Sunday, June 30, 2013

Fishing for dinner

Collectively we caught 7 trout today! Six of them were caught by munchkins, 6 years old and younger.
Look at their wizened faces as they wait for a fish to nibble on their lines. Before you get impressed, I should disclose that we went to a trout farm and fished in a small pond that was well stocked.
My brother in law is an experienced fisherman - NOT!!!!!
He did catch the first fish, but he also squealed every time he saw a worm or A FISH!
My dad made a valiant effort to catch some fish, but to no avail - they eluded him again! Poor Daddy!
As for me, I thoroughly enjoyed fishing, perched high on a picnic table, under the shade, being slowly consumed by a hundred annoying flies. At least I had good company!

Saturday, June 29, 2013

Fairy yummy birthday cake.

Who is this fairy?
Oops wrong cute little pixie. Name this fairy:

I thought it was Tinkerbell but apparently it was Wasp from the " adventures." Well excuse me for guessing wrong. In my defense it was on my four year old cousin's birthday cake. All the kids shouted at me for daring to say it was tinkerbell. I have forever cemented my reputation as the uncool aunt. Well regardless of which fairy or mutant was on the cake, it was delicious. Can't go wrong with Oreo cookie ice cream cake! Yummmm!


Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Surprise

My daughter said she had a surprise for me. She led me to the blackboard. This is what she had to show me. She can finally write an R all by herself! We've been practicing for two days and I was so impressed that she remembered how to do it on her own.

I did something for the first time today too. I cut my daughter's hair!


I've never really cut hair before. Correction - I cut my daughter's bangs before, but I cut them too short. Oh and there was this one time in university where I stayed up too many nights in a row studying for finals. I tried to cut my own hair. That didn't end so well. Anyways, this time I think I did ok. My husband cut my son's hair too. I love him with short hair, but we've noticed that whenever we cut his hair, he gets a little naughtier. I'll let you know if he does anything mischievous!

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Father's day take two

This is was the best fish I ever had.

It's lake trout, caught by my son and expertly fried up by my husband!
My dad went with them too but the fish somehow eluded him.
We also went for a hike on a trail about five minutes away from my house.

It was a hot day, but in the woods, the shade from the tree and the light summer breeze made it a perfect excursion. The stylish creature with the sun hat and exotic sunglasses is my mom.
We ended the weekend with a birthday party followed by a movie with the kids (monster university)

Feel blessed to have had such a pleasant evening.




Friday, June 21, 2013

Defining moments

I promised myself I wouldn't get sentimental. After all, everyone graduates from Kindergarten. No one fails right? But then they dimmed the lights in the stuffy gym and they started playing the graduation music, you know the one - pomp and circumstance. Then the little ones walked into the room with their little hand crafted cardboard graduation hats and the next thing I know my throat is all choked up and I'm holding back tears. Then they called out the kids names one by one and their teachers gave them a diploma. Here is my son getting his diploma from his teacher. The shot is a little blurry, because I was struggling to keep it together =)

My daughter also had an celebration at her daycare. It was her last daycare showcase as next September she will be starting Kindergarten. Why are they growing up so fast? To perpetuate her childhood, I took my daughter to the park down the street to play. It was deserted. She was queen of the park and she loved it!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The grass always is greener on the other side

I have a very unique problem. I have a grass aversion. I don't like being on grass, even walking on grass makes me anxious. My grass phobia goes back to when I was a preschooler walking home from school with my Mother. Let's just say I wasn't paying attention and I stepped in a big pile of ......  Well you can fill in the blank. We were ill equipped to deal with this situation and I was forced to walk home wearing my soiled slippers. I still remember the feeling of having the stuff between my toes and under my feet. Over the years I've tried to get over my fear. I even took up soccer which forced me to be on grass. I learned to run on grass, which made me a really good soccer player, but I never learned to be comfortable on grass. I can't walk on grass. I certainly can't do this:
Just looking at this picture makes my skin crawl. I can't even do this:
Oh the woes of being me.


Monday, June 17, 2013

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Action packed father's day weekend

The weekend started out nicely enough. My husband, an avid comic book collector dragged my reluctant posterior to the theatre's to watch Man of Steel. It was AMAZING! Loved the story and Henry Cavill IS Superman. Saturday was also very pleasant. We went to the Kid's fest. The kids went on all the carnival rides.

They also got animal balloons.

Sunday started out gloomy with some gentle rain. We cancelled our plans to go fishing and decided that we would go for dinner instead. On the way home we got caught in a severe hailstorm. It was so bad that the roads were like rivers and we had to take shelter. We parked the car under a tree on the sidewalk.

Well at least it was a memorable father's day!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Summer Scents

Summer has been late coming to our corner of the world this year. In fact the meteorologists are predict a cold damp rainy summer. We got a little slice of sunshine today though!
Our roses finally bloomed.

We had barbecued hotdogs and corn on the cob for dinner - yum!

We did the corn desi style with some lime salt and chili

After dinner was done and the dishes were cleared away. We lazed in the hammock until bed time.

It was mostly relaxing.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

How to make goose chow

Ingredients:
  • Well the first thing you need is a nice warm breezy day. 
  • Having a park ten minutes from home with a nice swift river running through it also helps. 
  • Next you will need a bag of stale bread.
  • Lastly some little girly fingers.

Just joking about the girly fingers, those are definitely optional. Most of my family are a little scared of geese. The fear of geese has been instilled in us by our father, who often tells us a sad tale of how, when we was but a boy, he encountered a mama goose in the little village in Bangladesh that he was born in. Somehow my poor unfortunate father got in between this goose and her goslings and so the goose apparently chased my father and pecked viciously at him. The harrowing saga has taught us to keep a distance from the rabid animals.

My daughter however hasn't heard this story yet. She ventured closer to the geese than the rest of us ever dared. There were a few moments where I thought for sure her fat little fingers were goners, but thankfully the geese spared her.

My son was so relieved that she survived her encounter that he gave her a squishy little hug.

On another note, the humans had much yummier fare for supper. We had korean flavoured grilled steak frites with asian sesame salad and garlic portobello mushrooms.

Even the little humans in our family enjoyed this meal.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

The butterfly whisperer

On the way home from great wolf lodge, we decided to stop at the butterfly conservatory. As soon as we walked in, my husband invite a butterfly to sit on his finger.

The insect happily perched on his hand and then fluttered up to settle on his shirt.

His new found friend stayed with him for the whole hour that we visited. Other butterflies also momentarily alighted on him as we walked through. At the end of our visit when we tried to pry the butterfly of my husband, it refused to leave. It fluttered back and settled on my husband's face.

My husband was so proud of his ability to attract butterflies. "they must sense that I am a peaceful person" he told me. As we were leaving the conservatory, a park official shattered this illusion. He said that the butterfly was attracted to the sweet smelling hand lotion that my husband had slathered on before we entered the park!
I think the guy was wrong though because my daughter who didn't wear any creams or scents also attracted butterflies. She had a curious and playful attitude towards them and they seemed reciprocate her interest.

My son on the other hand was the exact opposite. He screeched every time a butterfly flew close to him, which was every 30 seconds or so.

Then something wonderful happened. A butterfly came and sat on his head. He couldn't even feel it so he stopped being scared.

Next thing you know he was inviting butterflies to sit on his cap.

He still wouldn't let them touch his skin though. I had my own encounter with a butterfly. One came and sat on my shoe.

You can't really see it because it is black against my black shoe but I promise you it's there.
My favorite part of the conservatory was this area where they recreated a tropical waterfall. There was koi swimming in the depths and butterflies flittering through the leaves.

For a moment I felt transported to the heart of the amazon.

A howl lot of fun

As you may have surmised from my clever blog title, the post is about our yearly trip to Great Wolf Lodge.

I'd like to say we go for the kids but to be honest, we've been going since before the children were born. Yes we got lots of stares from judgy people on those trips and I'm so glad we have children to validate our presence at the lodge now.

The kids were both very independent this year, and by independent, I mean my daughter did not hold on to us for dear life. Last year she was only two when we visited and too little and scared to do anything on her own. This year she is a confident little girl.

They were comfortable enough to move around the shallow water and go on the kiddie slides on their own.

At the end of the first night we hit the arcade. We spent $40 and we walked out with eight toys that you can get at the dollar store. On the surface it seems like a very poor return on investment but it once you factor in how much fun we had as a family, the experience was really priceless.


Sunday, June 2, 2013

The family that bakes together



Eats cake together.
I don't have a picture of us eating cake. I've been really lazy lately, as you may have ascertained by my lack of recent posts. It's also been crazy. I had to bake things for my son's school.  For those of you who have children in North America, you know what I'm talking about. There's always a fundraiser/event/school fair that requires parents to send in baked goods. For those of you that know me......I am not a very good baker. I made these brownies in what I thought was an edgeless brownie pan, but instead it was a square muffin pan. I didn't think it would make a big difference, but it did. My brownies came out as big blocks of dry cake instead of dense fudge like brownies. I was going to send them into his school anyway, my reputation as a perfect suzie homemaker be damned!!!! But just as I was gently lowering the brownies into the receptacle the school sent home for the baked goods to be delivered in, I read the instructions - Cakes and cupcakes only! So then I had to start from scratch with cupcakes. Here's what I did:
1. Bought cake mix (what? I said I wasn't a very good baker!)
2. Bought frosting (see above)
3. Preheated the oven
4. Followed the directions on the back of the box and made some batter
5. Put cupcake liners in the muffin pan.
6. Filled the liners to the top with batter.
7. Put the muffin tins in the oven and went sit and relax
I read a book whilst waiting the obligatory 21 minutes for the cupcakes to be done. At 15 minutes, instead of smelling heavenly vanilla, I smelt acrid smoke. I looked in the glass window of the oven and it was clouded over with wisps of smoke. I did what any sensible women of six and thirty would do. I yelped for my husband. He came down and spent a good 5 minutes laughing at me before he started to help. You see, he may have passed by the kitchen when I was at step 6 and told me that I wasn't supposed to fill the liners to the top. I, of course pooh poohed his suggestion, which really since I had never made cupcakes before, I shouldn't have done. The batter had spilled over the sides of the muffin pan and had fallen on the element below. My clever husband made the oven stop smoking and saved the cupcakes. Since my confidence was shot, he also frosted the cupcakes for me. Really he is my hero.
The school fair went really well. No one said anything disparaging about my cupcakes, which was a relief as I was afraid they might have taken on the flavour of smoke. My son won a outdoor water gift basket at the fair, part of which was a set of dollar store water guns. Now we have a strict no toy gun policy at our house. My poor son isn't even allowed to make a gun out of lego, but seeing as he won these, I couldn't deny him the chance to play with them. It was the funniest thing ever. He soaked my husband from head to toe, which made my husband very upset.

I also got some shots in on my husband from behind the sliding door, which resulted in my husband doing this:

Men can be such babies sometimes!