Could December BE any crazier?

Wow, December is busy and it's not even over yet. Let's see where did the month start? ... Well, this technically wasn't December, but November 29th is awfully close and this is too important of an event not to cover... The Grey Cup! I still have students in the hallway coughing as they say, "you lost" or "Saskatchewan Sucks", all in good fun of course and mostly all grade 7 & 8's that I don't teach anymore. Not many kids I still teach are that rude to me, as I still have to grade them. We hosted a small Grey Cup Party. Pam, Kevin and Grace attended along with Jay's friend Dale from D & D. It's always a treat to have Dale come over, as he is a very good chef. For the party he made guacamole and last time he brought home made pickles, I am dilling my eggs in the leftover pickle juice right now, anyhow... Jasmine helped decorate by making little signs and hanging them all along the hallway. The kids all cheered with pom poms, screeched and ran around, it didn't take long before we made them go downstairs. As most of you know, the game was good, real good in fact, until the last 10 seconds when we realized the Roughriders CAN'T COUNT! 13 men on the field for a penalty, which meant Montreal got to kick, again, after they missed and WE WOULD HAVE WON, boo, hoo!

I can't get my blog software to work correctly with my new computer and Jay is currently sleeping with Devin on his lap - don't ask! If I keep adding photos now, they will all go at the beginning of my blog entry and I can't make them move for some reason - then my December will sound even crazier than it is, so I guess I will just start another post with the next stuff in it and this time I will be smarter and work backwards. If it doesn't work, just read the blog backwards and you should hear santa like messages, I mean satanic messages, no santa messages would be more appropriate being small children could be reading this.

Latest Scrapbook Pages

I have been working hard to complete Devin's 1st year album (after all he is turning 4 in December). Below are the scrapbook pages for his first year birthday partyand his first Christmas. I started the birthday layout at my montly scrap club, although Linda the designer won't even recognize it. I'm not sure why, but I had a tough time getting into the groove on this one. It is very busy, but I had a lot of pictures to use, but didn't want to spread them out to 2 layouts.

For this layout, I actually dug out my embossing gun, which hasn't been used for a loooon time. I also got to use my new font sent that is all jumbled up. FUN! Devin would be 3 days old in the pictures below!

School Photos

Here are this year's school photos. Jasmine is in Grade 1 - taking French Immersion, while Devin is in JK, Junior Kindergarten. In Ontario, they split the kindergarten curriculum over 2 years. So, yes Devin started Kindergarten when he was only 3 - crazy! Jasmine gets her first report card tomorrow and we have an interview with Devin's teacher Tuesday. I am very excited to hear how they are doing. Even though I am a teacher at their school and even though both their teachers are my closest friends on staff, I am still totally excited.

Trick or Treat!

This Halloween seemed to sneak up on us so fast. I had to make the popcorn balls the day of Halloween and it was a bit of a rush, so kids didn't get to help as much as I would like. Same with pumpkin carving, we seemed busy so it just got stuck in the schedule and done quite quickly unfortunately. I don't think the kids noticed, they still had fun even though everything was quick and short.

Devin loved his dragon costume and his teacher said he wore it all morning, even with the hood up - wow! Today he was roaring around and even letting out dragon farts, where he basically stuck the dragon tail in your face and pretended to toot - he thought that was hilarious! For trick or treating we met up with friends we haven't seen in a long time, Anna and Graham, even though they live right across the street - it was nice for the kids to get to spend some time together again (last year they were at daycare together everyday, so it has been a big change to not see them). We turned off all the lights and trick or treated to our closest neighbours altogether and then Jay took the kids out and I stayed at home. It makes sense since I teach in the neighbourhood, I knew most of the kids who came to the door, so it was fun for me, too! Jay said our kids were pretty nice and polite in general, but that Devin did like being at the front of the line as opposed to the back and of course he did not like houses that played scary music.

It wasn't too long before our good friend Grace showed up and then I believe they hooked up with Avery and Nolan, too (I wasn't there to get pictures of that though :() - so in the end they were one rather large group of cute little trick or treaters! Kids were home and eating candy by 8:00 - I'm glad they napped yesterday!

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Scapping fun!

The "At the Beach" page below was my experiment using blown up pictures from my new printer. I had lots of fun trying to change sizes and get what I want, although I still really don't know how to get what I actually want. It came close enough, but I still have some work to do. This layout was designed by my good friend Pamela Dixon. When my mom came down we each made a layout design and then all 3 of us made a double page spread - a fun night out with the girls.

This is the scrapbook layout I did today at my Stampin' Up! Demo, Linda's house. I always seem to have to change her design, not that I don't love hers, but this week I had printed my pictures 9 to a page, so they did not quite fit the 3 x 3 layout she had in mind, but I made it work - loved the title Linda!

Below is the layout I made for my mom's visit and I was happy to get more camping pictures scrapbooked. I am really enjoying my time scrapping these days and hope to finish Devin's 1 year album really soon! Then I can start the travel album and catch up on the Christmas one and Halloween one... it never ends - I take too many pictures!

Steam Train to Wakefield - another great fall adventure!

Here we are on the train - our table didn't stay clear for long. Ended up with lunch boxes, coloring books, card games... a sign of a quality trip I guess!

We just happen to have a little engineer outfit from out Thomas the Train Days, so Jasmine was quite happy to wear it all day long! Below is the conductor punching our tickets, just like in the Polar Express.

We had to partake in some hot chocolate as well. After we stopped in Wakefield and visited the bakery, we had even more fresh treats of the way home including chocolate train suckers, nanaimo bars and a fresh loaf of bread for supper - yuumy!

Geocaching - what is it?!

What is Geocaching?

Geocaching is a worldwide game of hiding and seeking treasure. A geocacher can place a geocache in the world, pinpoint its location using GPS technology and then share the geocache’s existence and location online. Anyone with a GPS unit can then try to locate the geocache.

We were introduced to geocaching a few years ago and have done it on numerous occasions with friends and family. It is a great way to get fresh air, exercise, quality time with other cachers and treasure of course! Below is a picture of the first cache we went to while my parents were down, we did 4 in total. Uncle Kevin and Grace joined us on this one. This was an especially cool cache because our babysitter, Andrea, is one of the people who placed this cache in the woods for us to find. It had been visited previously that day even, so a popular spot I guess. Devin took some marbles, fitting as that was the caches title and Jasmine took a purple dragonfly toy. We left a swiper and cookie monster figure for someone else to find when they dig the treasure up. This cache is located about a 8 minute walk from our house and did require a bit of searching in the woods to find it!
The one below is actually a minicache that was stumbled upon by accident. Gramma thought the decoding clue said under a rock, but it actually said under a pine. Grampa was searching under all the rocks and he found a tiny little container actually embedded in the rock. They drilled a hole into the rock and stuffed the container. Not much would fit in there for treasures, but Devin was happy to take a tiny wheel (which would have been from a toy car) and we left a hair elastic for a little girl.

Below Grampa is helping Devin traverse the creek. Once Grampa went over, Devin just had to follow. They needed walking sticks to help them balance across, as there was at least a foot of water deep on each side. He made it no problem!

This is Devin posing with Gramma and Grampa after finally finding this one. For this one you had to solve a riddle first and then add the number to get the new coordinates, but the first time we messed up the math and weren't in the right location. The second time we went was much better. Devin took a toy gun from this one, most of the toys inside were unfortunately moldy, as it had gotten wet. Jasmine was at school still, so she didn't get to partake in these adventures.

Below Grampa is searching through the ammunition box we found at another location. We tried to persuade Devin to take an army man, but instead he took a bracelet! What a kid, at least in was camoflauge. This one was a pain to find. First you had to go to a memorial and record numbers and then add those numbers to the coordinates. We headed in the right direction, but he said it was a short walk... and he lied, it was quite a bit further away AND he said the treasure was under a pine and it was a spruce. Geez!

Here is Devin the Trooper dredging his way through tall weeds and grass to make his way back to the car. He did 3 geocaches in one afternoon and was mighty tired by the end, but had fun with all his toys in between caches. Fun, fun!

Like I said a fun excuse to get outside, get some exercise, solves some puzzles and earn some treasure! At each site you get to sign a log book and say where you are from and when you return home you log onto the website and let people know about your adventure - pretty cool!

Mom and dad actually put their own cache out in Shaunavon - can't wait to go looking for that when we go home next summer! They are in the process of building a second one already. I guess we will have to do one so that we can make them go find ours next time they are here! Now, we just need a theme, a container, a location and ... TREASURE!

Gotta' Love Saunders Farm

When fall comes there are so many things to choose from. Simple things from raking leaves, going apple picking or heading to Saunders Farm. My mom and dad were in town and had never been, so we thought it was the perfect adventure!

I hadn't been in a few years and it seemed to me that many of the climbing structures were new. Such good quality, unique and just plain fun!

I think this was Princess Pumpkin above and below are a couple of pictures from Twi-Fright. Seriously, I loved this show. If you have read the Twilight series, then it is just too funny! Smella Yawn meets Deadward in the town of Spoons, Ontario - priceless humor. The kids loved all the musical numbers and the costumes were great fun!

Saunder's Farm also has these crazy mazes, must be close to a dozen of them and below is the most awesome pirate ship!

I don't even have pictures of everything... ginormous slide, corn shooting, beaver tails and more. We had a great little adventure with mom and dad and celebrated fall the way it should be done with a cool trip to the farm!