What's up with Glenn, Heather, Katrine, and Elspeth
A happy gotchaversary to our travel crew! Three years! What a difference it makes. Yesterday we celebrated with some mini golf, family time and treats at the park.
Today was Elspeth’s Forever Family day and the girls decided that they would bake cookies in honour of the occassion. A day of smiles which is a world away from this day three years ago. Time has helped to lay the foundation of trust and love.
Here are two cute mini putt photos to cap it off.
How do you spend an August long weekend? Swim class, old friends and a bit of park time squeezed in between showers.
Elspeth is in the middle of retaking her current level at swimming. She is continuing to struggle with any skill that requires her to have her face in the water for any period of time. That is not to say that she hasn’t made gains. Oh no, she certainly has. At the start of the summer she wouldn’t even put her face in the water or jump in. So she is getting there but it is slow going. Her friend from the previous session is along for the ride once again so she has been having almost daily park playdates after swim class.
This afternoon we set out to try a new park. It has a really cool climbing section. According to Katrine it is quite a challenge as all of the various parts move. Elspeth was not as impressed with that part. Instead, she tried to flip herself over at the hanging rings.
It has also been a weekend for reconnecting with old friends. Today we shared a lovely barbeque meal with a friend who I have had from grade school. The girls had a blast sharing their latest antics with her and then while Glenn took care of dinner we had a chance to reconnect. Yesterday saw us out for Korean barbeque (which as you can see involved too much food of questionable glutenfree-ness) followed by dessert with a friend from Hong Kong. I love my new friends but it is also wonderful to spend time with those friends who  have seen you through stuff and just get you.
This will be a photo post.
While looking into what is going on at the CNE this year I came across an ad for Horsecapades. Most importantly it is FREE. Now who can turn down free activities? In this case it was free-tastic!!
The girls got a chance to ride a mechanical horse (which is as close as they will get to riding a horse for a while). Elspeth was ready to go until she learned that one of us would have to hold onto to her because she is so small. Katrine decided to name her horse Blackie.
There was also a couple of educational displays about horses (with the exception of a section with general farm activities – hence the pig photo cause they were so very cute). Elspeth was quite pleased with her horse hat and pretended to be Baby Horse for the rest of the day. Katrine enjoyed looking at the life-sized insides of a horse display and was thoroughly grossed about by the section on horse parasites. The girls also got to touch and feed various horses. I think that the Minature Horse named Pablo was their favourite.
The highlight was definitely the horse show. What gorgeous creatures. They both loved the unicorn being ridden by a fairy. Elspeth enjoyed the lasso and trick riding portions while Katrine enjoyed the horse races and musical poles (aka chairs) game.
We topped it off with some peddle sulky rides.
Here is a blast from our past from July 25, 1998. When we were cleaning to get ready to paint I pulled my dress out of the cupboard and the girls took a look. They found it hilarious that it no longer does up. They also told me that it was super poofy. In fact, Elspeth hid underneath the skirt. They both tried on the veil which was apparently substantially less funny. Don’t think that either of them will be sporting my style on their wedding days. My bouquet was the most positively received item.
Happy Anniversary to us!
When I was a teenager, my mom taught me how to make pastry. Nice gluteny pastry. Flakey, tasty goodness. She had learned from her father who was a baker so you know she is a pastry pro. Way back in the day I could make top notch lard or shortening pastry. Then it happened – Celiac. Since my diagnosis I have not been successful at making pastry from scratch. It just hasn’t turned out right. When Katrine asked to make butter tarts I knew that it was time to contact the pro. This past week while up at her grandparents Katrine made tarts from scratch in all their gluteny goodness. Apparently they were flaky and suitably buttery.
She inspired me to try again. I thought it was going okay but it was an epic fail. The pastry was suitably flaky but way too grainy to be tasty. The key lime filling for the pie was limey but didn’t set. Neither did the egg tart filling. Sigh. Time to try again.
First, some random cuteness which I could not bear to leave unposted.
Glenn has a few weeks of holidays this summer. This week the girls are up at their grandparents for a few days and we are not relaxing. Nope. We are painting bedrooms – pink. Before dropping off the pair, we put them to work helping to tape the trim and then paint the closet. Pain got in the hair, on the hands but they had a bit of fun until they lost interest. I will post some photos of the finished rooms.
Okay, not all of our popsicles have been successful. One of our flops was the pureed apricot ones. Normal they were sweet and juicy. However, pureed and mixed with some sugar and they tasted SOUR!! Pretty bad.
A more successful popsicle was the Caramel Apple-sicle. Both the kiddie and the adult version. In fact, I enjoyed the adult version and may have to make a few different variations over the rest of the summer.
When searching for ideas for school in the spring, I discovered this website (http://www.housingaforest.com/simple-catapults/). Now I have already posted about creating the bubble snake blowers and the pop bottle sprinklers. This afternoon’s project was foot catapults. The girls were super excited because this process involved the use of tools as well as sending things flying.
This weekend, weather permitting, we will launch phase 2 of this project – the castle siege. At Katrine’s suggestion we have settled on water balloons as the ammunition for the backyard attack on Chateau K&A. I expect it to be an epic battle but we are hopeful that our troops will be victorious.
This past weekend the girls worked with Glenn to create a homemade sprinkler out of a pop bottle. Elspeth donned her goggles and actually got herself a bit wet.
There was book reading, cloud watching and learning to slide down the pole at the playground. Loving the summer.
