MITTENS!

I decided yesterday to make Aidan some mittens. His little knit finger gloves get wet so easily and don't do anything to keep his hands warm. The more I thought about it the more convinced I was that they would be pretty easy ... and I was right! Next time I'll make the wrist part a little wider because it's a little difficult for him to get his hands in them, but his hands were actually warm when he got home from school today!

Modelling his cool gloves with his matching pants that I made for him last week. He requested a new pair because his other pair were getting a little too short for him.

Allllllllllllmost Halloween!

I bought this candy apple for Aidan on Monday and after a little hesitation, he was very excited to eat it.

However, because of bad behavior he hasn't been allowed to eat it until today. And by bad behavior, I mostly mean lying. He's been walking home by himself lately and it's been going good. I go out and meet him by the last street he has to cross but he does the rest by himself. With my growing dayhome it is SO much easier for him to walk rather than for me to go get him. So on Tuesday he was a little late getting home and I asked him what was going on. He said that an older man had picked him and tried to take him, but that he had screamed and a teacher had seen this and told the guy to drop him. I didn't know what to think at first, but the way he said it and the fact that he wasn't freaked out (being 'taken' is his biggest fear) made me question the validity of his story. I should have called the teacher right then but I didn't because I didn't think he was telling the truth - and because I was sick, I was babysitting and busy - bad excuses, I know. The next morning I loaded everyone into the car and when we got to the school and were about to go in to talk to the teacher he finally told me he had been lying. His punishment was no treats for 2 days (I figured he'd more than make up for it on Halloween!!) and I was very relieved to hear that some random guy hadn't tried to take him. The more I thought about it the more it freaked me out!!

He said it was very yummy :)

And then of course Keira wanted a picture taken as well!

Here she is saying 'CHEESE!!!' I love these monkey pajamas!

Pumpkins!

I have to say, I'm very excited about pumpkins this year. I hate buying canned pumpkin because it's SO expensive, but I've got this recipe for pumpkin oatmeal that is SO yummy! Once Nov 1st hits I'm looking forward to roasting, pureeing and freezing these guys!

Superstore advertised extra large pumpkins and they did not disappoint!

Keira was very excited to do her pumpkin

She wanted a 'happy' pumpkin :)

I thought maybe this year Aidan would be old enough to draw his own face ...I drew a couple samples on a paper and gave him a marker ......

..... however, he did not understand how big the eyes needed to be! Ha ha!

I helped him out - he wanted a scary pumpkin - of course!

It did turn out pretty scary!

Keira's much nicer (in my opinion) happy pumpkin :)

Christmas Blankets

Originally I decided to make the kids blankets for their birthdays. I spent a looooong time trying to decide what kind of pattern to use and what I wanted them to look like.

I found some great sheets at Value Village to use for Aidan's quilt - Spiderman, Batman and even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one and a Star Wars one. I was super pumped about sewing it all up into a blanket. Finally I found a pattern I thought would work, all it needed was some enlarging. Since my fabric had large designs on it I had to make the pieces larger so that the design would be properly visible. While I was sewing all the blocks I wasn't so sure how it would turn out - the fabric was not sitting completely flat and with all the angle seams some of the blocks looked kind of crazy! Once all the blocks were sewn together into rows and then the rows were sewn together it looked okay and I was very relieved :)

Here's the finished product:

One of the spiderman sheets I found at value village was in really great condition so I saved it and used it for the backing of the quilt.

One last picture of the quilt. It's very long to go with Aidan's Ikea bed. The last thing I have to do to it is sew individual figures onto the black diamonds. From each of the sheets I cut out a figures - a spiderman, a batman, a star wars ship, a turtle and I'm going to sew them into the black diamonds. I was planning on starting this a couple days ago, but life and being sick have gotten in the way.

For Keira's quilt I decided to keep the design fairly simple. I wanted to do the different characters from Yo Gabba Gabba, so I put one character into each of the white squares. I found some great polka dot material at the store and they had blue (Toodee), green (Brobee), yellow (Plex) and Pink (Foofa and Muno). The heads were not too difficult to do - the nick jr website had printables that I took to Staples and had enlarged. Then I just had to cut out all the pieces and sew them together! Which is easier to say than it was to do :) Here are the character head blocks:

Muno

Foofa

Plex - the silver part stumped me for a bit until I found this amazing material that looks just like tinfoil on cotton, it's so great. Now if only my black seams were a little straighter, it would be perfect! :P

Polka dot squares

I had 6 white squares but only 5 characters so after much thought (DJ Lance and the YGG logo were too difficult) I decided to go with Keira's nickname: Lib.

Toodee

Brobee

Keira LOVES it!

And here it is all sewn together! Right now I'm just finishing the binding and then it's all done unless I decide to do any quilting on the top. For the back, I took 4 of Keira's receiving blankets and cut them into squares and then sewed it all up. It looks pretty good and definitely ups the sentimental factor.

I'll post pictures when they are all completely complete!

Pictures

Once again, it's been longer than I intended, but here are some pictures of our life lately:

Aidan's birthday invitation - front

Aidan's birthday invitation - back - click on it to get a bigger view and read it. I found it online and it's pretty funny!

Keira's hair one day when she let me do it. She usually hates to have it done which is sad.

Aidan's birthday cake. Since the party was in jeopardy of being cancelled and I didn't have as long to prepare for it, I just ordered the cake from Save On Foods. We brought along our own Lego guys to decorate it and saved the cost of the toy!

Aidan's present on his actual birthday was a Storm Trooper helmet from my mom. It has buttons you can press on the side to hear phrases and also a microphone inside to amplify the voice.

He loved it!

This year Aidan is in soccer and Michael is coaching his team. So far it's going pretty good.

We went to Prince George for Thanksgiving and while we were there, went out for a night of bowling with the family.

Everyone had a great time - Keira especially loved pushing the ball down the little frame. She kept taking balls and heading towards the lane - I was surprised that she could pick up the balls!

Hanging out with Auntie Amber

Me and the kids - or rather, me and one of each of the kids eyes

Aidan's school had crazy hat day and I wasn't sure what we were going to do ...

... we looked online to get some ideas and Aidan liked the picture of a hat with a stuffed chicken on top. So we safety pinned some small stuffies to his toque and voila! a crazy hat!

Keira watching Aidan play soccer. Some friends of ours are coaching their son on the red team and donated an extra shirt to Keira so she could look just like Aidan. So sweet, and she loves it!

Aidan lining up to boot it in the net

Me and Keira watching Aidan play soccer

Lately .....

I have honestly been meaning to blog more often, but life gets busy and intentions - even good intentions - don't always happen. So this is what's going on with us lately:

-Aidan's behavior in school has really improved, due in part to us threatening to cancel his birthday party!! He has had about 2 weeks of really good behavior with no big blowups, just normal 6 year old behavior for the most part. His teacher and principal have been working with him at school and Michael and I have also been talking to him at home. His major problem seemed to be reacting appropriately on the playground and not just lashing out. We told him that if something or someone bothered him, he should just walk away and not get involved - and strangely enough, he put that into practice immediately! I think that for him to grasp that concept and do it right away is pretty amazing. I also found a website that has a behavior chart integrated into a social site for kids called HandiLand. When you checked off stuff on your task list you get points which you can then use for various things. It turned out to not be that great because you have to be a paid member to use the points, but he still enjoys playing the games - and he only gets to do that when he's been good. I'm really hoping this upswing continues and that he's been able to make these new changes permanent!!

-Keira is talking SO much. I've been meaning to make a list of all her little words and phrases and I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I better do it soon or I won't be able to remember everything because her speech is improving more and more each day!

-My babysitting is going pretty good. This fall I got a call from the family that I had been babysitting for for 2 years saying that they wouldn't need me because the mom's mother had decided to quit her job and become a nanny. This was about a week or so before I was expecting to start babysitting so it really stressed me out. I've been really trying to trust God and do what I can do about it and leave the rest up to him. I've got a total of 6 kids, 3 sets of siblings, that I look after, though they're not all full time. Kendyl (2 1/2) and Dawson (4 months) come once in awhile when their mom needs a break or has an appointment. Brandon (2 1/2) and Meadow (6 weeks, yes, WEEKS!!) were supposed to come 2 days a week for 1 month, but that turned into 5 days a week with no end in sight. Right now I've told her I can do 2 days a week for however long she needs so I'm not sure how long she's going to be working. I definitely took on more than I thought I was with this little grumpy baby! And Kaiden (almost 3) and Ariana (almost 5) come full time. Ariana is in Kindergarten 2 days a week, but I've also got them on Saturdays. I had thought that these guys were going to be a really great thing since there were 2 of them, full time and ongoing. I try to keep my rates reasonable but even so, this would be some good income, and I was hoping that I could leave it at these 2 and not have to look for anything else. But now I'm not so sure. They've got a young single mom who works 2 jobs and though she must be very busy and stressed she very rarely drops them off or picks them up at the right time which is EXTREMELY frustrating for me! And now her hours are being cut back so I'm wondering if I'm going to need to find more children to look after! I think whoever wrote that God's ways are mysterious was bang on - I am doing my best to remember that God will provide for us, and though things could be much worse, some days it's harder than others.

-On a more positive note - we just got back from a nice weekend away with family in Prince George. Michael's Aunt and Uncle live there and we got to see them, Michael's cousin as well as his sister. Another highlight of the weekend was that Michael's sister Amber drove their parents van down to Prince George so that we could drive it home! Although I used to be vehemently against minivans, now that I have 2 children and a small dayhome I am definitely in favor of all the seatbelts and room that minivans provide. The only thing that I hadn't really thought through was that in order to get it back to Grande Prairie, someone was going to have to drive it back; namely ME! I am not the greatest driver, in fact, I only got my fully certified license this past April after having a GDL for the previous 4 years. I was ready to pop with Aidan when I went to write my learner's! So needless to say, my highway driving experience is pretty limited. I was VERY nervous about driving back, especially because it's a twisty turn-y road and because I had the kids with me! Michael was pretty good about making a stop once every 1-2 hours - he hates stopping and always says 'We're going 0km/hr here guys!!' - and thankfully the kids were also very well behaved. I am very proud of myself for driving all the way back while sick, with the kids and keeping the van all in one piece!! Now the only hurdle is to get it insured so I can drive it here!

I just heard Keira waking up from her nap so I better go feed her lunch - I will try to be back soon with pictures!!