The Gingerbread House

Teaching children to share and be patient is a tough job in any circumstance... but it seems to get even a little tougher when there's one gingerbread house to decorate and 5 willing  eager exterior designers. 

And we don't even want to talk about what happens when you first build the house and then the house falls apart when ONE child accidently cracks, pushes, leans, drools, knocks etc a piece of said house. We try to control our tongues and disappointment... but we aren't always successful!

I thought it was a fair enough suggestion to split up the pieces and the candy and let everyone have at their own section.  It worked well.  We still had to practice patience and sharing - the icing bag went round and round the table as everyone dabbed dots and lines of icing where they thought it looked the best.

BUT everyone had their OWN space!! :)

As for the house itself?  It will probably stay in it's prefab state until it's devoured. I'm thinking those heavy wall and roof slabs would need something along the lines of the hot glue gun to keep them together.  Might as well just let each child eat their beautiful designs!

 Mid decorating I pinterest-ed "gingerbread houses" just to inspire them.
Cruel or encouraging?  :)

Maybe the best thing to come out of this was the little lego table with the two eager children creating their own gingerbread house.

And please, if you know me at all, I have no desire to be encouraged to let each child make their own house out of graham crackers.  Do you know how much patience is required for the Mom to talk each child through sliding graham crackers that refuse to stay in place????  I do!! Tried it once.  It required much more patience than I have.

Beautiful Grin

Our last baby to lose a first tooth!

Room by Room

And square foot by square foot.  

Last September the playroom was sadly covered with water and rot.

 Everything got packed up and put away as we (with the help of many!!!) chipped away at fixing the drainage.  We knew we still hadn't solved it when spring rains led to this....

 For months this area was the catch all for tools and building supplies and also all the boxes of packed up toys, clothes, crafting supplies etc.  You can't even see the half of the mess and apparently I didn't take any pictures of it either :)

 But last night, after BIG help and encouragement from Wieska and Shelly over the last couple of months, and signigicant hours by Steve, the playroom looks like this.  MUCH better than ever!

 Not quite done...we still have to work on this half.  We'll get to it, even if it's a square inch at a time :)

But our house? After unpacking all the toys they've talked about for the last 1 1/4year? It was better than the proverbial Christmas morning!!

The Most Wonderful Time of Year

Maybe... maybe not.  Maybe "certainly not a wonderful time of year" on the afternoon everyone wants to write their friends a Christmas card!!!!

Now, it was certainly better than the same activity last year.  I probably still had some remaining hives and trauma from THAT.  But, it's a crazy afternoon for sure!

With 2 kids begging to do cards - while I had a friend over visiting

+

mom giving permission even though she's too busy to supervise

+

a ridiculous amount of rifling and mess making to find just the right kind and amount of cards

+

2 more kids adding into the "please can we write cards" mix

+

supper to be made

+

tears because he/she stole/touched/looked at my cards or envelopes

+

one unsuspecting husband walking through the door and being greeted with 12" deep pile of paper on the table he's hoping to be served supper on post haste, as well as wailing and snot because of aforementioned tears

+

"I wrote all my names on my envelopes but they must be the wrong ones because the cards don't fit in these ones"

well... let's just say I'll be glad when they either a) don't care about giving cards b) are completely independent in their list making and printing and c) furthermore have their own means to go to the store and pick out exactly what they want!

All that being said, after supper I went through their stacks and was blown away by the differences in the cards and what the differences said about the kids, some to my surprise, some not.

1 child took no care in penmanship but made sure to include the "dear" and "from".

1 child did ok for neatness but was sure to choose the quickest route of "from... " on the inside with only the friends' names on the envelope.  The reasoning was that way he knew which card was for who but only had to write the names once.

1 child took time to add an extra message to each card.

1 child hasn't yet bothered to write out cards.

But this child????? He sorta surprised me and he sorta didn't.  I was sorta surprised that he took as much time to write as neatly as he did.  I was sorta surprised that he was willing to take as much time as it did to write an extra sentence.  But I WASN'T at all surprised that his extra sentence made me laugh out loud!!! 

That Cody!  He's quite the boy.

It's amazing to me how we adjust.  For the first few hours having no bathroom door for a 7 person family felt a little uncomfortable and odd.... but in no time at all we forgot we ever had one!  That was a couple of days ago :S

Renos mess with my mind.

Being Real

So yesterday's (oops this didn't get finished yesterday!) post with the very messy pantry was real.  I'm not good at having the perfectly neat, tidy, decorated house. Ever.  And it's ok but sometimes being real on the internet is a little humbling.

And my poor Mom is probably despairing that I didn't soak in all her housekeeping lessons. :)

After posting Monday's pictures and really looking at them I decided to do something I said I wasn't going to do.  I moved the pantry out of the living room where it was annoyingly in the way.  I said I wasn't going to do it because I'm convinced I'm in danger of making this temporary spot a permanent condition :)  As long as it was in the way there was incentive to frame in the new pantry but now... 

But at least I can find everything and fit everything.  And at least I got rid of some more mostly used coloring books and broken felts. :) 

Back to being a little real... this is what it looked like when the 3 kids that stayed home sick from school helped me empty it so we could try to shove it to it's new home.

This is what it looked like with it out of the way :)

Oh wait... that picture cuts out all the clutter that actually still exists :S

But at least by supper time the wash was cleaned up and the last bit of pantry odds and ends were put away!

step by step

Dear Dad, if you can look past the pantry that gets more and more disorganized everyday AND no longer has doors to hide the mess, can you figure out what Steve did on Saturday?

 He also finished down here!  Now to paint the baseboards and move everything from the big room into here so we can do that floor!

 Even the little "closet" under the stairs is ready for shelving for the canning.

Cold but Good Day

Another rainy day saw him out on the river.  Cold but fun!

Tis the Season

for optimal working conditions... :(

And yes, Steve was working across the road by that pile of dirt on the foundation just across the road and it even rained harder than this!

Perfect Ending?

Off to church we go.  The kids were very excited to hear Opa preach again.

 Home again.  Do not be decieved.  There was so much tension and crankiness by this time.  The culprit?  Two different ordering styles at Tim Horton's 3 hours back on the trail.  Amazing isn't it?  How a wonderfully, relaxing week and vacation can become undone so quickly?
All because of selfishness, pride, petty annoyances?  Thankfully we persevered, agreed to take the picture and then start the clean up.  By the time a week rolled by   the sun went down  we all had some rest and the house looked sort of organized again, we could smile AT each other again.
Not that it's right but I'll admit it took a bit of time.
And we'll probably fight about it again if we ever have the same situation in Timmy's.

But I still love him and them dearly.

Back to that Beautiful Blue

After the first steep hill almost turned disastrous for Cara - I know we aren't to live a life of "what if's" but I was thanking the Lord will ALL my heart that Cara didn't hit a tree, get hit by another rider, scrape all her skin off her arms and legs, break a bone etc!! when she lost control on her way down the steep hill.  Thankfully, even though she screamed a terrified, helpless cry she somehow managed to hang on and stay up right till she collapsed in my arms, a shaky, crying little girl.  Us ladies stuck together for calmer paths till the rains came.

 And we saw the snake.  Anyone tell me what it is?  It slithered sideways in this S shape so that the name sidewinder came to mind but I have no idea.....and yes, it did cross my mind I have access to google. Call me lazy? edited:  I looked up sidewinders and this is def not one of those: 

• Crotalus cerastes, a venomous pit-viper species found in the southwestern United States - nope

 Did I mention gorgeous blue skies?????  I think they are SO majestic!  I would love to be someone who lays down in the grass and just watches the clouds blow by!

 We met up with the adventurers... maybe not a good idea when I started hearing stories about Cody's "acrobatics of the year" and some hearty off roading/ head over tea kettle-ing?  I always think it's better to hear about it than watch it.  :)  They were so excited to share the crazy things they had done but I was so thankful they were still all whole.

 And again.

 The blue skies disappeared behind the clouds and the rough and tough gang took to the muddy trails under pouring rain.  This bike didn't make it.  We abandoned it here and Steve happily did some cross country! One time he came around a corner and was 3 steps away from patting a deer on the nose.

 On the way home we picked up some ice cream cake for a belated Opa and Daddy birthday celebration.

 Another Uncle Billy story.

 Not to be forgotten... our handy dandy diy bikerack that got not a few curious looks :)

Feeling Warmer just looking at these Sunny pictures!!

I could live under a sunny sky like that....if it didn't already start snowing in September!

 We went walking instead of biking today...

 The next day was chilly and rainy so we ended up at the Bass Pro shop.  Could spend quite a long time looking at all their displays.

 Easiest way to get your deer :)  And yes, we did give them quarters to shoot in the rifle range but obviously we were a few quarters shy of getting the right feel for how to hold your gun :)

 The next day wasn't quite sunny yet but we did get out biking again.   We were delighted to see deer for real grazing right beside our path.

 Then we got to some cement barriers and do not use/ trespassers are responsible for their own risk signs.  After much consideration, deliberation and consultation we decided to just keep going and see what it was like.

 We discovered that the trail had been very damaged by the huge flood in the spring of 2013.  Thankfully there was a way around it and we just kept going.  We really wanted to complete this big loop.

 Everyone enjoyed zipping down this long pedestrian/bike ramp!

 The more we biked these paved paths the more we practised our "look ma, no hands" routines. Leah could bike for kms like this.

 Cam would go a LONG ways like this! Standing up with his hands out.

 Or like this....  No doubt about it, we all very much enjoyed these relaxing days of exploring and biking.

 Another one.

 A backyard fire and games for finishing the day.

And Since I'm on a Roll

Maybe our most relaxing family holiday yet.... a trip to Opa and Nana's...

See how happy we are to go?   Truth is we were all feeling a little van crazy and selfish and knarly.  But I'm still thankful for this picture!

 Our first day there we went for our first bike ride.  We made 15km the first day.  Quite the trek for Cara who only had started to ride two wheel a couple weeks before! Thankful for the gorgeous sky and paved paths.  And the best daddy ever.

 Boys will be boys..."Daddy, can you throw this one in for us??!??!"

 And then of course it would be expecting too much to take the path there AND back again.  It wouldn't have been so terrible if there wasn't a group of teens practicing being bad in the bushes and so were witness to our pushing, pulling, dragging etc our bikes over these rock piles :)  Worse yet? I didn't realize they were there till I had already made a scene.

 Such a BEAUTIFUL place to ride.

 First of many family pictures we all agreed to make.  Hooray!

 I don't know if he even realized it but it seemed so appropriate that Cody went against the arrow.

Days 3,4,5,6,7 to follow!