else I could make a killer salsa).  Katrine also brought home a strawberry plant last year and then we bought a few more.  They all survived the winter and a few even have some berries starting to grow.

As you know, Katrine is a big fan of gardening.  She enjoys it so much that she was thrilled when the Easter bunny brought her gardening gloves to replace her Dora pair.  This was Elspeth’s first experience in gardening.  She seemed pretty interested and helped to throw the seed potatoes into the holes, dig random holes and then move all of our row markers about.  And she did it all with a smile.  Next spring will certainly be easier when it comes to planting but nothing beats that first time spent introducing her to a new experience.

Let me finish with a request that anyone with suggestions on how to dry sunflower seeds or grow large pumpkins post them.  Those are two things that Katrine is hoping will happen with our garden this year are both are currently beyond our area of expertise.

We also have ducklings at the marsh near our house!

 

March Break

Let’s start with an Elspeth-ism.  See if you can guess what she is saying?  I will give you a clue, it is something you eat: “hambagung” Have you figured it out?  That is how she says hamburger.  Too cute.

Hope that everyone has been enjoying our early burst of spring.  The bulbs infront of our house are up so here is hoping that if it decides to snow again that it is just a flurry.  We took full advantage of the weather this week after being cooped up inside the house for so long due to illness.

We visited the zoo and this time Elspeth actually enjoyed it.  On our previous visits, she was very over whelmed by the crowds and insisted on being carried or riding in the stroller.  This week our little girl tried to walk the whole time with her sister.  She also got right up to the glass.  We saw the bears, orangutans and tree kangaroo being very active and she was more interested than scared.  I have to say that I love going to the zoo at March Break.  Yes, you get camps and daycares but there is always something for the kids to do when you need a break from looking at the animals.  This year there was a whole interactive section on bats.  The girls made adorable bat clips.  Then while Elspeth coloured, Katrine had a chance to actually talk with a keeper about bats.  I think that she discovered that she shared the same wing span as a type of brown bat.

Tree kangaroo. Taken by Katrine

Another morning was spent exploring a section of the Oak Ridges trail.  It was a nice day and a friend invited us so we tagged along.  What a lovely trail.  We spent about 2 1/2 hours walking in the sunshine, breaking the ice on the edge of the pond and splashing in puddles.  Did Elspeth last that long?  No, but her stamina is building every day.  I figure that I carried her for about 45 minutes out of the walk so she did quite well.  We left refreshed and then spent the whole afternoon outside playing with friends.  Elspeth is getting good at peddling her trike….when going downhill!  Oh, and as you can see, sometimes she even comvinces her sister for a ride.

One afternoon Katrine attended a skating workshop out in Scarboro.  She had the chance to skate with Marina Zoueva who is Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s coach.  It was an awesome workshop which challenged her to think about the artistic side of her sport.  Did she enjoy it?  Yes and no.  She loved the workshop itself and the things that they worked on on-ice, but she was sad that none of her friends went.  That can sometimes be a very big thing to a 7 year old; even one as outgoing as Katrine.

Stopped at the mall one day. The girls loved the bear mowing the store.

Then there were the playdates.  I am so glad that we were able to schedule these.  Katrine has missed so much school in the last few weeks.  As much as she loves us all, spending countless hours at home is not the same as being with friends.  It was nice to see her just having fun again.

Elspeth really loves her sheep. It has been everywhere with her this week.

Today both girls got some one on one time with a parent to wrap up the break.  Glenn took Elspeth to the Home Show while I took Katrine to a dance competition. According to Glenn, the highlight of the show for Elspeth was the giant mushroom shaped water fountain.  She came home with a sleepy smile on her face, so she must have had fun with her Baba.  We registered Katrine in the dance competition back in January.  With how ill she was,we were not expecting anything from her (I mean, she only practised one week out of the last 5).  Boy were we pleasantly surprised.  She got through all of the dances and walked away with three medals and another stamp.  Only three more stamps and she is out of Beginners.  Dance exams in May and no more dance competitions until June.

A 3rd, 4th and 5th and a proud little girl.

This week?  Back to the regular schedule of dance and school. Highlights look to be Elspeth’s weigh in at the doctor’s tomorrow (fingers crossed that we are still in the third percentile) and then the Sweetwater festival this weekend. Wishing all of you a nice week.