A Walk with Riley

Tonight Riley and I took Oz for walk after supper. He was excited to have some special time with Mom. We were probably gone 20-25 minutes. I swear Riley talked non-stop the ENTIRE way. There was much more than this but here is a sampling:

"Mommy, I want to collect things on our walk. Like last Thanksgiving when we collected leaves for the table. That was fun. And I got to sit at the table with the leaves. And at the grown up table too. It had leaves too. I got to sit at both. That was a good supper. And New Year's when we had those little things (appetizers) for supper. That was a good supper too. Those were my favourite suppers of last year!"

"I like the way the water flows in the ditch. I want a skateboard (we saw boys on skateboards...). The first move I'm going to learn is one like this (Riley demonstrates flipping a skateboard). That would be cool. Jake has a skateboard."

"Why is that dog barking at Oz? Do dogs always bark at Oz when you take him for a walk? Are they the same dogs? I remember when we walked down this hill before..."

"I can't wait until we have our little authors celebration at school! I'm one of the little authors!!"

And so on, and so on. I wish I had a tape recorder with me. It was so cute!

As promised, here are some pictures from Bridget's birthday party.

The look on Bridget's face when she looked in the fridge and saw her cake for the first time. Makes all those hours of baking and decorating totally worth it!

All decked out in her new hat and purse. Totally stylin' with her jammies :)

Bridget with her giant frog she got on her birthday shopping excursion with Daddy :)

A birthday dance with Kieran.

A fairy princess opens her gifts.

Not sure what she's up to here but it makes me giggle :)

That dress is so cute and it's got some great twirl to it! She was twirling all day.

Love it! Thanks to Bampie for capturing this picture!

Cake anticipation.

Make a wish. Actually, I think the only wish at this point was to eat cake!

It was a fun day. I can't believe she's three already. But, man, can you tell. She now has that three year old attitude. Fun times!

Here are some of my current layouts.

This one is my current fave. I started it for a challenge at Tally, but I failed to meet the requirement to have 2 pictures. I managed to make it monochromatic, have a title be a Green Day song lyric, and include something from nature (birch bark). Oh well, it turned out to be one of my favourite layouts yet.

An altered canvas. I kinda like how this one turned out. The fun misting and the pops of red. It's hanging at the top of my stairs :)

This one was my second attempt at that Tally challenge. Got all the requirements this time. I really like this one too. I'll have to do one for Kieran too :)

Ok, time for bed. I have to read a couple more chapters of my book for The Big Rothesay Read :) I might actually get it read this year in time for the author's visit! Night all.

A big week!

It's the end of March Break. Bittersweet. I love having the family all home together. No obligations to be anywhere or do anything. No rushing. There hasn't even been too much fighting. But in a way it will be nice to get back to routine. I think the kids miss school and I would love my quiet time back :)

We started the week off in Moncton on Monday. We hit Crystal Palace for the day and had supper with good friends. The kids even slept, kind of. :) We had to break them up a bit and Kevin laid down with Bridget to get her to go to sleep but after that they weren't too bad. And I even slept a little between being kicked/laid on by Bridget, getting her water, taking her to the potty and switching to sleeping with Riley because he was scared on the pull out alone. Phew. The kids loved swimming in the pool and eating a giant breakfast at the hotel the next day. A huge part of that treat was the pancake machine. So cool. You just push the button and 45 seconds later out rolls a hot pancake on your plate. Cooked to perfection. So.stinkin'.cool.

Some cute Crystal Palace pics...

The carousel was B's first ride but far from her last! That gal is fearless and rode the (pretty darn fast for a 3 year old) roller coaster 3 times!

The carousel again. Kieran is also fearless and rode every ride he could!

Unfortunately, I don't really have any pictures of Riley. He was far too busy running from ride to ride with his cousin. He rode the crazy swing ride (a ride that lifts tiny swings into the air spinning them around very fast at an angle) 8 times! I stopped fearing for his life after the first couple. It's a hard thing to watch your first born on something that I won't even go on, lol. Kevin went on once and that was enough for him, lol! I also feared for his life, btw. Oh to be young again. I remember being able to ride on that stuff again and again. What happens to you when you get old anyway?? Weird. I can still pack away a goodly amount of cotton candy, haven't lost that ability :)

Again, no fear. You want Mommy to come with you? Nope, I'm good!

Wednesday we had lunch in the market with friends. Yummy. I love the market and only get there a few times a year so it was a nice treat. Then we hit the SJ library. The kids love going to the 'big' library :) We had to leave early though because Bridget thought the library was a good place to run around and hide from Mommy and Daddy between the stacks.

Thursday was a quiet day at home. Like really quiet. Oz was at the vet losing his manhood so it was uber quiet. So strange to not have him around. Guess he's really part of the family now :)

Friday we had a playdate in the morning with friends and a movie date in the afternoon with other friends. Oh, have I mentioned how supercool we are? Gimme a call we'll pencil you in, lol! All of these friends were sweet to get me out of my disaster of a house. More on that in a minute. It was also nice to give Oz a little time to recoup.

So, the disaster. Have I mentioned that Kevin's middle name is 'the Destroyer'? So, we planned to take the wall down between my craft room and our family room. Good. Open up the room, allow for more heat flow from the stove. Good. Of course, after the wall comes down comes the painting, new flooring, desk/shelf building. Wall coming down took an hour or two, wonder how long the rest will take? Sigh. I'm trying to focus on the end result. But once Kevin knows that he gets to destroy something it's hard for him to resist.

"Arg, I am destroyer!" I know he looks harmless, but don't let him fool ya!

Goodbye wall. Oh, now where am I going to hide all the Christmas gifts? Maybe this was a bad idea....

And my favourite part...the orange rectangle:

When Kevin painted the closet in the scraproom, he painted the ceiling too. Nice. Hey, it's art, right? It will be painted over of course, you know...in the next year or two...

Here are all the layouts that I discovered that needs home. I just kind of tuck them away when I'm done...guess I've been doing that for awhile. Eeek! Need more albums! Quick :)

Today was Bridget's birthday and it was a rousing success despite the fact that Santa didn't show up. She was pretty convinced he was going to come. Luckily, once she saw her cake and the presents other people had brought she was ok with it. More on the party later, now I need a glass of wine and some food. It was a long day. A long week!