a full house

Things have changed a lot around here over the past week. Grandma and Grandpa are home for the summer, and we're all thrilled to have them back! The kids have been so excited, and have even had a sleepover already! They got home last weekend, on a beautiful warm day. We played outside all afternoon. The kids are loving the bubble machine!

This week, my sister is out for a visit! Yay! We spent the evening peeling the kids off the ceiling. They were pretty excited! So am I :-) It's going to be a short visit, never long enough to really catch up... but it's better than no visit, and I'll be going to spend some quality sister time with her in just two weeks!

I'm a rare bird...

Spent Friday leading a professional development session at work, on personality types and norms of collaboration. It's always insightful to do that kind of reflection on who you are and how you work. My personality test results showed that I'm an INTJ, one of the rarest types. One of the things that I always find fascinating about the Meyers-Briggs/Keirsey temperament tests is how dead-on they are...how people who do them read the description of their typology, nodding their heads the whole while. I've led a lot of professional learning sessions this year. It's been a lot of work, but I really enjoy it! I put a lot of effort into planning it, and it's so rewarding to see adult learners involved in engaged learning as a result of that planning.

We had a great weekend. It was beautiful out! Today the sun actually felt hot! We bought bikes yesterday, so now we each have a bike. G is thrilled about his new bike (but not interested in taking the training wheels off yet...which will be our goal for this year). We drove around the block a few times yesterday, and went for a longer bike ride today. M is NOT at all excited about wearing a helmet. She screamed and tried to pull it off the whole time she was in the bike seat. I finally just took it off her and stuck her into the bike cart. L isn't too interested in driving bike yet, although I'm sure she'll be able to (she's been practicing a lot on the SmartCycle). I'm hoping that she'll be more motivated to try once we put her new Princess basket onto her bike (which is G's old bike), so she can take Monkey for a ride.

Lots of playing outside today...bike riding, t-ball, badminton, bubbles, and Hut for supper! I love spring!

yay for spring!

It's finally gotten warmer here. The snow is almost gone! Yesterday was so nice out, we sacrificed a good supper for playtime outside. G wasn't too excited about going outside (he wanted to play Batman on his Leapster instead), but once we got outside he was thrilled to learn how to play badminton, and he was awesome at T-ball! I can't believe how well he's hitting the ball this year! Of course, he had to keep score.












L wanted to go in the tree, but wanted out right away. It hurt her bum too much. :-)












Being outside is such a different experience with M this year. She is all about exploring. We went for a short bike ride, and she was chattering away the whole time! Walking around the backyard, playing with the sandbox, and touching the grass. I'm hoping she doesn't discover one of the many mounds of dog poop that was deposited on our yard over the winter (no, we do not have a dog).












The transition back into real life has gone better than I expected, hopefully as the result of planning. G has been a little stressed...but he's coping, and that's great! L and M are thrilled to be back with the friends and fun at daycare!

Back to Reality

Tomorrow morning we'll all be heading back to the grind. Spring break was good. I needed a break, some extra time with the kids. Things were so intense in the two months before Spring Break that I just needed to shut it off for a week. So, I took a break. I brought work home, and I didn't do it. I'm okay with that. I'll catch up tomorrow.

I'm glad we didn't make any momentous travel plans this year. Things have been so busy, it was nice to just stay close to home, and catch up with some stuff around the house, spend time with friends, and take a few smaller outings.

Went swimming at the Aquatic Centre in Steinbach on Friday. Thank goodness for friends with older kids who came along, because I never would've managed the "You must stay in arm's reach of your children" rule on my own! I only have two arms! The kids had a really good time! It was super noisy in there, and that's always tough on G, but he still had fun. Both G and L went on the waterslide with one of the older kids, they had lots of fun in the "river," and M went crazy for the pool! She is a real water baby. On a side note, I think that L has her first crush on an older boy... he babysat with his older sister on Thursday afternoon so I could get a haircut, and then they joined us at the pool. She had to sit beside him at DQ after swimming, and she's been talking about him a lot :-) It's cute.

We went out on Saturday for the 16th anniversary of our first date! I can't believe we've been together for that long! I guess it means I'm getting older, and that we're still making it work. We went shopping in the afternoon, which is always much more pleasurable and productive without kids along, and then we went for supper. We were home before the kids were sleeping, and it was nice to tuck them in.

I'm crossing my fingers for a smooth transition back into reality. The kids have kept their sleep routine pretty consistent, even getting up earlier than usual (all on their own) for much of their week. I know I've said this before, but I just don't get how they wake up early, on their own, on days when I'm not working, but on work days, we need to wake them up...and it's ugly. G's respite worker will be taking him to school this week so that she can stick around and help him transition back into school. Breaks are hard on young kids...especially when they have anxiety and issues with flexibility and transitions. L and M should be excited to be back with their friends in daycare. They're both so social...I think they may have been getting a little bored at home ;-)

Taking it easy

It's been so nice to have some time off! We've been laying pretty low, just catching up on spending time together.

Spent Saturday at Rhubarb Roots doing some scrapbooking, then went to a baby shower for a friend. Here are a few of my favourite layouts from the weekend:












We've been catching up with some friends, playing, cleaning, and just hanging out. I've got some work to get to at some point this week, and I still need to get my computer glitches figured out. Kids have been getting up as early or earlier than usual, which will be good next week when we need to get up to get out of the house.

M is walking more than crawling now. I finally got a (lousy) photo of her walking, and of her sitting on our coffee table saying "ticka ticka ticka ticka" (i.e. tickle tickle). She also has started making this funny sucking noise with her mouth when she wants her soother. Her new favourite food is pickles. I'm sure she even said "more pickle" the other day at lunch! Unfortunately, too many pickles seems to make for a very sore bum later in the day.





G and L have been getting along really well, for the most part. They've been so cooperative when we've been going out, and they've been really helpful around the house too. They've been playing Smart Cycle quite a bit together, and it's very cool how they work together to play the game. L needs lots of help from G to figure out what she's supposed to do, but she's got the peddling part figured out. For some reason, though, she usually needs to take her pants off to pedal the bike (seriously, I don't know what it is with her and pants).

Not too much up for the rest of the week. More cleaning, a huge mountain of laundry, more scrapbooking (I'm really indulging this week), a haircut, a sleepover for G with a friend at Nita's house, and probably swimming on Friday.