Changing my chairs

The other day Cynthia and I went to Fabricland and purchased some material to recover our chairs. I got a nice velvety type material that should clean really well - much better than the micro-suede that is on the chairs right now. She has a staple gun so I figured I'd just borrow it when she was done - which I thought would be a long time - I was sooo mistaken! Within the week she sent over the gun with Amanda (who babysits every Tuesday while I teach). So my project this Thanksgiving Long Wknd was to change out the material on our kitchen chairs - which you can see are very 'yucky'! The kids food, marker, pen and paint was all over them and I couldn't seem to get the material clean!

"Dirty Old Chairs!"

So, I started . . . first taking the seats off of the chairs (way too easy) and then trying to get the staples out of the old material. Too hard . . . decided to just staple over-top of the old material - easy again!!!

The finished product!

In a bit over an hour I had recovered 4 chairs - and they look good! Brade was happy with it too because the material ties in the couch in the living room (adjacent to the kitchen) and now it all looks like there actually is some thought put into it all. And - I have extra material so that I can do this all over again to another 2 chairs (which I hope that will not be anytime soon!)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

This weekend was Thanksgiving and so far it's been a really good weekend. We did our big Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night over at Mike and Cynthia's. Cynthia had her dad, sister, mom and Mike's parents over and then us. It was really nice to be a part of a "family". I just brought over some sweet potato casserole (the tradition in this family), strawberry spinach salad (on special request) and those pies that I showed you the other day. The meal was absolutely delicious and it was hard even finishing off the dessert (which of course I did anyways!!!).

This morning we did the church thing and the breakfast at Broadways thing (a tradition here - but it is hard getting table for all of us. it used to be when 4 couples went out you only needed 8 chairs, but this morning we needed 16 - and this was a low count morning . . . usually Cynthia's brother and family come out too and then we add another 6 to the count. they must LOVE us there!!!). After breakfast we went to the Bird Sanctuary, which is another tradition out here. The last time we went was when Emma was sooo little, and now she's 7 and keeping up with everyone! The kids loved it (and so did the adults) as the birds would actually land on your hands and eat the bird seed. Everyone had at least one landing except Navia (who is too young) and Jeff (who was a bit too scared on the birds - oh - and he's Mike and Braden's age!!!). Don't believe us - check out the pictures!!!

Emma's first feed!

Sandra (Cynthia's sister) and Navia

One little one landed on my hand!

Kaleb's first bird of the day - boy was he happy after this one!!!

Daddy went from birds to catching snakes - the boys loved it!

Kaleb found a place all by himself and was able to feed lots of birds there without the girls chatting beside him! Smart boy!

A game of statues - or bird feeding (you choose)

Emma found that if you put the seed on your head the birds will still come - watch out!!!

Oh yes - there were chipmunks to feed too! Doris (Cynthia's mom) fed this little greedy one for a while - his cheeks were HUGE!

Daddy trying to carry 2 kids home from a 3 - 4 km walk - poor daddy!

Navia was on my back and fell asleep. Cynthia went to take her off and when Navia saw her she looked up at me and back at Cynthia and said in the most tired little voice "I want Cyncia". Awww!

So, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! It was a great one! And Jesse, I was thinking about how last Thanksgiving you came up to Airdrie and I did a turkey and a ham!!! Yikes - I will never do that again - but for family - I'll do anything!

Navia's Commercial!!!

Well - the photo shoot that Navia did a little bit ago is now going to be seen by the nation! Yep - out of the 3 shots that the company decided to use of the shoot, 2 of them are with Navia!!! So, just click here and you'll see the commercial. It will start airing on October 13th. If you miss the little princess, just turn on your TV and you might just see her smiling up at you!!!

"BOO!!!"

Is it a cat or is it a pumpkin??? Hmmmm....

This year we have decided to start a new Halloween tradition - Booing! I was looking online and came across this idea and decided that it would be a fun thing for the kids. What you do is make up a small treat bag and then make sure to attach to it a note and a little "boo" poster inside. You then get your family together at around dusk and have one child sneek up to an unsuspecting neighbors door, leave the treat bag on the front step, ring the doorbell and then RUN like crazy so they don't see you!

The note attached says:

Then we make sure that there is a "BOO" sign in the bag so that they can put it up on their door so that people will know that they've been "Boo'd" and will find another neighbor to "Boo".

Last night we did our first "Boo" and Kaleb was the runner. He had such a blast doing it and Emma can't wait until tonight as we find 3 more unsuspecting "victims" . . . it will be fun! We just put the makings of caramel apples in each bag, along with some glow-in-the-dark bracelets and Halloween candy.


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It's 2 days later and Emma has had her turn to "Boo" and loved it and Kaleb just finished the last 2 tonight. It is such a blast!!! I would highly recommend this to others with young families out there. The kids love leaving treats and hiding while they hear the kids open the door and try and figure out where the treats came from. So cool!

Kaleb just before his last "Boo".

I can't believe I filled up for this much!?!?!?

I just thought that I'd let you all know that as I was coming back from the pumpkin farm (without a pumpkin because I couldn't find the fat and short one that I was looking for) I filled up with gas for . . . $0.97.5!!! Yep - I could hardly believe it, but it felt nice to fill up for under a dollar . . . it's been a while - a long while!!!

(the kids just had to take a picture with the guy who got stuck in the pumpkins. we figured that it would be a better picture than the guy that was stuck underneath a crate full of pumpkins!!!)

Oh - and I just had to show you a picture of two of the apple pies that I have made. If you know me at all you'll know that cooking isn't something that I jump up and down for - not even smile all that much about! Coralie, you would be proud of me!!! But, I'm going to save them for Thanksgiving Dinner with our friends out here and try to not sample them earlier - yikes - that's going to be hard! And, the apples in the background are all that's left of the 30lbs from 6 days ago. 3 apple pies, 1 apple crisp, a double batch of "sunshine" muffins and they're almost gone!!!

And the winner for P.D. activity was . . .

Mountain Orchard!!!

I had originally decided to do the pumpkin thing, but there was a small problem with my plan . . . I left the directions in the house and the GPS didn't have the pumpkin farm in it's files so I ended up driving in the direction that I thought it was supposed to be for, oh, about 1/2 hour. I then gave up. I found myself in Kempville and so I had to go to a cute little antique shop for a few minutes (the kids really didn't like this unnecessary stop) and then I remembered that there was an orchard in Mountain, ON so I typed in Mountain, ON in my GPS and went in that direction. On the way there we ran into a couple of signs for Mountain Orchard and we just followed them - ta-da - the kids didn't even know that this wasn't my original destination!!! YAY!!!

When we got there the place was busy as anything because there were 3 school buses of Field Trip kids and it was also PD day for other schools, so to start out I thought I had made a bad decision. The nice thing about the place, though, was that there could have been 5x as many people and you really wouldn't have noticed because the orchard was so large.

First the kids went in the "Straw Jump" while I figured out what we were supposed to do.

The we decided that instead of waiting for the wagon to pick us up and take us to the orchard we'd walk to the corn maze. The kids were really excited about this - and so was I - until we got in there. Yikes!!! You really could get lost in it!!! At one point Navia was lagging behind us and suddenly I looked and she wasn't there anymore. We started calling and heard a little "here I am" from her. She had stopped to check out the corn cobs on the stalks. Yep, my heart stopped for a second or two there. We finally decided to find the "Enter" side again, because the "Exit" was impossible to find! Maybe if Daddy was there he could have helped us out a bit - the kids want to take him out and show him the place - and if we do he'll show them how to get to the end, because Mommy just couldn't figure it out!

Once in the orchard the kids had a blast. I gave them each a 10 lb. bag and off they went picking. It did take Navia a few minutes to quit picking up the ones already on the ground, but soon she started only picking ones that didn't have "woom holes" in them - cute!

It didn't take long to fill up our bags and we made sure that we got Lobo's, MacIntoshes and the green ones for Kaleb. We thought that instead of walking back to the farm with our heavy bags we'd just catch a ride on the wagon - which was one of Kaleb's highlights of the afternoon!

(note: Emma is eatting another apple - I thing she did 2 or 3 while we were picking!!!)

We came home with 30 lbs, although you can't really tell from this picture

Then it was back home, but not without another apple treat - this time a real candied apple! The kids figured that it was just like a huge lollipop because it was so hard that all we could do was lick it. Maybe in a few days we'll actually get to the apple part!!!

When we got home we decided that we're going to have a Family Date Night so off to the grocery store we went to pick up a few ingredients and then Emma peeled all the apples for an apple pie and an apple crisp (when 2 kids can't agree on what we should have for dessert and there are 30 lbs of apples waiting to be used - well - 2 desserts work!). Daddy came home to a surprise candle-light rib dinner with an amazing apple dessert and then cuddle time as we watched a movie together. The only thing that could have made today better would have been to share it with Daddy in person, not just show him our pictures . . . next time!

Unexpected P.D. Day

Emma went to bed tonight and told me that she didn't have to wake up early because there wasn't school tomorrow . . . oops - guess I kinda forgot all about that. So, now I'm up late trying to figure out what we'll do for this P.D. Day.

Hmmm . . . apple picking, pumpkin searching, geo-caching, cleaning??? I'm pretty sure that I'd like the results of the last one, but on a P.D. day - even I'm not that cruel! So, tomorrow we'll see what the kids are feeling like doing and go on an adventure, just the 4 of us. Daddy will have to see it through the pictures!!! (and maybe be able to taste the end results of the day!!!)