Giving Thanks

We had visitors! My British cousin Katie (who is spending a term studying in NYC) and my Torontonian brother Dan both joined us for Thanksgiving last weekend. They saw a bit of the city, spent some time with us and ate some good food, including Katie’s first poutine and pumpkin pie (although not together!) What more could you ask, really?

Uncle Dan losing to his nephews at “Mario Smash Brothers” on the Wii

Katie and me on the couch, with William attempting to give me bunny ears.

William cuddling with Uncle Dan on the couch

The Thanksgiving spread!

Katie and Charlotte sampling deluxe poutine at Jean Talon Market

Charlotte and Katie with giant (but real!) pumpkin at the Market.

Charlotte and me at Jean Talon Market with pulled-pork tacos – yum!

Charlotte making Minecraft- and Pokemon-shaped cookies

Elijah rolling out cookies

Misshapen but delicious vanilla & chocolate sugar cookies

France 2014

We just got back from our long-anticipated trip to France! We spent a weekend exploring a rainy Paris with some terribly jet-lagged twins, then headed up to the family cottage in Normandy for two weeks. Cottage life revolved around the beach, backyard soccer and wonderful French food. Our time at the cottage was interspersed with day trips around the area and one overnight to Tours in the Loire Valley, where we visited the chateaux at Chenonceaux and Blois. Cousin Katie biked down to stay with us at the cottage for a few days, and Grandma and Poppa also arrived near the end of our visit, so we spent some family time all together.

After two weeks in France, we drove up to Belgium to see Ypres and Bruges, then went on to stay with my cousin Susana and her husband Martin in Soest, Holland. We spent two days wandering the streets and the canals of Amsterdam and enjoying Susana and Martin’s tremendous hospitality.

It was a fabulous trip and we all had a great time, and my only regret is that I wish I’d taken more photos!

Starkey Hill

The kids were overflowing with energy this afternoon, so Grandma and I took them and Charlotte for a 4k hike up Starkey Hill, just outside Guelph. Elijah and William managed to scare off all the local wildlife (as well as some unsuspecting hikers) but we worked off some of their excess exuberance going up and down the trail.

In other news, the Tooth Fairy will be making a return visit tonight after William lost yet another front tooth:

School’s out, grandparents are here!

Grandma and Poppa came down to Montreal to help transition us all into summer. Elijah and William finished kindergarten on June 20th, and Charlotte’s classes ended at noon on June 21st. We all took advantage of Friday’s gorgeous weather to play some soccer and visit our local waterpark. Summertime, we are ready for you!

Epic Uno Tournament

Eric’s parents came to Montreal for the weekend of his marathon, and they taught the boys how to play Uno. Charlie already loves the game and was delighted to show off her skills, and all of us ended up playing for hours over the weekend. I’d love to say that Elijah was as gracious in victory as in defeat, but let’s just say there was a lot of “We are the Champions” being sung around the table.

Happy New Year!

Yes, yes, it’s January 16 already and I’m finally posting pictures from Christmas… what can I say, life is busy. Everyone is doing fine and settled back into our routines after a very nice holiday; the kids received everything their little hearts desired, and now our house is strewn with new toys.

Way back in December, my parents-in-law visited us for a weekend to celebrate Christmas a little early. Here they are, completing the traditional Costco gingerbread house with the kids, which stood for approximately 10 minutes before being devoured:

Here’s Grandmaman playing dress-up with William, who is loving the attention:

Since Charlie’s birthday is December 30th, we held her birthday party a couple of weeks beforehand. She invited about a dozen friends to the local bowling alley, which offers all-inclusive party packages (very appealing to parents!). Grampa helped to keep an eye on all the energetic 7-year-olds, and I provided the double-decker chocolate cake:

After an action-packed month of work and various holiday-themed social events (such as the boys’ holiday party at daycare, where they actually sang, danced and didn’t cry, for the first time ever – they’re growing up!), my parents and brother arrived in Montreal to celebrate Christmas. Here’s Uncle Dan, hanging out with his nephew Elijah:

We had a traditional Christmas: turkey, stollen (German fruitcake with marzipan), stockings, the Globe and Mail crossword (completed in a record 48 hours this year) – here I am with my Dad, hard at work deciphering clues and puns:

As usual, my mother spent a significant portion of her time online, playing Scrabble (sorry, “Lexulous”) with various friends and acquaintances:

Here are Elijah and William modelling some of their favourite gifts; new superhero capes! That’s William in Superman blue, Elijah in Spiderman red:

Here’s Poppa with his grandkids, modelling Eric’s (somewhat snarky) gift to me, a “Snuggie”, as they watch a Pixar movie:

We didn’t spend our entire time indoors, of course. We visited the Insectarium, where the kids were fascinated by spiders, scorpions, and stick insects:

My parents stayed until Charlotte’s 7th birthday, when we all ate yummy cupcakes (although it turns out that none of our kids are big jellybean fans – ah well, they looked cute as decorations):

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with a quiet night in: sushi, champagne and a movie, then bed long before midnight. I had worked until December 23rd, so I didn’t go back to school until January 11th. Happy 2011, everyone!

Where did the summer go?

…and we’re back! We’ve been busy as always, so I’ve got an enormous backlog of pictures – we’ll see if I can get them all posted today. A quick summary of the last 2.5 months: Summer involved a 10-day trip home to Ontario, as well as camp for the kiddos, passing McGill comps for Eric (who’s now officially a “PhD candidate” in his program) and lots of moping around and worrying about jobs/money from me. Then September hit, and I found myself suddenly hired at a local private school to teach full-time:  English classes for grades 8 through 11, and a grade-8 Ethics course. Charlie’s now in grade 2, the boys have ascended to the ‘yellow room’ at their daycare, and Eric’s working at an addictions clinic 3 days a week. Charlotte’s also taking dance classes again, and the boys have weekly swimming lessons. Considering that our poor old dog, Elsie, had to be put to sleep a few weeks ago, and that September also involves various curriculum nights, meetings, etc, it’s been a non-stop month of hectic craziness.

But! Now we’re in October, and we’ve all started to adjust to our busy lives and our new schedules. We had a visit from Grandmaman and Grampa last weekend, and my mum (Grandma) is here this weekend, which is always nice. There’s more (always more) excitement on the horizon, too, with Elijah and William’s 4th birthday (and party) fast approaching, as well as Hallowe’en (which of course requires costumes for all)… oh, and I’ll get to write report cards at the end of October, for the first time in my teaching career. Fun, fun!

Without further ado, here’s a pictoral history of our summer/September 2010:

New camera!

We bought a new camera this weekend; it’s a Nikon D3000 DSLR, which means I can take lots of awesome pictures of my beautiful children. I’ve been playing with it since Saturday, reminding myself how to use different apertures and speeds and all that, plus admiring the clear, gorgeous photos I get when it’s in automatic mode. Here’s a nice one of William, in all his grubby glory:

Here’s Elijah:

Big sister Charlie:

Both boys reading with my mum, who was visiting this weekend:

My in-laws were here for a quick visit last weekend; here’s Grampa showing off some cool new apps on his iPod to the boys:

Grandmaman bought the boys a bunch of toy food to go with the giant toy kitchen which Eric recently brought home after a neighbour put it on the curb. Here, William’s trying to feed her while Elijah sits on her lap:

March Break

It’s the last official day of my 2-week March Break from school. The kids have stayed at daycare/school for the duration, so it’s been a fairly low-key holiday, although we had some great family visits last week. First, my mum was in Montreal for about 6 days, then my in-laws visited over the weekend. We’ve been extremely lucky with our weather, which has been sunny and spring-like for most of my break.

Everyone is doing well, although we had a short-lived fever sweep through the children last week. It hit Elijah first, so he stayed home with his Daddy when Grandma and I brought the kids over to the Westmount library and Conservatory. As always, Charlotte and Will were enthralled with the fish:

A couple of days later, Will was the next to succumb; here’s Grandma comforting a very miserable William when he was too sick to attend daycare:

By later that day, William was already recovered enough to help Grandma prepare dinner:

Here are Elijah and William decked out in their kitchen gear, ready to help their daddy prepare some food (at least in theory):

My parents-in-law were kind enough to babysit the kids while Eric and I spent a night out in Old Montreal (my very first night ever away from the kids, believe it or not!). Everyone had a wonderful time, and the whole event was a big success.

Here’s Grandmaman playing with all three kids, creating “snakes” out of playdough:

All the children love books, and adore reading with their grandparents. Here’s Grampa looking at a magazine with the boys:

William had a ‘booboo’ on his foot (some kind of blister), so when he was reluctant to bare his feet to get into the bath, Grandmaman let him keep his sock on:

Finally, here’s a video I shot of the boys at breakfast time – I love listening to their wacky comments and conversations!

Go Canada Go!

Canada has just beat the US for the gold medal in Olympic men’s hockey so we’re feeling pretty patriotic here tonight! We didn’t get to watch the game (we don’t have cable TV), but I followed the action with a combination of Twitter, Facebook and good, old-fashioned CBC radio. Charlie was very excited to hear that we’d won another gold, and was doing a little victory dance for the Canadian team. She did a school project on “Patinage artistique” (ie Figure Skating) and has watched a few videos of Olympic events on Youtube, and she’s a big fan of Team Canada.

We had a very short visit from my dad last week, who flew in from Las Vegas at 9pm, then out to Toronto at 9am the following morning… still, he got to have a nice breakfast with us before the kids went off to school/daycare, and everyone was thrilled to see Poppa. Here’s Charlie sitting with him, right after she woke up (hence the extra-messy hair):

Charlotte’s on March Break this week, so she’ll be attending a “camp” at our local Y. She’ll get to swim, snowshoe, play, go sledding, cook, sing songs… hopefully it’ll be a fun, relaxing week for her. She’s caught a nasty cough from her brothers, but she seems to be over the worst of it and should have plenty of energy to burn at the Y. I’ve only got one more week of work until my school has March Break (which is two weeks long for us), and I must admit I’m looking forward to the holiday. I’ve completed 2 weeks of full-time teaching, and I am feeling fine, so hopefully this virus is entirely vanquished and behind me. I did manage to pull a muscle in my back this weekend, so I’m hobbling around like a little old woman, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re chasing three kids around!

As for “the brothers” (Charlie’s name for Elijah and William, since she still can’t tell them apart), I can officially declare them potty-trained. They wear underwear all day long, and very rarely have accidents anymore, although we still travel with an extra pair of pants, just in case. My husband has taken the extra step of teaching the boys to pee standing up, which is fine, except that their aiming skills are still developing… As I’m sure you can imagine, neither Eli nor Will is achieving 100% accuracy, and the area behind, around and in front of our toilet is receiving regular sprinklings of pee from our enthusiastic (but easily distracted) little boys.

Here’s a picture we snapped this evening: William’s adapted their step stool (which my father made for my brother when he was potty-training) into a potty-side table, so he can read his magazine more comfortably while he has a poop:

Finally, here’s a video of the three kids painting with watercolours. You can see that Elijah holds his paintbrush with his left hand – we think he’s a lefty!