Let The Festivities Begin

Snow, snow, snow.  All the kids, two legged and four were giddy and anxious Wednesday morning.  We bundled up and played outside for hours.  The first thing Sid did was run and make a snow angel.  Ahhhh timeless childhood traditions....

Nothing can deter Lilly from chasing her ball! 

 Groovy plodding along

 I love this picture above because it reminds me of an Ann Curran painting http://www.ragtail.co.uk/

 Queen Maggie ~ We Are Not Amused

 I am pretty sure Maggie is near blind or getting there.  She has always been very clumsy and has a hard time catching things.  I love her eyes wide open as I prepare to throw the snow ball.  Little Brat Lilly is in the background on the left pawing Maggies butt.  Maggie REALLY hates that.

 "Intercepted!"

 After all that fun and fresh aire it was time for some serious snuggling.  Lilly is such a good girl and loves her little kid.

Saturday night was the local community Santa Parade.  We had spoken to friends who go to Karate to see where they were planning on standing and made arrangements to meet them.  By total good luck, we showed up and two other families from Karate happened to come to the same spot.  It was awesome!  While waiting for the parade to reach us 7 Karate kids from 4 yrs right up to 13 years, ran around the property in front of the bank, played tag and grappled.  We represented the club well!  Lots of laughs between the parents and tons of smiles from the kids.  Sigung would have been proud :)   We have discovered one of the hidden benefits of doing Karate with the club is we have made a network of good friends and they all live in our community.  We never go anywhere without meeting up with someone from Karate, it is so cool and gives us such a sense of community and belonging.

 Some of the kids waiting patiently ~ Naomi (Bella - as Sigung calls her), Grace, Wyatt, Johnny and Sid

 The big guy!

 And now the snow is gone again so the aire-heads found mud to play in instead.  Lilly stayed nice and clean because she is obsessed with chasing her ball but Maggie above and Groovy below each found holes to climb into!

I am sure with Christmas less than a month away the snow will be back with a vengeance.  It is no fun to drive in but it does keep the dogs a whole lot cleaner!!!!

Have a great final weekend of November.

My Life ~ The Musical....

Last week a friend of mine said to me, "Some days I feel like I am living in a musical."  I laughed at that because I completely understood where she was coming from.  Sid wrote and sang this spontaneously over the dinner table.  I started filming this after the first two minutes of song.

Enjoy!

Unexpected

We have had a week of unexpected events!  Thursday morning at 3:45 Ken woke me from a dead sleep with "Steph... you have to get up, Lanthiers shed is on fire.  You have to see this."   I am not known for my cordial behaviour when being woken in the middle of the night but this is something I am so glad I didn't miss seeing.  The neighbour across the street has three commercial buildings and the one in the middle went up in flames and got demolished.  I stayed up from 4 until about 5:45 watching them put it out.  Later around 6:30 when I got back up they were just finishing tearing it apart with an excavator.  What an experience.  It was about 500 ft from our front porch and most of these pictures were taken from the porch.  There were several police cars and at least 6 fire trucks with tanker trucks running back and forth to Limoge to refill.  No one was injured and they saved the two other buildings.  There was quite a bit of property lost but that can all be replaced.  We are still waiting to hear the cause of the fire.

 Fire just as the emergency vehicles were arriving

 Silhouettes of three fire fighters

 Going, going, gone.

 You've Got to Be Brave

 The Aftermath

 This is Mystery Black Dog. He arrived last week on Thursday night to play with Lilly on her Birthday.  He came back this week on Wednesday during the day.  The girls like his company but he runs under the gate and I am worried Lilly will follow him so I barricaded the gate.  He got out of the yard by jumping the fence but then couldn't get back in to play with my dogs.  What did he do?  Well he started eating my fence.  This was the point at which I leashed him up and called animal control.  By-Law was great, they came and picked him up and the owner had 72hours to find him and pay to get him back.  Problem solved or so we thought, until Saturday morning at 3:00 a.m. he showed back up at our back door.  The dogs were not amused to find him playing on the deck alone and woke the house up to let us know.  I will be calling by-law again on Monday.  We are getting a little tired of the middle of the night unexpected events.

 Every year Ken supports Survivor Night at The Races with a corporate sponsorship.  This is an event at Rideau Carleton Raceway to raise money for the survivors of breast cancer.  Something different this year was the chance to ride in the pace care during his sponsored race.  It was soooooo coool!

Me, Ken, Maria and Rick before we got in the pace car

 This is a view from inside the bubble on top of the pace car.  The car holds the judge of the race so the car runs right along the horses.  Watch the video to see how close we were!

Lastly this is an unexpected picture of a 7th degree blackbelt in Panda earmuffs!  Sid bought these ear muffs because it was love at first sight and HAD TO HAVE THEM!  She has worn them everywhere since last Tuesday and Sigung took a liking to them.  It has been determined that they are Kung Fu Panda earmuffs.

Wishing everyone an good week with no middle of the night surprise events! :)

She's 6!

 Sid awoke to a whole new year yesterday.  She is finally 6 like all her friends and what a party day we had!

 Flowers from Daddy

 Prezzies

 Needle Felted Harry Potter with Hedwig

And the number one gift Sid wanted was a new CD player so she can listen to her music at bedtime.  Instead she got a network resident computer with built in speakers and wireless keyboard.  :)   She will not have access to the Internet with this but can listen to all the audio books, music and movies we have on the server while in bed!!!!

A special birthday breakfast before we left nice and early for Karate.  Pancakes and an episode of Peep and the Big Wide World!

Sid was so excited about going to Karate on her birthday.  She did an hour of class and had to grapple with every little kid in the picture above before Sigung mentioned her b-day to the class.  Once he told everyone and they sang Happy Birthday, she got mobbed and hugged and loved!  There were 23 kids there plus Sisuk Alex and Sigung.  This is truly what belonging to a club is about!

Sigung pulling her out of the pile so she can live to see her 7th birthday!

Now it is time for the official B-day swing!  Sigung and Sisuk hold her like a hammock and swing her back and forth 5 times then alllllll the way around for the 6th.  Meanwhile all the kids sit and stand ready to catch her just in case :)

Lastly since she is so little Sigung gave her a birthday hug and then threw her through the air to Sisuk Alex who was waiting about 12 feet away.  He caught her and hugged her too.

Sid and I baked 5 dozen chocolate chip cookies and there were just enough for kids, teachers and parents
with about a dozen left for some to have seconds. Her Birthday at Karate was a huge success.

Next it was a BEST SISTERS birthday party!  Oh what fun we had.  Bella gave Sid a little playmobile set that had playmobile for the playmobile people.  We all thought that was the coolest thing!  The girls enjoyed the toys for hours.

Daddy as always provided the fun and entertainment. xoxoxoxox

And finally the girls snuggled into Sid's bed together and watched Harry Potter 2 on the new computer.  At 11:30 they were finally both asleep.  At 4:56 they woke up! AHHHHHHHHH!

Lots of coffee was consumed, lots of laughs were had.

Thanks to all our friends and family for making this day so special.  Sid really appreciated the gifts, cards, email, voice mail and phone messages.

Ken and I are still a bit shell shocked at how lucky we are to have this bright, sunny, smart little kid in our lives.  She brings smiles and love to us every day.  Bring on the 7th year!!!

Thank YOU Mother Nature!

Glorious! That is the best way to describe the weather we have been having. With all this beautiful sunshine, it is hard to keep the body and camera inside. This week I had some real fun shooting Magda and her Australian Shepard Zuni. Zu LOVES frisbee and it is awesome to see these two work together. Here are just a few of my fav's.

Flippin'

Flying Squirrel

"Ok Mom, put the Frisbee in your mouth."

"Like This?"

MINE!!!

Over the legs

It was the perfect day with the perfect light. Thanks friends for the fun afternoon!

Kenny is having a website done up and asked for a couple of pics. Here are a few from the first shoot. That isn't his guitar but he is falling in love with it. His guitar is in the shop being tuned up so they loaned him this one. It isn't as nice as his Gibson but he is really enjoying playing it. It's name is Yvonne (it said so in the guitar case lol)

ROCK STAR

Daddy and his Girl

Sid was doing some work and Lilly came and laid across her lap. Sid immediately requested a blanket so Lilly could be tucked in. Silly dog stayed there long after Sid finished her work and went out to play.

While this is a very graphic sign, it was designed by Sid. We had an issue with an emergency dog poop in Sid's bedroom one day when we were out. Sidney was not pleased so she commissioned and coloured this sign so the dogs don't do it again. It rarely happens that the dogs have accidents in the house so she has been very pleased at the effectiveness of having proper signage. :)

And lastly I had to post this video that makes me giggle. Lilly throws herself into everything she does. Particularly when she rolls over. If you are close enough you can hear the "OUFF" of breath being knocked out of her when she throws herself down!