Future Construction Foreman?

The street in front of my parents’ house has been torn up and is being re-paved which has provided hours of entertainment for the girls.

As this truck drove down the hill, I heard Sarah remark to Olivia, “Isn’t he a beaut?!”

I’m not sure whether she was talking about the truck or the construction worker, and to be honest, I don’t think I want to know!

To wii or not to wii

Evan & Alex really want a wii, so D’Arcy & I have told them that they can save their own money to buy one.  Our poor, deprived sons have lived this long with just a Nintendo 64 as their sole piece of gaming equipment, bought for them at a yard sale.

They have being doing jobs for us to earn money, and so far, Evan is way ahead.  They each need $158.20 and Evan is already there; he just needs another $17 because he wants to ensure he will still have $50 left in his bank account when they’ve bought it.  Alex, on the other hand, takes his wallet with him whenever he goes to the store and loves to buy juice, flavoured waters, candy, crackers, etc.  Needless to say, it’s taking him much longer to earn the needed money!!

Unfortunately, he had a major setback yesterday.

He loves to iron and that is one of “his” chores: ironing napkins & pillowcases.  He’s been told over and over not to play with the iron.  (I never thought I would write in a sentence that my child was playing with the iron!)  However, it was on the mantle in our tv room yesterday, where D’Arcy had left it after ironing the night before.  To make a long-story-short, Alex was playing with it and knocked it off the mantle onto the brick hearth below.

My new $100 iron.

Just over a month old.

We do a lot of ironing.

He & D’Arcy took it apart last night to see if it could be fixed, but to no avail.   Alex’s quest for the wii has been thwarted, as he now first has to earn $75 to pay for a new iron. ( D’Arcy found one on sale.)

So far today, he has helped me with the dishes and now he is out with D’Arcy learning how to edge the lawn.  Evan is off to basketball camp next week, so he’ll have a week of being able to earn money for Evan’s chores as well as his own.

Alex’s birthday is in August – I’ll bet I can guess what he’ll be asking for!!

Some fun & some disasters in the kitchen

We’ve been making strawberry jam this week.  Olivia found this strawberry and her father helped her turn it into a person:

She ate him up pretty quickly!!

The girls and I made cookies on Sunday while the boys and D’Arcy took my father out golfing.  I’m a good cook, but I can’t make a decent cookie to save my life.  I don’t know what it is I do wrong?!  Here is our end result – at least they tasted good!  (And yes, even before we went dairy, egg, peanut, tree-nut & soy free, my cookies were a disaster…)

Flat...

... and see-through!

Let’s hope the jam turned out better!!

What are the chances?

Sarah had a major wipe-out on her face while racing with Evan last week, and scratched the lenses of her glasses.  Luckily, we had put lenses with her prescription in her older pair so we would have those as a “spare” since she can’t bear to be without her glasses!

Last night, when I bent down to give her a hug and a kiss while tucking her in for the night, I felt a snap and discovered that the frame of her “spare” glasses is now broken!  I offered her her baby glasses to wear, but the prescription is too weak and they are too small on her ears.  I’m hoping I’ll be able to find an optician that is open on Sunday today to solder the frames, otherwise it could prove to be a very long day!

A week already?

A week ago today was the last day of school.  How did the week go by so quickly?

We had a quiet night at the B&B last night – no guests at all!  This weekend is historically slow since we find many Canadians & Americans wait until the holidays are over to travel.

We forwarded the phone yesterday (just in case!) and took the kids up to my parents’ house to go swimming.  What a difference in Sarah, especially, this year!  Last year, she would just play around the pool and this year, she’s paddling all over the place in her water wings.  Olivia, as always, does everything her siblings do; nothing holds that child back!

We came home and while D’Arcy was trying to finish cutting the lawn, we had a heavy summer shower.  The girls ran inside and watched it from the dining room window.

D’Arcy & Evan played a game of Risk while I curled up in the living room and finished my book and Alex & the girls played together.  When the girls went to bed, the four of us watched Pink Panther 2 in the Guest Living Room!

Talk about the lazy days of summer – we don’t get too many of those around here, so it was heavenly!!

O Canada!

Yesterday was Canada Day and we had a great day!

We had invited some favourite friends over for a barbeque, so spent the morning cooking & getting things ready so we didn’t have to spend all our time in the kitchen once they got here.  When Sarah had woken up in the morning, the first thing she asked about was going to the Park to get her face painted for Canada Day – that was what she remembered from spending the day in the Park last year!

We all wore our Canada Day t-shirts from last year and the park was packed!!

We managed to walk right past the playground which gave me much joy. (Hundreds of kids who had eaten who-knows-what would have raised my blood pressure had we stopped there!) Sarah knew right where to go to find the face painters from last year, so off we went, on a mission! We did stop at the van sponsored by the local radio station, who were giving out Canada Flags and – SAFE potato chips!! While we waited in line, D’Arcy & the boys went off to buy some cotton candy and Olivia ate some for the very first time! She loved it!

I asked her what it tasted like and she innocently replied, “Sugah”

Evan wasn’t feeling very photogenic…

The line was long, so Olivia spent some time exploring the flower beds .  (No, I didn’t notice until we got to the park that when I had told everyone to put their shoes on, Olivia put slippers on – we just went with it; that’s what you do with four children…)

Alex & Sarah asked if they could go and explore the creek. I love these photos!!

A conservative estimate of the time we spent in the face-painting line would be an hour-and-a-half. Sarah was so happy to get her “Hello Kitty” with the sparkly pink bow!  They closed the line two families behind us!!

And Olivia will do anything to be like her big sister! (She chose a yellow bow though…)

Alex asked for “Sponge Bob”.

As per his sister’s (Olivia’s) instructions, Evan was a great sport and got an Elmo!!

We were running very late as usual (did I say that?!) by this time, so while the boys were getting finished, D’Arcy started off to the van with the girls.

We got home in time to put the roast on the rotisserie and get the kitchen cleaned up.

Sarah thought the napkins were funny!

The kids had fun together while we relaxed out back.

D’Arcy (&I) were excited to try the new rotisserie BBQ. Perhaps he more than I…

Don’t the girls look like they’re enjoying their meal?

I promised the kids that we might play a game with them, so we drew names for teams and played Children’s Trivial Pursuit. Although the game got called for fireworks, Colin & Alex were clearly winning…

The winners: see how intent they were on each question??

My crazy oldest boys:

Unfortunately, the girls had crashed by the time the fireworks went off, but the rest of us had a perfect view from our deck.

Happy Canada Day!!

B&B Chefs-in-the-making…

Alex asked if he could make pancakes for breakfast this morning, and Sarah decided to help him.  I let them do it on their own as much as possible.  (I did have to step in at one point when Alex was making egg-replacer using cups of water and oil rather than tablespoons…)  There was surprisingly little mess, and Evan said they were so tasty, he ate five.

Maybe I’ll be able to start sleeping in and letting them look after breakfast…

Quote of the Day from Sarah

Sarah:  Is my face clean Mom?

Mom:  Yes, Sarah.  It looks great.

Sarah:  Good, because I wiped it off on the couch and the couch is a dark colour so the chocolate cookie won’t show up!

A Trip to the ER

And we had gone almost a full year without taking Olivia to the ER…

Our local pharmacy is owned by our neighbours so rather than us going to pick up Olivia’s prescriptions, they will usually drop them off to us when going by.  This morning, we received a delivery of Olivia’s Prevacid, which she takes for GERD (reflux).  It comes is a dissoluble tablet, which she puts on her tongue once in the morning and once at suppertime.  She loves it.

I gave her this morning’s dose, and then put the package on the kitchen table while I was talking with our guest in the dining room.

Not long after, Alex called to me, “Mom, Olivia’s playing with her medicine.”

We discovered that she had popped five pills out of their blister packs and eaten them!  (Plus the dose I had already given her…)

I called the pharmacy and told them what happened while Olivia was screaming bloody murder in the background because we had taken her “candy” away from her!  They did some calculations and checked with poison control, and it turned out that based on the dose she’d had, she should have vomiting induced or take activated charcoal.  Great.

So off went D’Arcy & Olivia to the hospital where they put her under observation.  She was showing absolutely NO symptoms of distress, so they kept her on a heart strip for a bit (it was perfect) and then sent her home.

Needless to say, she doesn’t get any more doses until Wednesday, and I’m hoping that she’ll sleep well tonight with no reflux!

And yes, the boxes are back up on the top shelf where I should have put them in the first place…

Not Since Moses

Today, we packed up the gang at 7:15 am and headed to Five Islands, NS, to run in the “Not Since Moses” race on the floor of the Bay of Fundy.  The kids’ run was actually scheduled and went ahead yesterday morning, but since our School Board had the last day of school yesterday (Saturday) they added a second kids’ run, just last week for today.  The race date is planned each year according to the time the tide is at its lowest and out the longest.

I had to wake the girls up and get them dressed, just before we loaded them in the car, taking their breakfast to-go.  (My parents arrived at 7:00 to serve breakfast for the guests – we’re so lucky!!)  Evan is NOT a morning person, so he was being sullen until we hit the road, and then they were all raring to go!!

We listened to some “High School Musical”, etc. along the way, and everyone was getting down with it.  I had thought that the race started at 9:00, so made sure we were there in lots of time.  As it turned out, we were the second car in the parking lot (other than the volunteers – and there were only a couple of them around as well!)  We decided to head down to the beach to pass the time.

The kids found a large driftwood tree trunk, and hung out on that for a few moments, talking and giggling…

And then we went down to the water’s edge as it receded and spent a good chunk of time skipping stones…

We have never been so early for something that we actually got to watch them set up!! (The race started at nine yesterday, 9:30 today!)

We ended up going back up to the van, checking out the port-a-potties, and watching the other runners arrive and sign up.

D’Arcy even put the kids all on the roof of the van, so they could have a better view of what was going on. (Olivia didn’t seem too impressed!) They came off pretty quickly when Evan exclaimed, “That felt freaky when the roof just sank underneath us!”

The girls then had fun, finding one another in the tent windows…

We went back down to the beach and hung out on the driftwood while waiting for the tide to go out further.

Sarah even had time to make a “Discovery” when she learned that some rocks can be used as a pencil on others. (We called them “chalk rocks” when I was growing up…)

Finally, the organizers decided the tide was out far enough and came by asking the kids to line up to run in “one minute”! We were ready!! Unfortunately, most of the kids had run yesterday, so there were only a few today. The Volunteer making the announcements said that in yesterday’s race, only two runners completed the full 1k. (It’s more difficult than you would think!!) Both our boys finished!

The boys ran on ahead from the start, but the girls & I did great during the beach part…

We ran along the beach without a problem, but as soon as we had to turn the 125m mark and run in the mud, the girls started to wail cry. The volunteer who was marking the way was trying to cajole them, but the more their feet sank, the harder they screamed cried. D’Arcy could see us from the start, and noticed that we had stopped, but he couldn’t tell what was going on. He kept taking photos of the boys…

The girls and I had decided to forsake the mud and come back on the beach by this point (I had to carry Olivia most of the way, still wailing crying…)

We FINALLY made it, tired, dirty & indignant!

They all got medals for completing the race. Some were more pleased than others…

This one was taken by our friend Judy, a B&B owner in Five Islands. Like I said, Olivia was not happy until she was cleaned up!!

We went to Five Islands Provincial Park for a Picnic and to watch the start of the 10k.

See the 10k runners in the distance? “HI Mrs. Dennis!!” ;-P

I love that my kids really love one another – look how much fun they have together!!!

We had to stop along the way home to get this photo for Ms. Teale,

We also stopped at the Market on the way home, then I put all the laundry in the washer while D’Arcy hosed off the sneakers. He took all of the kids to my parents’ house for a swim-bath this afternoon, and we’re planning a low-key movie night and early bed tonight.

I LOVE Summer Vacation!!