Happy Birthday to ME!

Carrie, one of the SLPs that I work with, makes each of us a special cake for our birthday. This year she made me my very own hopscotch cake! (She's made: a treasure chest, a swimming pool, humpty dumpty on a wall, a train, you get the idea).

This spring the "dog run" turned into "poop soup". Even more gross than you're imagining right now. So we had to be real dog owners and actually take the dogs out three times a day. Sigh. Here they are in the back yard (I'm hoping that by the end of the summer this will be a good BEFORE picture and we'll actually have some kind of trees or shrubs or SOMETHING green back there). Keely - thank you so much for this little down vest. Of course we are so thrilled with it! Now there are three of us in vests. Cheesey but true. The best part: There is a family down the road with a beagle and a little boy Maddie's age and all three of them also have vests. Can anyone say soul mates?? We've been trying to stalk them in a cool, not creepy kind of way. Stay tuned.

Baby Bjorn:
Never before seen design.
(this was ENTIRELY Maddie's idea. She stuffed Cathrine in there and then insisted that we help her put it on. As with many things around here, Jason and I are merely innocent bystanders)

Mommy Maddie Day
I was completely inspired by Erika's recent string of Mommy and Kole days so this morning Maddie and I headed out sort of bright and early to The City. Our mission? The Mendel Art Gallery. As we Maddie and I were pulling out of the driveway both Jason and I thought it was quite possibly the single worst idea I have ever had....

Turns out we were wrong. So wrong. Maddie and I had the best day that I think we've ever had together. We explored the art gallery and she was so good and well behaved you would have thought she was the ripe old age of 4, not 2. Then we headed to the river for a quick peek (that's where this pic was taken. Allison, remember when you gave Maddie this sweater when she was 4 months and you were worried it wouldn't fit...) Then it was off to Starbucks for a delicious (one of Maddie's latest words) lunch of cookies. (I'm the mommy, I get to pick if we eat cookies for lunch). Then a bit of shopping and off we headed home. What a fabulous day.

Ok, try to peel your eyes away from the Toddler in the Cradle to take a minute to realize she's put baby knickers (what do you call those things?) over her pants. Another look from the Madeleine Spring Collection. This is my doll crib. Pretty cool.

Yesterday morning I come out to discover that Jason and Maddie are running round and round the island. Maddie is riding her "horse". What horse? Oh, that would be the white strip from our living room blind that you see.


directors note: No animals were harmed in the making of this blog.

Having a Bath.

Maddie took a notion one day that she should have a bath. She dragged a rubbermaid lid into the doorway of our bathroom (not sure why our bathroom b/c that's not where she baths. Maybe the lid was already there?) Anyway. Then she scooted off to the other bathroom to get all her bath toys. And of course get bare mucked (as Uncle Britt used to say).

Fixing the bike. I think this was another day (but still the nakedness). She crawled under there and told me she needed to fix it. She loves "riding" this bike.

Just when we thought the clothes boxes were done, I found some more! Bless those Nelsons!! Keel - do you recognize these shoes? She loves them. Of course she feels that she should wear one pink and one blue. Good thing there are two pairs of one pink and one blue... She also thought that maybe Cathrine could wear some too. That last box had tons of shoes. Most of them are too big still but Maddie couldn't care less. I came home saturday to find her wearing a t shirt, diaper, one brown work boot and one dark brown work boot. Kind of like some miniature member of the Village People. Just needed a hard hat.

Scrapbook Weekend!

Jolleen came out from Calgary for a scrapbooking weekend with her mom, Kim, Kim's mom, Morgan and me! This is the second one of these I've been to out here and they are really fantastic. Tons of great prizes and freebies, good food, and of course lots of time with friends. Some people dress up in costumes and make table center pieces. Well, we couldn't be out done. Our costume was something called The Leisure Suit. Good times. Jolleen and Joyce whipped up this ultra fabulous fruit boquet. Almost too good to eat. Almost. I promptly went out and bought a flower cookie cutter so that I can make one of these for Morgan's shower one day.

Jolleen and Joyce

Morgan

Glo and Kim

You might notice (if you look closely) the attractive name tags we have. That's another thing - there's name tag making contest. Well, again, not to be out done we fashioned name tags from the envelopes our tickets came in and a bunch of scraps. They were ugly but made us a cohesive unit. Added to the "team" feel. We didn't win a prize. Hmmm.

Happy Easter

Lisa "suggested" that it was time for an Easter post. So here it is. There might be more to follow, but this will be it for tonight.

We drove to Flin Flon to spend Easter with my parents, Britt and his new girlfriend Lauren (who we like, btw). The drive went by crazy fast - which was very good b/c although Maddie is generally a good traveller it has been brought to my attention that I, in fact, am not a good traveller. Who knew? Moi? Cranky? Never...

On Saturday The cousins on my mom's side all drove up from The Pas to have dinner with us. Maddie was THRILLED to discover these "new" cousins. Serena gave us pictures of her kids and Maddie has been hauling these around (glad you gave us two sets b/c the coloured ones are looking a bit dog earred) talking about her "cousins". I suggested that we have all the kids decorate eggs. Shelley gave me a look that said "are you out of your FREAKING mind, Jenn". But she didn't say Don't Do It. So we did. And did you know, that the dye that colours egg shells also works on little teeny tiny hands? True. Very very true. It was really nice to see everyone again and hopefully we'll do it again sooner than two years.

Hutton with his little egg.

The finished product. Voila.

The Cousins:
Hutton, Storm, Blaise, Jett, Jazlyn, and Maddie.