Another Friday and another week I’m participating in Candid Carrie‘s Friday Foto Finish Fiesta (you can see who else is participating over on her blog). We’ve just come back from a recent trip to DisneyWorld so I’m full of vacation pictures. Though this week I’m sort of cheating since I’m posting a video instead of a photo (just this once, I promise):
Big Thunder Mountain: Roller Coasters have always been a favourite of mine. The hills and twists and turns. The freedom to scream from terror and excitement all at the same time. My seven year old daughter recently discovered the roller coaster bug on our last DisneyWorld trip. And, like all children, she of course has to kick it up a notch. Even at her young age she’s riding the rails with her hands high in the air. The video depicts her first ride on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster ride in Magic Kingdom. Trust me, after this initial ride her hands never touched the inside of the car. Yes, I love the Honey Pots ride and the Spinning Tea Cups (well, maybe that one not so much), but it’s kind of nice when your kids are old enough to enjoy some of the bigger, more thrilling rides I also enjoy.
When was the first time your child or you yourself enjoyed a coaster?
Vacations are great. I love them, who doesn’t? But they all have to end at some point. And with the end of vacation comes more fun stuff. There’s laundry, laundry and more laundry. I know there are five of us and we were gone for a week, but wow. Three full loads so far and I haven’t even hit the kids stuff (and they’re the messy ones).
Then there’s helping ween my kids from the vacation drug. That means getting them back into a routine: getting up early, eating at regular times, going to bed early, having some quiet time. But like weening from all drugs, the symptoms of withdrawal aren’t pleasant.
Let’s not forget emptying the refridgerator of all the green fuzzy stuff that use to resemble food and grocery shopping for new food. And by grocery shopping I mean taking three tired kids who are coming down from their vacation high and trying to grab a food item between breaking up fights or stopping my son from hurdling cereal boxes or listening to my youngest screaming for Mickey Mouse to save her (and she can scream loud).
And if that wasn’t enough, my son decides to kick it up a notch. As I’m picking out fruit with my oldest, my son decides he’s hungry. But instead of telling me so I can maybe buy him a snack, he decides to take a bite of a pear on the fruit stand. He doesn’t it up to take a bite, but instead leans down and bites it while it rests on the fruit stand (not once but twice before I catch him).
Then at home he decides to swing his housecoat from his ceiling fan by his Spiderman’s web and knocks a picture on the floor, shattering the glass.
All I can say is thank goodness this day is over. Only seven more days before school starts. Hopefully we’ll all survive.
You know summer is coming to a close when the libraries Summer Reading Club program comes to an end. All three of my kids have been participating in this year’s Secret Agent 009 reading program. We’ve participated in the past, but this is the first year we’ve actually completed it. So to celebrate we attended the finale party.
Only my two oldest finished their books but all three kids received participation awards. Anyone who read at least one book as part of the program was given an award, which was great for my youngest.
An award for all
After the awards the real fun began. And no party is complete without a magician. The great thing about this magic show was that it was based around the secret agenct theme. He also had lots of participation from the kids. Some kids were called upon to be secret agents to help the magician detective. Others were called into bad guy roles to try and capture the magician detective. The show was enjoyed by adults and kids alike.
We're watching the detective (magician)
Enjoying the show
My oldest daughter trying to figure out the tricks
Near the end of the show, the magician had magnifying glasses to give to all the kids for their own secret missions. My oldest daughter was selected to help hand these out, but first she needed a secret agent name. Secret Agent White Meatball (colour + food) enjoyed her important role.
Secret Agency White Meatball at work
Then came the ice-cream and random name draw for prizes. My son was thrilled to have his name picked and walked away with a secret agency pen (it has a light that flashes at the end). And all three of my kids were on the winning trivia team so they all received a free book.
When my daughter found out the person who read the most books received a bag of books as a prize, she vowed to read the most next summer (ah, a girl after my own free book giveaway heart). It was a great way to end the summer reading program.
Ready for Disney: All three of my kids are excited. When they’re playing together in the backyard they’re pretending to they’re on the rides. They sit and tell stories about past trips (this would be our fourth visit). My youngest daughter wakes every morning and asks if we leave today for DisneyWorld. She can’t wait to meet Cinderella and the other princesses or eat dinner with Winnie the Pooh. Well the wait is almost over. And to be honest, I’m just as excited as the kids.
(Oh and no that’s not dirt on my son’s face. The day I took the picture my son had a party at camp and they had some face painting. He’s a pirate)
Every day this week, right at 4pm, like clockwork, the ice-cream truck pulls up outside the community centre where my two oldest kids are attending summer camp. Every day at 4pm I have to come up with some excuse why we’re not stopping at the ice-cream truck. So Thursday night I agreed that on Friday, the last day of the kids first week of camp, we would make an ice-cream truck stop after camp.
Friday morning arrives. I wake my son up, all excited because he was going swimming with his camp today. And the first thing out of his mouth: We’re going to the ice-cream truck today.
My son’s camp finishes thirty minutes before my daughter’s so we have to wait. There’s no way I’m taking only 1 of my kids for ice-cream. I’d never hear the end of it. Thirty minutes passes and no big kid camp. Forty-five minutes, still no kids. Finally almost sixty minutes later my daughter’s camp arrives. We rush out and to great dismay the ice-cream truck has left.
My kids are devistated. And of course this is my fault. My son whines that I should have bought him ice-cream when his camp ended and the truck was here. My daughter whines that I should have bought her ice-cream earlier and saved it for her (yeah, ice-cream, in the sun, for sixty minutes!). Walking home with three very unhappy kids, we see a welcoming sign: 7-Eleven!
So I offer my kids a choice of ice-cream from the freezer in the convenience store (now I know why they’re called convenience stores).
Now that's the way to end the week
It may not be soft serve swirly ice-cream with sprinkles on top, but my kids seemed just as content with the store bought variety. And next time I won’t promise the ice-cream truck unless I’m standing in front of it, money in hand, ready to buy.
And here I am once again participating in Candid Carrie’s Friday Foto Finish Fiesta (you can see others on her blog). We just came back from visiting my sister and her kids for Simcoe Day which brings me to today’s photo:
There's something special about cousins
Cousins: Kids will always have family, you can’t escape them and they love you no matter what, though sometimes you may not be too happy with them. Kids will always have friends; someone to share a common interest in like Webkinz or Star Wars or grade one. But sometimes friends change interests or develop new friendships or move away. I always think cousins are like a hybrid of the two: they are friends who are family. You can hang out with them and enjoy playing with them because they’re not your brother or sister and you don’t see they every day. But because they are still family, they will always be there for you. Cousins have a special bond.
My sister and I were the first grand kids on both sides of the family and the kids to follow after that, our cousins, were much younger. We still see them occasionally on special family events, but we’re in different stages of our lives.
My sister’s kids are pretty close in age to my own, by some happy coincidence. And they enjoy hanging out together. It would be nice if we lived closer, so the cousins could hang out more, but in the meantime we make an effort to get together so the kids can get together. I hope our kids continue to develop their unique bond with their cousins for years to come.
In less than two weeks we leave for Disney. We’ve been before and I’m the kids are really excited about going again. This trip the kids wanted to try a little pin trading. But if you’ve every been to Disney, you’ll know the pins there are expensive, anywhere from $7.oo to $14.00 US. So my husband jumped onto ebay and bought a box of one hundred random pins, working out to be a fraction of the cost.
It may seem crazy, buying something without knowing what it is (we didn’t know what pins we were getting). But that’s the whole idea. If the kids ended up selecting pins they want to keep they’ll have nothing for trading.
A friend of mine is also going down to Disney with her daughter so we thought we could include them in the pin trading fun. So here it is two weeks before our trip. The pins have arrived. What better way to amp up everyone’s excitement then by hosting a Pin Party.
My oldest got right into it. She made a sign for the door. She also found a recipe for a fruit drink in her Girls Book of Flower Fairies. This same girl, the one I have to drag out of bed, was also up at six in the morning to go party shopping with her dad.
The kids drank their fairy drinks and they played in the backyard. We had a great BBQ outside. Even the rain held off (a few showers don’t scare my kids easily).
Catching up in the hammock...
...and hanging out with zombie comic books.
Over cupcakes and fruit the Pin part of the Party started. We gave each child their own lanyard to wear around their next and display their trading pins. Then we went from youngest to oldest child and they reached into the pin bag to choose a pin. Each child ended up with 25 pins. Some the kids were excited about and others they didn’t recognize.
Yummy cupcakes
Crazy friend faces
Pin Parties are for boys too
Reaching into the pin bag
Once all the pins were distributed the real fun began. The kids were allowed to trade with each other. My son has decided he wants to collect and trade for pirate pins. And since some of the girls had pirate pins he was eager to trade with them. You should have heard the negotiating going on! At least at Disney there’s no negotiating. You ask a Cast Member (what employees at the Disney parks are referred to as) and they just give you the pin you want for the pin you want to give up. No worries on value or size, just a nice friendly trade.
Some pins the kids decided to keep and not trade
Shhh...pin negotiating in progress
The party was a big success. That night my kids went to bed with visions of Disney pins in their head. They’re all excited about some real trading. You’ll have to check back in two weeks when the real trading happens in Disney to see how it all went.
We just returned from celebrating Simcoe Day with a camp out at my sister’s family ‘farm’ (when you’re surrounded by corn fields and hear cows, that’s a farm). We had a wonderful break and now we’re getting ready to coast through the last month of summer.
Another Friday, the last of the month. That means the summer, if you can call it that, is half over. I’m participating in Candid Carrie’s Friday Foto Finish Fiesta (visit her blog to see other participants). We’ve been away on a work vacation and that’s what this week’s photo is:
Nothing like a vacation nap
Sugar Crash: We’ve been having a mini vacation. And to make it a kids vacation you need jumping on the bed, non-stop cartoons on the TV and of course snack. My kids loved it. My youngest daughter was enjoying some cartoons on the TV one afternoon and when I looked over she was asleep. So I guess that’s one more great vacation treat: an afternoon nap on the couch.
We had a play structure installed in our backyard when I was expecting my third child (so my older kids could play while I was laying on the ground enjoying my morning sickness). It’s really come in handy. Like yesterday for example. I had some work to do in the backyard so I took my two youngest with me to play (I worked, they played). My son is a wanna-be circus clown and his younger sister is a wanna-be in training. I guess I should have been paying better attention:
This is actually tame for the two of them. In case you can’t make it out, they’re sliding down on the front half of a child’s plastic wheelbarrow. I say front half because my ‘clever’ son figured out the back half slows you down and therefore removed it. I usually give the kids a little leeway when it comes to playing in the backyard since the school playground has so many rules. But really if you think about the school rules, they’ re in place for a reason, so kids don’t do ridiculous things that get themselves killed. So of course I had to give the speech that what they were doing was dangerous, but not before I captured it on video (I guess that makes me Tweedle Dumb Mum).
Trying to balance life at home with my 3 kids (all under 7), while building my business and developing my writing. Oh and throw a load of laundry in and a dinner that isn't burnt. Wasn't working from home suppose to be easier?
Trying to balance life at home with my 3 kids (all under 7), while building my business and developing my writing. Oh and throw a load of laundry in and a dinner that isn't burnt. Wasn't working from home suppose to be easier?
Another day, another thought...or two. 