Summer Vacation 2011 Week Two

Week Two was a quieter week. It began with a trip to Calaway park which included eating ice cream and having a bit of fun.

Then it was an exciting lunch with AuntieC where we demolished great quantities of sushi at our summer kickoff Sumo Lounge Sushi festival! This was followed up with a trip to everyone’s favourite gelato place, Amatto Gelato.

Wednesday saw a quick trip to see Dr Low our fantastic orthodontist and making our own bears in the afternoon.

The rest of the week was spent doing some work on our summer journals, playing at the park and heading to Cricket practice. All in all it was a great week with fun, friends, family and new fury friends!

We hope this finds you all enjoying your own summer adventures ~ MommyJ

Summer Vacation 2011 Week One

Week One of Summer Vacation 2011 we headed up to Edmonton to swim in the hotel pool and visit our Edmonton cousins. It was a great quick trip where we enjoyed two trips to the pool, dinner with AuntieA, UncleP, CousinsL&N and wrapped it up with a fun session at the park.

June, the kids ended the month with the DaddyJ taking them to their first baseball game while Jose Canseco was in town. I am pleased to report that the kids enjoyed the game very much, despite the fact that the hometown team lost. They sat just above the visitor’s dugout, ate ice cream in tiny baseball batting hats, mini donuts and got to watch the fireworks at the end of the game! What a way to take in your first baseball game, not to mention some of the hilarious heckling they heard.

Then for July 1st, Canada day we celebrated with a trip to the movies and checking out the fireworks! Yeah Canada, there is not another place that we would rather live, even if the beaches are warmer or there is less snow, you are the greatest country we know! Oh Canada, our home and native land ....



What a great first week of summer vacation! Thanks for all of the great memories already family, I love you all and HAPPY CANADA DAY 2011 to all Canadians near and far.

June 2011

June saw us celebrating DaddyJ, the end of Sparks and the end of another school year. Yippie, summer vacation!

Father’s Day was enjoyed with presents, Julio Barrio’s and some good laughs together. We even had KFC for dinner as DaddyJ is always longing for a bucket of chicken when he sees the commercials!

With school ending, SparkJ made chocolate brownies in the Easy Bake oven to celebrate! They were delicious brownies, good job SparkJ. What a great way to end the week and start our summer vacation.

June was a great start to our summer vaction, be sure to check out our week by week adventures as the summer progresses!

Hugs to all and best wishes for an amazing summer,

MommyJ



May 2011

May  was a fun month! We began with a get away to Canmore for Mother’s Day and brunch at Lake Louise. High tea continues to be one of my favourite things: there is something about those tiny little sandwiches, miniature desserts and flaky scones! What is there not to like, especially if it includes a chilled glass of champagne?

At the end of the month, CubJ went on his first travel studies field trip when all three grade four classes headed out to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller for an overnight trip. This trip included a hike in the badlands, workshops on Ancient Rocks of Alberta, Fossil Casting  & Raptors in Action, a trip to the sportsplex for swimming, a sleepover at the museum and finally a trip to Reptile World! CubJ even managed to snap over 100 pictures of his trip.

This was a great introduction to traveling with the school and if this is any indication, I can not wait to see the pictures he will have in the years to come of Ottawa, Quebec City, Washington DC, Costa Rica & Columbia if he keeps up the great work.

April 2011

April included both an exciting field trip to Aggie Days with CubJ’s 4^th grade class, Easter and the loss of SparkJ’s first tooth! What an exciting month for everyone. Most excitingly, the basement was finally completed!

Aggie days has always been one of my favourite field trips to volunteer for. I love seeing all of the animals, enjoying the rodeo demonstration and watching the kids get  a better understanding of where their food comes from. This year, I got a huge kick out of watching them feel for the baby cow aka "you want me to put my arm WHERE in the plastic cow!?!!" Thanks for the great day!

The Easter Egg hunt was a great sucess this year as we all enjoyed tromping into the developed basement in search of candy treats. Pleasently, this year the Easter Bunny brought gift cards for the kids favourite places, Build a Bear and the Lego store! I wonder what he will think of next?

Our Easter dinner: corn bread and green bean casserole baked by CubJ, spiral cut ham, carrots and mashed potatoes! Yummy job CubJ, you were a big help making those two side dishes. Not to mention that BC Blasted Church wine was the perfect pairing with our meal. Hoppy Easter everyone.

The month was ended with SparkJ's first visit from the tooth fairy after the loss of her bottom tooth! Sniff sniff sniff, my baby has lost her first tooth....

March 2011

March, saw us continuing down the path of drywalling the basement. One gets a great respect for the art of sanding things smoothly, a passionate dislike of the dust it generates and ear fatigue from hearing the local hard rock station played! Despite all, things were continuing on in the basement like pouring molasses outdoors in January at the North Pole and we could sense that it would eventually be finished.

The March break saw us take a quick trip to Edmonton for a break from the construction in the basement while enjoying some time together. While there we spent some time enjoying the rides at West Edmonton Mall, bumping into some of CubJ’s classmates (much blushing occurred on all sides at running into members of the opposite gender! Lol) and generally very relaxing!



February 2011

February’s highlight was Chinese New Year! This year for CNY, the kids classrooms got together for a party where we brought in green onion cakes, dumplings and orange wedges on red plates. Many of the kids had not had green onion cakes before and were thrilled by how tasty they were. For me, the highlight of the whole thing was a close tie of seeing the kids' classmates enjoy something new and getting to make all of the yummies with CubJ and SparkJ! Thanks for all of your help making all of the little money purses (dumplings) , rolling all the green onion cakes out and serving it all up in the classroom guys! Xoxoxo Mommy

Near the end of the month, the boys were off to Winter Cub’s Camp at Camp Winchell. Thankfully the weather cooperated and a great time was had by all of the Cubs in the snow. The highlight of the trip seemed to be making forts both out of trees and packed snow. What a great way for everyone to start out the year.

January 2011

January saw us ringing in the New Year quietly as a family at home, eating snacks and watching the ball drop in Time Square and the development of our basement. 

After that we were off and running with school starting back up, SparkJ’s 6^th birthday party with her friends from school and our usual activities. This was SparkJ’s first big birthday party with her friends. We headed down to Let’s Play for a climbing, sliding, pizza and cupcake eating party. I think that everyone had a great time, especially the birthday girl!

January was a great start to the year!

December 2010

Then, the year was quickly drawing to a close! Another year gone in a blink of an eye. Wow, what an exciting month.

The month of December began with the opening of the Lego Advent Calender. What a fun way to celebrate each day with a little Lego toy to build a festive holiday scene. It was a nice addition to our old faithful candy calendar.

Then there was a playdate with a friend for SparkJ before he left for Peru for a month. What a good time everyone had eating pizza, playing outside in the snow and just hanging out. CubJ was a tobogganing superstar making a train so all three of them could go super quickly down the little hill beside the house.



This year for my birthday, we went for Afternoon Tea at the Banff Springs hotel. This is such an indulgence. I love everything about afternoon tea from the tiny sandwiches to warm scones. We had a wonderful server who was a tea sommelier, meaning he is actually educated about tea. He was a riot, having joined the world of high end hotels after blowing out his knee playing football on a scholarship to the University of Hawaii! That is correct, the ex-football playing, tea knowledgeable formal dinning server. He was utterly professional, engaging and entertaining all at once. It was a wonderful way to spend my birthday, thank you family.

Next was the beginning of the really fun activities:

The Christmas concert for grades one through four. The grade four's including CubJ played Ode to Joy from memory on their recorders in a round! It was impressive to say the least. Every year I am so amazed by all of the work that the two music teachers put into teaching the children such a variety of music. They really do shine a light on the very best of what teachers can achieve.

Then we celebrated our community Christmas party with some craft making and tasty little snacks at the club house.

SparkJ's class play, where she was a talking Christmas tree:

The Bowling League Christmas Party and Bowling twosome:

Then it was the last morning of school before Winter Break and time to visit with the cousins! Oh what a happy day, you get to go to school in your pj's, have lunch with your Auntie, Uncle and Cousins at Denny's, show them the framing progress on the basement and then have your own mini bowling tournament to be capped off with a trip to Starbucks. Happy days indeed.

Next it was Christmas Eve! In a nod to French Canadians, many of whom we know and love from the school, we had Tourtier Pie for our Christmas Eve meal. We decorated mini sugar cookies for Santa and his reindeer and left everything ready for his visit. After opening our traditional one present, we were all off to bed.

Christmas morning began at a pleasant 8am! There were presents to be opened, snow to play in and a turkey dinner to be made. Once again, CubJ was very helpful by preparing the Green Bean Casserole. It is funny, but even for the kids now, it is not a festive meal without that special side dish. SparkJ, had seen the brussel sprouts while we were picking up the Tourtier pie and pronounced that they were the cutest vegetable ever, which we must have at Christmas dinner. Who could say no to that, so it was onto the Internet to find out how to cook them and presto magico they arrived at the table dressed in maple syrup with bacon bits. I must say, they have greatly improved since my childhood. In fact, they taste a lot like broccoli. Who knew....

The turkey, it was moist, tasty and HUGE. Both DaddyJ and I burst out laughing at one point when it became obvious that my "smallest turkey in the bin" was enough turkey for 10 adults who have finished fasting. Oh well, it was wonderful on sandwiches the next day.



Don't you just love DaddyJ's coworker's Christmas present to him, a Canuk's stocking!



The day after Christmas (Boxing Day) was SparkJ's 6th birthday. Where or where does the time go? Here is a look back at her Birth day to now:


Starting at the top working left to right: birth, 1st, 2nd, 3rd,
4th (large bottom right in yellow), 5th with balloons and now 6th with button!

We decided that SparkJ could pick all of our activities for her special day. This included the application of her new Barbie makeup set and fancy curled and sprayed hair. (Visions of 16 year old SparkJ had Daddy hyperventilating) We began with lunch at Earl's, then we went to Yogi Bear at the theater, had McDonald's and ate cake! By that point we had all eaten enough in the past 24hrs to last a week and had an earlier evening after playing with some of the new birthday toys.


After a busy several days, it was New Year's Eve. This year we had a nice quite evening at home, watching the ball drop from 10pm onto 12pm eating a variety of little bites. The little bites were a great representation of the year we were ringing out, little bits of our favourite things spread out over the course of time. 2010 has been a great year to all of us. We have come a long way, all done our parts to make it a wonderful year and spent it together. All four of us are very lucky to have been blessed with this life and each other. To our friends and family, best wishes for 2011, may it bring you and your loved ones an amazing year!

With our cracker crowns and our very best wishes for you and yours to have a year of good health, happiness and more laughter than you can imagine,

The 4J's

November 2010

November, well it was a busy month of getting ready for Christmas, cleaning out the basement to start on our renovation project and lots of fun activities. In the beginning of the month, Picou the Grade One class pet came home for a visit. Picou is a hedgehog and a very pleasant house guest.

On Remembrance Day, after we had finished watching the parades and ceremonies it was time to break out he EasyBake oven for the first time! SparkJ baked a wonderful chocolate cake. Remarkably, using the EasyBake oven is just as much fun now as it was when I was little. Not to mention that it still amazes me that a light bulb can bake something.

I confess, we were all so excited to see the completed cake that it was devoured before I thought to take a picture! LOL

Our next exciting thing was to use our first November PD day to do our first and tastiest Christmas preparation work, decorating our gingerbread trees. This has become one of my favourite traditions over the past three years. It really signals that Christmas is around the corner. We can play the carols non-stop, break out all of the decorations and our cousins will be visiting soon! Let the fun begin.I think that this has also become one of the kids new favourite traditions as they very much so enjoy decorating the trees while eating preforming quality control checks on the candy.

This year, since we were not going to be in Cayman for Christmas, we broke out a little bit of the islands to snack on while we laboured on our creations. There is nothing like hot chocolate and the original rum cake to transform an afternoon into a party. While I will miss not being on the beach this year, I know that the renovation will be well worth it and that all of us will enjoy our next trip even more after having had a break.

Two weeks later, it was time for our second PD day of the month and our next tasty project. Given that everyone has greater fine motor skills, we decorated Gingerbread houses to go with our trees and snowmen. I would like to clarify, in the end, these were candy houses with a hint of gingerbread!

November was a wonderful month. We accomplished a great deal, made some wonderful memories by embracing our family traditions and tried out some new things!