A restful Sunday.

I can't believe it's the middle of May already. There's been craziness, happiness, sadness and always the busy-ness since my last post. We're right in the middle of "Dance Season". From the end of April to the end of May our household is extremely busy with Dance recitals, lessons and Festivals. By June, we covet the time off until September when lessons start up again. Thankfully this year I don't have to juggle work as well as everything else!



I been blessed to have a brother who has gladly shared his technology hand-me-downs with me over the years, and I was quite attached to the laptop he'd given me a year and a half ago... until a week and a half ago it decided it needed a rest. I miss it terribly, and am hoping it can be fixed, but we'll have to just wait and see. Until then I have to survive with my out of date desktop that is slow and clunky.

Sisterchicks Unite!

Ok, I admit it, I'm a Sisterchick at heart.  I fell in love with these books from Robin Jones Gunn a few years back, and quickly read everything that she'd written of the series to that date and have been holding off reading her two latest books until just now.  If you haven't read them they take you on adventures all over the world.

I ended my last post about trying to find your true passion in and for life.  I guess you could say one of my greatest passions is for travel.  If I had all the time, money, and freedom in the world I would really like to explore just that, the world!  These books allow me to take the adventures with the characters with no money, just my library card.  It certainly makes my traveller's heart soar, but long for being able to see these places for myself one day.  Though I must find some more fellow Sisterchicks to accompany me on these adventures, otherwise it just wouldn't be the same!

I still struggle daily with the uncertainty of my future.  I know it is all in God's hands, but the waiting is excrutiating.  I know that I do not and can not live "carpe diem" to the fullest extent, but oh the longing is there.  

It definately gets a soul thinking of what kind of legacy am I leaving for my children?  I bring nothing, have nothing, and will take nothing... but what will be left of me sustainable enough for my beautiful little hearts to cling to when they will need me most and I'm not here for them?  I can only give them my God and my heart... I have nothing else to give.

The questions that Kaia is asking I find incredible for a 5 year old.  I certainly never talked to my parents about the meaning of "thankfulness" or discuss what heaven is when I was her age.  Is God preparing her fragile little heart?  Or am I just reading too much into things lately?

My biggest fear lately is what about my dear little Anya?  She is too little to understand, do I even have enough time to make a real impression on her soul and mind?  If something were to happen, would she even know who I was?  Oh, but my heart breaks for her some moments.

Is it selfish to wish for a long, memory filled life with your children?  Why do I have such a longing to "get away and see the world" if my hearts desire is to have a life with my children?  Life is full of quandries and conundrums!

Thankfully it is spring and life seems to be breaking forth anew.  I took Anya outside last week to delight in the blossoming of my tulips.  It was a gorgeous 22 degrees, and we took a moment to let her feel the new soft grass under her feet for the first time :)  It was a small patch, lush and green and soft like carpet under our feet.  I loved watching her little toes curl and play in the soft grass as though it was an old friendly blanket.  Oh for the little joys in life.

Oh, almost forgot... I encourage you to take a little time and read a book, call an old friend or simply just give your special little one and extra little squeeze ~ just because!

Where does the time go?

Wow, pretty much a month has breezed by and I barely blinked!  We just spent a wonderful weekend at the lake, and look forward to what will hopefully be a beautifully warm summer.

Hailey had a first last week.  One of her dance classes went to Winnipeg for the Canadian Dance National Championships.  It's a very different set up than the usual festivals that we've been to so far.  It seemed very quick and disorganized, but very interesting to watch.  There were new styles and different dance company's that we haven't seen before.  

There were many categories that only had one or two performances, so I was a little disappointed that these groups still got trophies and medals for placing top 3, even though there wasn't really anyone to compare them against.  Thankfully Hailey's grouping had 7 performances, so their first place achievement seemed more meaningful.  She was so excited to receive a medal, her very first!

Unfortunately Hailey's dance thing happened the same day/night as Kaia's very first school concert.  Although I wasn't able to watch the whole thing, I did see her part of the concert, and it was so cute!  Both Kindergarten classes were together singing a cute little song about a mouse.

We cannot leave out Anya, she's been working on a first too.  She's mastered rolling back to front on either side, but still needs to work on front to back.  The newest achievement is sitting.  She (fairly reliably) sits up on her own.  When she gets tired, she can be a little unpredictable yet, so I still like to have the pillow around her.  She quickly learned how to lean right down and lay on to her tummy.  Funny how quickly they learn to love tummy time when they can get there on their own!

All three have fallen in love with a new member of the family, Clover.  She doesn't live with us, but we've managed to get out to Papa's house at least once a week to visit her since my brother gave my Dad the dog.  I'm sure the poor thing barely knows what to do with herself after the kids leave, they certainly love giving her lots of attention!  Almost makes you want to get a pet... almost.  Seeing as I'm allergic to cats, and possibly some dogs (I think even Clover), a pet doesn't seem that close on the horizon.

I had my scar removed the week before last, and seem to be healing up well.  I'm very anxious to get the results back to see if they managed to remove all the bad cells.  Now is the waiting, waiting for test results and waiting to see the dermatologist to determine if and how many other spots will need to be removed.  I'm hoping that within 6 months from now all of this will just be a vague memory and we can get on with our lives.  It's hard some moments to not think the absolute worst, but there is no reason at this point that we still can't wish for the absolute best scenario.

I encourage you to take a little time to reflect and seek out your true passions.  Whether it's cooking, painting, entertaining, or even cleaning.  Try to find the joy in all you do.  If you've mastered that step, find a way to share that joy with others.

Believers or Fools?

Happy April Fools Day!  Although it is April 1st, there are no pranks planned in this household. Rather today is the eve of Good Friday, which means a flurry of planning, and baking and cooking has begun!  

It's been an extra special week.  My brother is "home" visiting from Switzerland, it was my Dad's 60th birthday on Saturday, and both older girls are home from school for March Break.  We had an extra busy day on Monday, as I took the girls into the city to do a little shopping and took in a movie before going out to dinner with the family to celebrate my Dad's birthday.  

We saw the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks (or the Chickmunks as they are known in our house) the Squeakuel.  It was a very cute, funny movie that even Anya seemed to enjoy!  It was Anya's first movie in a theatre.  I was very impressed on how well it went.  Then we joined up with my parents and my brother and his girlfriend and headed off to the restaurant.

We ate dinner at the Ichiban Japanese Steakhouse.  Expensive, but a great evening of food entertainment.  The girls really liked watching the chef flip, cut and cook our food right there in front of us.  It seemed to make a great memory for all of us to celebrate such a special day!

Tuesday I decided to tackle making homemade perogies!  Wow, what an undertaking.  I think they'll be delicious for all the work it took to make them.  Seeing as I'm supposed to be more careful about what I eat, I've decided that I can cheat on my "diet" once in awhile if I have to put in the effort to make things from scratch.  It's so easy to just go and buy things in the store, without ever reading the label to see what's actually in them.  This way I know what's going into them, get a bit of a cooking workout, and hopefully a plateful of delicious food at the end!

This weekend is Easter.  I'm looking forward to spending time with my family, doing some crafts, having some fun, and eating good food.  We have the eggs all ready to be coloured, small gifts and chocolates to be made into a scavenger hunt, and the joy of knowing that our Savior died for us, and is preparing a place at His table, in His house just for us.

How will you celebrate Easter?  Is it just a holiday of bunnies and chocolates?  Or is there something deeper?  Take a little time this weekend and do something special.  

The Firsts have Begun!

Well, it's been about a month now that Anya first started rolling over.  A couple weeks since she had her first big girl bath in the big tub!  So the era of firsts has truly begun.  Today she ate cereal for the first time!  Normally I would have waited until she was six months, but she's been eyeing our meal times so intently I thought today I would try it.  I would say that it was a success.  I was surprised how well she took to it.  There was no spitting, no struggling,  and virtually no mess.

         

     

This week was also extra special because she met her Uncle Yon for the first time.  He lives in Switzerland most of the year, and wasn't able to meet her until just now.  Thankfully it didn't take her too long to warm up to him and he actually was able to hold her as well.  Oh the joy in my heart!

It's been a long month.  I think I've averaged at least 1 doctor's appointment every two weeks for either myself or one of my children since I was about 20 weeks pregnant last year!  First it was pregnancy related stuff, then kidney stones, then a spike in my cholesterol, a mole excision,  and now to top it all off skin cancer!

Looking back now I guess I know why I named this "just take a little time".  Life is too short to not stop and be thankful for what we already have.  I encourage you today to take a moment and show those around you how much you love them.  Don't just say it, show them.  Just for good measure do something nice or special for a stranger and experience just how much God loves you too!

A Flurry of Feet!

Whew, what a weekend.  We just finished the second weekend of performances at the dance portion of the SE MB Festival.  Both older girls performed this year, and did quite well.  Last weekend was Kaia's very first Festival performance, she was so excited to be able to wear her beautiful costume and dance on stage.  It definately made her dance lessons more enjoyable and exciting again.

Hailey danced both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.  It was tough, 2 dances each day, 4 costumes, 3 hairstyles.  Trying to get all that done, plus keeping a 5 year old interested and a 5 month old happy was definately a challenge.  I greatly appreciated my Mom's help to get everything done and get our beauties where they needed to be when they needed to be there.

The younger ones are considered "Ribbon" category, where they basically go on and are only positively critiqued and each one gets a ribbon for their participation in the performance.  It helps encourage future interest in participating in the festival.  As you can see, Kaia was very excited to get her ribbon.  Hailey is in an older group and her performances are judged and critiqued by the same adjudicator.  Her classes earned 3 High Silvers and ended it off with a Gold performance.  They've worked  diligently so far and seemed pleased with the experience.  Maybe Hailey will even want to try doing a solo or small group next year.  Good job to all the dancers!  It was nice to see so many people interested in supporting their dancers.    

Over the last 10 days I have earned a greater appreciation for having access to my laptop and wireless internet.  For as much garbage you can find on the internet, there are some good nutritional nuggets out there too, you just need to know where to look for them.  My quandry: find a more efficient way to get proper hairstyles accomplished for my girls over the last 2 weekends.

I hate to admit that I am not necessarily the most patient Mommy in the world (shocker, I'm sure).  My mission this year is to be more patient, giving, and understanding to my family.  The problem is the first thing that goes out the window when I get stressed is patience!

Unfortunately trying to create all these fancy hairdos for these events stresses me to the max, or at least it has in the past.  My girls have been blessed with full heads of thick long hair, and growing up with long thick hair myself you'd think I'd be all prepared for this.  Uh, NO.  I mean I can do pony tails, and pig tails, and the occasional braid, but I never spent this much time on my own hair in my life!  If it can't be done in 5-10 minutes, it's not worth it for me.  So now here I am, wrestling with how to achieve the perfect "curly pony tail" or french braid, and ballet buns!  Seriously it took at least an hour, hour and a half to curl Hailey's pony tail each time last year, nevermind having to "quickly" change it from a bun to a pony tail between performances.  Now with an unpredictable 5 month old, I just don't have that kind of time, nor do I want that stress.

This year I decided to "do my research" and get smarter about this endeavor.  With the help of youtube, I was able to achieve proper french braids (which I've never done before, inverted yes, proper, no), and learned about pin curls and rag/paperbag curls.  The braiding was simple enough, I've braided my hair enough in the past to figure that one out.  So, the real challenge was accomplishing the dreaded "curly pony tail".  Why don't I just use foam rollers??  Believe me, I thought of that; but her hair is too long.  We tried that last year and even after 24 hours her hair was still too damp to keep the curl and we still ended up having to blow dry her hair and curl it with the curling iron.  Not very stress free for dancer or Mommy when your trying to beat the clock and get everything done before having to load up the family and dance apparel and get to a competition an hour away!  Compounding problem, this year we needed a bun for 8am this morning, but a curly pony tail for 12:30 with keeping in mind that baby might decide they need to eat at the very same time that I need to work on the hairdo.  What to do??  Pray!

We practiced a few different things through the week, and decided to do pin curls.   What a concept, you just put gel or putty into the damp hair and curl up around your fingers and pin in place!  Let dry and voila, or so it seemed.  Like I said Hailey has very LONG hair, so it was a bit of a challenge, and the pin curls were still a little damp when I took the pins out, but the curl still held (YAY!!).  I simply left out a small top section that could cover the pin curls and when we put her hair net on to make her bun you would never know the hair underneath wasn't in a traditional bun.  Tricky :)  That left only a small amount of hair to have to curl with an iron; which then only took me about 5 minutes (another YAY!!).  The pin curls weren't perfect, but the nicer curls disguised them (bonus).  Why is this important you ask??   Almost zero stress!

This discovery allowed me to take a little time to enjoy making up my girls for their dance performances.  To get into the van on time, with all the necessary tidbits, costumes and shoes, to get to the performance rehearsals on time, with little stress to me and almost zero stress to my girls.  What a priceless thing!

I encourage you to take a little time this week to find a way to reduce your stress level.  It's good for your heart, good for your health, and good for your family!  

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Well, I can't say that I'm being very festive on this fun "holiday".  I'm not even wearing green.  I don't drink, so the concept of heading off to a pub to indulge in green beer is lost on me, but I do eat, so I spent some time over the last week researching recipes to try out today.

For lunch I made Mini-Shepard's Pies

 (http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Mini-Shepherd-s-Pies).  My 5 year old couldn't wait for lunch because the house smelled so yummy, but restrained herself from coming to the oven to come and peek because she didn't want to "ruin the surprise".  I had to come up with a biscuit recipe as well because I didn't have any store bought dough on hand like the recipe called for, and seeing as they were so simple, I doubt I'll ever need to buy that stuff again anyway. (http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Fluffy-Biscuits)

Later I'm going to try Irish stew for supper, but seeing as we're not big lamb eaters, I'm making it a beef version.  Hopefully it's a good as lunch was.  (http://www.tasteofhome

.com/Recipes/Irish-Stew-2)

Until this year I haven't taken much time to make each holiday special, but I have decided this year to change that.  So why St. Patrick's day?  Why not wait until Easter?  I had intended to make a big deal of Valentine's day too, but having my husband away on business trips for most of the month, special Valentine's cookies was about all I could muster with a 4 month old, 5 year old and a 10 year old at home to keep up to.  I was hoping that Anya would be more predictable by February, but not quite, but now, being almost 5 months old, there is starting to be a little bit of light showing at the end of that tunnel.  

Again, why St. Patrick's day?  Personally, I think we've lost the zest for celebrating holidays.  I remember fondly wearing appropriate colours of clothing for different special days.  But there's something special I feel for St. Paddy's day, maybe somewhere down the line part of my family was Irish, who knows.  I realize there's little but myth about leprechauns, lucky shamrocks and pots of gold, but to a child it's a world of fun and imagination brimming with possibility.  I want my girls to find this intimate knowledge of imagination.

So today, amongst the hustle and bustle of mixing biscuits, and making Irish Stew and gold jello, I took a little time to reflect on the Shamrock.  A bold symbol of St. Patrick's Day, but what does it mean for me?  It is meant to symbolize the holy trinity.  Oh how thankful I am to have all three here with me, helping me be peaceful in mixing ingredients (thankful that I have food in the pantry to cook and bake with); helping me be thankful to be sharing it with 3 beautiful, healthy little girls; helping me honour ancestors past in tasting and sharing a little piece of Irish tradition.

May you find a moment to take a little time and find the life in the Shamrock.