Grandpa

About 5 weeks after Kathy died, Michael called me one evening and told me that he had gotten a call from his brother to say that his Dad had just died. I thought I had heard wrong and said 'What?!?' I think that's how everyone felt. Especially after Kathy had died just the month before we weren't ready to do this all over again. And for Kim, we could have waited another 30-40 years to do it - he was only 50!

Michael was out of town working but packed up his things and headed home that night. We waited one day to get everything on our end together and headed back up to Kitimat. Our good friends Pat and Tara let us borrow their van which was SUCH a blessing. I am definitely pro-van now; a good thing since we're inheriting Kim and Kathy's van! Our little car is great and there's enough room in the trunk to haul a front load washer or dryer home (I know because I did it!) but on a long drive it sure is squishy, especially with Michael's brother along for the ride.

It was kind of strange staying at the house. I kept expecting Kim to come down the stairs or walk around the corner or drive up in the van. His death was so sudden it was difficult for everyone to accept that he was gone.

There was a beautiful service held in his memory at the Legion. It was held at the Legion because the church wouldn't have had enough seating for everyone which tells you a little bit about what a great guy he was.

We stayed up in Kitimat for about 3 weeks. Kim had barely started in on Kathy's estate and now there were two estates to sort through. The weather was sooo warm for the first week and a half - it felt like August! Kitimat usually has a rainy climate so we weren't prepared for such hot wonderful weather. The kids had a great time playing outside, running up and down the many stairs (the house has 2 split levels) and just hanging out. It was a nice break from our regular life and it was great to also see all the family again - just under different circumstances would have been better.

By the time we got home we had about a month before the kids and I were headed out again, this time to Abbotsford to visit my parents. I think by the time we get back we'll be content to just stay home for a bit!

What We Do For Fun.....

Sooooo Tired

I thought I would check if anyone else had updated their blog, and not finding many updates thought I should probably update mine.

I've had a super busy week and tomorrow will be a great chance to relax!  Sarah, the lady that I babysit for, runs a dance studio, and had a competition at the college this week.  We had agreed on this past week's schedule awhile ago, but I completely forgot about the extra days until the night before :P  From Wednesday through today I had the kids from 8 - 10 hours/day!  What a way to end the year!  She does a couple week long camps during the summer, but I'm pretty much done until September now.  Oh, and I had committed to working the Montgomery Gentry concert at the Crystal Centre tonight from 6:15 - 10:30 - my feet are sore!!  I'm so glad I don't have to work these hours on a regular basis!

The weather has been SO nice lately - I was out with the kids yesterday and I actually got a sunburn on my face.  That is crazy!  We've been enjoying some parks around the town as well.  It's nice to finally get out of the house and especially for the kids, to be able to run around!

Well, Michael's done watching his movie so I'm going to go play a level of Lego Batman.  I've never been into video games, but I rented Lego Batman for Aidan last year and played more than him and ever since...

Nanny

We just got back from a quick trip to Kitimat - if you can call driving to Kitimat quck! Michael's mom had been diagnosed with cancer last fall and was in and out of hospital since then and passed away on April 17th. They came up to visit us in late summer and then we went up to Kitimat for Christmas and Michael was able to spend a week around Easter in Kitimat as well. I'm so glad we were able to spend so much time with them this past year, and especially that Michael (and his brother Corey) had the opportunity to be up there less than a week before she passed. We got the news on Friday and quickly made plans to leave on Monday evening. Although it's been frustrating for us that Michael has been laid off since he finished school, it was almost a blessing that we didn't have to worry about missing work! It was nice to be up visiting with the rest of the family and also to be there for the Memorial service.

I wish I would have taken more pictures, but here's what I took:

Is it bad that I took this picture? I'm not looking forward to when Keira all of a sudden has to go and there's no gas station or rest stop in sight. Maybe we'll have to start travelling with a little potty!

I don't remember where this was, probably right outside of Smithers since it's during the day and Aidan's awake, but the greens of the trees were beautiful.

Taking the opportunity to stretch his legs

In a pretty good mood for having travelled all night!

Keira in her corner, with Foofa. I'm really looking forward to getting rid of those carseats!! I'm sure the kids will have a lot more room without them, especially sitting behind Michael who needs a LOT of leg room.

Not so thrilled about being cooped up in the car.

We brought the computer along and Keira took advantage of this to watch her favourite show - Yo Gabba Gabba of course!

Little Munchkin!

Having a snack - I think the kids enjoy eating in the living room at Grandpa's house!

All it took was Aidan sitting in the chair and eating off this tv tray to get Keira obsessed with sitting here and having a snack - just like Aidan :)

Grandpa having a visit with Keira while out at a restaurant.

We decided to try travelling overnight this time - something we'd only done once or twice with Aidan and never with both of them. Usually we break up the trip with a hotel in Prince George, but it takes 2 days and we thought we'd try to save some time - and money - by driving straight through. And if the kids freaked out, we could always stop and get a hotel anyways. We planned to leave at 8 (I had to babysit til 8, which was pushed to 8:30) but ended up pulling out at 9:30. Aidan directed all his attention to his new Leapster game (Cars: Supercharged) and that kept him busy for 2 hours - I LOVE that Leapster! - and Keira thought it would be fun to make me play fetch with both her soothers and voice her feelings on being made to stay up and then buckled into a car seat. (We outsmarted her on the way back by tying her soother to her carseat - HA!) Both the kids finally fell asleep around 11:30 and slept until about 7:30 (6:30BC), just in time to stop at the McDonalds in Smithers! Although the drive home did not go quite as smoothly as the drive down, it still went remarkably well. I'm not a huge fan of road trips and I am always super nervous about going on one with the kids so I usually make a much bigger deal of it than needs to be made. I think we'll definitely have to do this overnight thing again, and maybe I'll be able to help out a bit more next time. Michael did all the driving on the way down, but on the way back right before Chetwynd I took over until Dawson so he could rest. Thankfully I had gotten some sleep during the night so I wasn't too tired.

Oatmeal

The kids and I have been enjoying home-made oatmeal lately and I thought I would share the recipe. Oatmeal is surprisingly quick and easy to make from scratch and in my opinion, tastes WAY better than the packaged stuff. This is a recipe from Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld, and all the recipes in the book have a hidden vegetable! I think it's a great idea to get more vegetables into your kids, especially when you can't taste it! They had Sloppy Joes last night and I put carrots, acorn squash, sweet potato, celery, onion and tomatoes in there. There was just enough room to squeeze in some ground beef and they loved it! Anyways, here's the recipe:

1 cup nonfat milk
1/4 cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar (I put half that amount in this morning and didn't notice a difference)
1/4 cup canned pumpkin or sween potato puree
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice
1 cup old fashioned oats
2 tsp peanut butter (optional) (I usually leave this out, it gets kind of goopy if you put it in)
Dried fruit and nuts - optional - Aidan loves raisins and coconut on his
Pure maple syrup, for serving - I think this is a little much. I pour milk over the oatmeal and serve it and the kids don't complain.

In a small saucepan, combine milk, sugar, pumpkin, vanilla and spice. Bring to a gentle boil and stir in the oatmeal. Reduce the heat and simmer for 2 to 3 minutes until the oatmeal is soft and creamy. Stir in peanut butter, if using. Spoon the oatmeal into bowls, sprinkle with dried fruit and nuts, if you like, and serve warm with maple syrup.

It's an excellent nutritous and filling breakfast!

More Easter Eggs

I was just transferring the pictures from the camera to the computer when I came across a couple pictures that should have gone in the Easter Egg post below.

I came across a craft on the nickjr website for using dyed easter eggs and decorating them to look like Brobee and Foofa. There wasn't anything for Plex, Toodee or Muno, but I figured it wouldn't be too hard to improvise, and I thought I'd use those plastic eggs you put candy in, instead of real eggs.

I didn't have a red egg and I left it too late to go hunt for one around town, so Muno is missing.

After making these for Keira, I had to make some for Aidan but I was kind of out of ideas (and egg colors) so his were way less cool.

He had no idea who they all were and kept asking if they were aliens, which was kind of funny. So, from left to right is Yoda from Star Wars, B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens, Olivia the Pig and a Stormtrooper from Star Wars. Yes, he should be white, but I only had one large egg left and it was purple...so he became a purple stormtrooper.

I got Keira the smallest hollow rabbit I could find, and I think I paid more for it than the 1lb solid chocolate bunnies! What's up with that? She thoroughly enjoyed it anyways and I was surprised how well she listened when I told her to take one last bite and put it back in the box.

And lastly, here's a picture of Keira looking adorable (in my completely unbiased opinion). She always does that closed lip smile when she's trying not to giggle and 9 times out of 10 she bursts out giggling anyways.

New Projects

I guess it all started way back when I was at Fabricland and saw a sample Baby Rag-Time Quilt hanging from one of the shelves of fabric with the instructions pinned to it. I took a closer look and discovered that it looked relatively easy to make. So easy, in fact, that I might be able to make it! So I asked for a copy of the instructions and purchased some super cute bug material, similar to some receiving blankets my mom had made for Aidan, intending to make a blanket for Hagatha (she wasn't born yet, so she was still Hagatha). Only when the blanket was done did I realize that I had forgotten to sew the seams so that they were outside the blanket instead of inside, but it turned out fine and is now Keira's special blanket.

I improved my technique over time and experiemented with different patterns and colors.

And when I received a blanket as a gift for Keira, changed the backing of my blanket from one big piece of fabric (which was held in place by ties at the corner of each square) to many squares. It made more work at the cutting stage, but was much easier when it came to sewing everything up.

This is the latest blanket I made for a little baby girl in my church. By now I think I have made 8 or 9 of these blankets - and am in the middle of another one with 3 more planned :) I've decided that it would be easier to keep making blankets so I have a few that are already made, instead of realizing that I need a blanket in 2 days and running out to buy fabric and sewing like crazy day and night.

A few weeks ago I saw a quilting magazine, and partly because it had a pattern for a handbag on the cover, I bought it. It has so many great ideas for quilts inside and got me all excited to make something. I've decided that I want to make a blanket (and I'm calling them blankets because calling them quilts makes the project seem more daunting) for each of the kids for their birthdays. I'm glad I've started to think about it now because even just finding the right pattern is a lot harder than I initially thought!

For Aidan's, I'm planning on using a Spiderman sheet I found at Value Village. It's a flat sheet, probably twin or double size and has a medium blue background with large Spiderman figures holding onto black rope type things. Since the design is large and most quilt patterns use small bits of fabric, I found a block pattern that I'm going to modify and use as the design for the whole blanket.I'm going to put the Spiderman fabric into the 1 blocks and since Aidan likes dark colors, I'll probably use black in the 2 or 3 blocks but I'm not sure what other colors to use. Any suggestions?

For Keira's I want to incorporate the characters from Yo Gabba Gabba since as she gets older, she only gets more fascinated with the show. There are 5 characters, which doesn't lend itself to symmetry, and the characters are big, which doesn't really work with most of the quilt patterns I found. So here are three possibilites that I have found:

After looking through pages upon pages of quilt patterns, it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't the first person to think about making a Yo Gabba Gabba quilt. I did a google search, and came up with this result, something a grandma had made for her YGG obsessed 7month old grandson for Christmas. She used the print off iron on transfers from the nickjr website, but pieces together flannel to make the heads instead of ironing it onto fabric. I like that idea because it probably looks better and will last longer. I would probably change some of the colors but I really like this idea.

I think this one is super cute too. I'd have to modify it a bit because there are 8 snakes and only 5 characters. I couldn't get Adobe to work (probably not it's fault!) so I did this with MS Paint and although it doesn't look really great, it kind of gives you an idea of what I'm going for. I thought it might be a bit easier - and more quilt-y- than the first one.

I didn't bother messing around with Adobe for this one. I like all the different blocks, and I'd probably put the characters whole bodies into them. Toodee in the upper left hand corner, Foofa in the large block below, Brobee in the rectangle in the bottom left hand corner, Plex beside Brobee and then make a tall rectangle immediately above Plex for Muno. Then I would have the middle and right corner squares as well as 2 small squares in the middle that I'm not sure what I would do with. I could move Toodee beside Foofa and put Keira's name across the top, either in blocks or without, but that's my only other idea for using up the blocks.

So what do you think? Any suggestions? I'd LOVE to hear from you!