Daniel's birthday party

Daniel's 4 years old! It's hard to believe! He chose to have a superhero party this year so we reused the Spiderman decorations from last year, added some new Batman ones and there was the superhero party! He loved it and had a great time with his friends.

Here's the Batman cake I made. I have to say, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. And it was really easy. I just traced the bat shape with chocolate icing and just filled it in with lots and lots of sprinkles. It was great until Daniel blew the candles out - the sprinkles weren't stuck into the icing very well so they kind of went flying!


Daniel with his buddies, Carson, Luke and Tyler.
Adam with his little girlfriend, Fina, and Luke again.

The birthday boy!

Sarah slept through most of the party. That was pretty impressive considering there were 10 kids racing around and having fun.

After lunch and cake, Daniel opened his presents. It was funny to watch since some of the other boys wanted to open Daniel's presents just as much as he did. Carson decided he needed to come over and play very soon because Daniel got so many cool things.

There were a few adults who braved the chaos of a 4 year old's birthday party. Auntie Joanne and Auntie Elaine are having fun with Sarah but it seems Uncle Clive managed to catch a nap! :)

The dads seemed to love the new foosball table Daniel got! All the kids were busy elsewhere while James and Eric challenged each other to a game.

What a lucky guy Daniel is, to have so many friends celebrate with him! He loves all his gifts and has been busily playing with them all. (Adam really likes them, too!)

Cousins!

Well, second cousins to be exact. We got to spend the afternoon with Nicholas (and his mom, Jennette, who is married to James' cousin, Ryan - got that straight?). The boys had a lot of fun making Nicholas smile and finding toys for him to play with. He's so cute and chubby and looked like such a little man next to teeny Sarah. Aren't they cute together?

Remembrance Day and a Firehall Visit

Today, the weather was surprisingly nice - no pouring rain for this year's Remembrance Day. So we all bundled up nice and warm and headed out to the cenotaph for the Remembrance Day service. Grampa was walking in the procession with other firefighters and the boys got to walk with him! They didn't understand anything about the significance of Remembrance Day but they thought it was pretty neat to be with all the firefighters, police officers and cadets.

After the service, we headed over to Grampa's old firehall so the boys could see where Grampa worked and see all the fire trucks. They had a great time sitting in the trucks.

Sarah wasn't too interested in the firehall. Maybe next year...

You get to do cool things when your Grampa is a retired fireman - they even got to climb up on the ladder truck!

A couple of the firemen showed the boys how they slide down the firepole. Then they took the outside and let them hold the firehose. Very cool!

The boys have been talking for weeks, maybe months, about going to Grampa's firehall and they had a great time today. I think we'll be reliving the day for quite a while! Thanks Grampa!

New pictures!

Here are some new pictures of our three cuties.

We have smiles!

Smiles are tiring work.

She's such a sweetie.

Sarah lounging in her brothers' Spiderman chair.

Here's the picture Daniel made of Adam. I had no idea he knew how to draw people that well.

Adam thought it looked just like him. He kept calling it Me Anam.

Cute and clean Adam!

Enjoy the new pictures!

Back to real life

It's hard to believe that Sarah was born 6 weeks ago and James has been home since then. Today was his first day back to the real world - he went back to work and the kids and I were on our own. It sounds like they missed James at work - no easing into things there! And the kids and I had a great day. Everything went surprisingly smoothly.

We headed out to the school to go to StrongStart. The boys had a lot of fun there today. They were so happy to see their friend and neighbour, Fina, there today. Adam and Fina played in the bin of flour for about half an hour.


Daniel spent a lot of time playing with the Lego. He made himself and Adam out of Lego!
Sarah loved StrongStart - she slept the whole time! (Yes, she's wearing her brothers' old jacket. Her pink ones were all in the laundry!)

After StrongStart, we headed to the mall to have some lunch and find some poppies for the boys. I had made sandwiches, which we ate in the food court. Daniel told me that my lunches were much better than mall food! Then, a woman came up to tell me that I had very well-behaved children and that I was raising them very well. What a nice compliment!

The afternoon went well, too. Adam napped (Daniel and Sarah didn't). The boys played Lego quite nicely together.

They helped me out while I was making dinner. Sarah was really hungry, so they each took turns giving her her bottle.

It was a really nice day and a good beginning to our week. Let's hope the rest of the week goes just as smoothly!

More updates

These kids are changing and learning everyday, I just can't keep up with it! Here are some more updates about Daniel, Adam and Sarah.

Daniel:

• is almost impossible to photograph these days. He will not look at the camera! That's why his picture is one with Sarah - it's the only good recent picture I have of him.
• is doing a great job in his swimming lessons. At his "midterm," the teacher said he could do everything except keep his head under water for 3 seconds. The next lesson, he could do it. He didn't want us to know he couldn't do something!
  

Adam:

• is so funny these days! He has quite the goofy personality. He likes to make faces, stick out his tongue and talk like a goof. He also does his own version of the pinchy dance. He dances around pinching his hands like lobster claws. :)
• is talking a lot! Some of his new words are brrr, car (mroom mroom), cracker (cookie), eye, go (doh), hand, hat, help (hop), milk (unck), mouth (ah), sneeze (ah-too), walk, yawn, yummy (nummy)
• says his own name now! He refers to himself as Me Anam. So cute!
• can recognize many colours.
• is a real copycat. He wants to do everything Daniel does these days.
• still doesn't like swimming lessons. But he likes swimming - when it's in the warm pool!
  

Sarah:

• is growing well but is still a tiny little girl. She weighs 8 pounds 1.5 ounces, which puts her in the 10th percentile.
• is feeling much better these days. She had a bit of a cold and it made her pretty stuffed up and grouchy. But she's sleeping better and looking much happier.
  
  
  

Halloween!

What a fun Halloween we had! We started the day by going to swimming lessons. Daniel had a great time, as usual, and Adam cried in the cold pool, as usual. But he had a really fun time in the warm pool. Next session, we've signed them up at the new Killarney Pool because lessons will be in the warm pool. Hopefully Adam enjoys it more!

We spent the afternoon getting the house ready for trick-or-treaters. We had already decorated outside but decided inside needed to look spooky, too. We all made these little foam pumpkins together and the boys stuck them on the stairs. They had a great time and I think it looked pretty cool!

Then it was time to get into costumes! Daniel and Adam were both really excited but Sarah was less than thrilled with Halloween. She was really tired and cranky and slept through the first half of the evening. But she happily helped answer the door and handed out candy the second half. Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures of her, but she looked exactly like she did the night before. :)

Here's Venom. Daniel was in love with his costume. He ran up to every house and acted the part of a scary bad guy. I think he liked surprising people who didn't know it was him behind the mask.

Here's our little train. I was thrilled that Adam kept the train on the entire time out trick-or-treating! He wore it up to every house, even climbing up stairs. But, the moment we came home, the train came off! Oh well. I'm just happy he wasn't going door-to-door dressed as a kid with a woo woo hat on!

James got dressed up, too. Or did he? Isn't he always a jester, joking around? :)

James took the boys out for the first half hour or so while Sarah and I stayed by the door and handed out candy. Then we switched and I got to watch the boys run up to all the doors. They had so much fun! They were very polite and remembered to say thank you and nana. :) I was so suprised that they weren't scared. We have a few houses in the neighbourhood that go all out with their spooky decorations and the dads answer the door all dressed up in gory costumes. Daniel thought it was cool and kept telling me it was "just pretend." Adam didn't cry but he did stare wide-eyed for a long time at the men in scary masks.

Finally, after about an hour, the boys decided they were done trick-or-treating. Then they helped hand out the candy. They had almost as much fun doing that as they did going out themselves. They'd each get upset if their brother was able to give someone candy so we started having to give two pieces to every trick-or-treater - one from Daniel and one from Adam! Many of the kids commented on how cute the baby pumpkin was. And we got a few confused kids who couldn't figure out why their teacher was answering the door (since I work and live in the same neighbourhood)! We finally turned off the lights at 8:30, after 211 kids came to the door. We were so lucky that the rain stayed away and everyone enjoyed the night.