Sunday, February 14, 2010

Happy Valentine's Day!




Ah, Valentine's Day. We had a very nice Valentine's. Jay and I started off by sleeping in until 8:30 - love it! I left bowls of cereal out for the kids and made sure the TV was tuned into a kid station; can't beat that for a present. Above you can see the kids sucking on one of their Valentine treats - I thought they were too funny and couldn't resist buying them. For Jay, Jasmine and I made the board game below. It is a keyboard and the game all revolves around his work. On an orange square you have to pick a card from the deck. Some are good, like daddy comes home early - move ahead 10 spaces, while others are bad, like manager called a late meeting and you miss supper - go back 5 spaces... and so on. You also have to follow the directions on the board game itself, like do 10 jumping jacks, kiss your neighbour or sing a song. Jasmine wrote out about half of the cards and came up with many of the ideas, including go back 393 squares, just kidding, go back 5! She thought that was sooo funny!

These were the Valentine's that the kids gave out at school. Each was a little box you folded up and inside they put a gummy heart, a few stickers and a mini Valentine post it note package.

For lunch today, we met our good friends, The Dixons at Boston Pizza. Jay was the only one who ordered the heart shaped pizza, I guess he was in the mood for a little extra lovin' today. Jasmine has been fighting a cold the last few days, but over lunch she developed a mild fever and wasn't quite herself, so Jay snuch out to the pharmacy to get some Advil and see if she would perk up, because we did have big plans yet to come. For desert Devin had Worms N' Dirt and Jasmine had a mini-chocolate pizza, Grace chose a fruit cup - wow, you can tell she doesn't belong to me, ha, ha!






Next up, we headed to the bowling alley for the kids first ever game of bowling. It was packed at the alley and very loud with rockin' music and glowing lights. It was ideal for the kids, as they had bumpers set up in the gutters, so the kids always seemed to knock down pins. Grace and Devin had a BLAST, they were dancing around while they waited their turns and just had a great time. Jasmine bowled really well, in fact beat both her mom and Uncle Kevin, but she wasn't feeling good enough to be jumping around.







They had a handicapped score, which basically meant when you stepped over the line you were deducted 15 points. All 3 kids had some points deducted, but even with the deduction, Jasmine still hit 100 points - crazy!

So, now we are at home and the kids are taking it easy. We hope Jasmine gets a good sleep and wakes up fine, as we have a few playdates planned for tomorrow. Our nephew Olivier is supposed to be coming over in the morning and our good friends The Howleys in the afternoon for a Wiifest and supper! Sounds like the perfect way to spend Family Day to me!

Hope you all had a super Valentine's. (Notice I didn't say anything about what I got for Valentines? There is a reason for that, what do you think the consequences should be?) I'll let you know what I decide, ha, ha! Have a great Family Day tomorrow!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Keeping busy in winter!

Often in winter we end up stuck inside with the winter blah's! So far we haven't felt that way too much. When it is a cold day, we have been having fun with our new Band Hero. The kids both love the drums, but are happy to take turns and have even been trying to sing songs like "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting" or "Ghostbusters". Jay has realized he is not very good at vocals, in fact the other night he was practicing on his own and the game kept defeating him. I always sing the vocals when we play in groups because I find I get motion sick from the scrolling (or at least that is what I tell Jay since his singing is soooo bad!) Ha, ha! I can say that because my guitar playing is horrible and I can't even do the easy level on it yet.



When we do get nice winter weather, we have been trying to get outside. These are pictures from our first skate of the year, taken a few weeks ago at the outdoor rink at the school. The kids have been taking lessons on Wednesdays and Jasmine can now glide and Devin goes out for lessons on his own (the first 3 were with dad) and he did super last week on his own, what a big boy! This first picture is our God-daughter Grace and her parents.








When we had optimum snow man building weather we headed outside to make this incredible fort, detailed with blue siding, built in seats and it's own bodyguard!









So, I hope the weather in your next of the woods has been good enough to get you outside to enjoy some winter festivities. This weekend we hope to venture to Winterlude and go for a skate on the canal (and eat a Beavertail), but we will have to see how Devin is feeling - today he woke up with a mild fever :(