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 :(

Salad of the Week

I haven't been very good at posting pictures of salads lately, or even posting many blog entries, but this week we had a salad worth sharing. I hadn't planned on sharing it, so I don't even have a picture - sorry!

This is from the Biggest Loser Cookbook - Thai Ground Chicken Salad

Dressing:

4 tbsp lime juice
1 1/2 tbsp fresh minced ginger
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp sweet chilli sauce
salt to taste
1 tbsp olive oil

Salad:

shredded romain lettuce
slivered red onion
slivered baby carrots
2 tbsp fresh mint leaves - chopped
2 tbsp fresh cilantro - chopped
2 tbsp roasted cashews - chopped
1 pound of extra lean ground chicken

Make dressing and set aside, I already doubled it for you, as they made it for only 1 serving. Easily I would make more - almost double what I listed above. The dressing was awesome, loved the ginger with the sweet chilli sauce, yummy!

Brown ground chicken, leave it in small chunks if you like or ground it right up into small bits. Pour some dressing on meat once cooked.

On a plate place torn lettuce, mix in cilantro and mint leaves. Add onions, carrots and cashews, drizzle with dressing and top with ground chicken.

The Quirk New Years!

For New Years this year I didn't know what to do, so I headed to the internet for some ideas and came up with this: Jay's mom and I made 8 or 9 bags and each bag had a clock face on it. When the real time matched the clock on the bag, we opened that bag and followed the instructions.
Our first clock bag had a disposable camera in it and we were told we each had to take 4 pictures on it. I haven't seen the camera since this night, so when I clean the house today I will be on the look out for it. Otherwise I will have to phone gramma and poppa to see if they accidentally have it in a coat pocket or something.

Next up, we had to blow up balloons and then keep them in the air, transfer them to one another through our legs and fun games like that. Devin just loves playing with balloons all together. At the end of the night we had to pop the balloons, which proved to be very challenging. Our next activity was to put on glow in the dark necklaces and dance around. We eventually made the necklaces into one large limbo, although most of us were not very flexible to make it underneath :)

Earlier in the day we made our own noisemakers, as we could not find any of ours. We used cut up wrapping paper tubes and filled them with lentils and beans (things I have good intentions of using, but haven't). One of our clock bags had Christmas Crackers in it and so we had a chance to do those as well. We were all SO thankful for the whistle Devin got in his!

At one point we filled up our glasses to toast to the New Year, say what we were grateful for and make a wish for 2010. After this we headed outside to light the sparklers and the kids love that part. The Green Goblin photo is out of order and I can't seem to move it. One of the bags had 3 villain targets and 2 cans of silly string, so we headed outside to defeat the bad guys. Silly string does not last that long, so although the kids liked it, it was over pretty quick.

Anyhow, I think that sums up our night. Of course we had good company with Jay's folks and good food with Sherry's Shrimp Surprise Dip, along with spinach dip, chicken wings and scallops wrapped in bacon. So between all our activities you could find us sipping on our wine or grazing at the appetizer table.

We rang in the New Year at 7:00 with the kids, did the sparklers, wound down and had them in bed for 8:00 - awesome! The grown ups played a few games and then watched Four Christmases, along with another episode of Glee (have to catch up you know). At midnight, which were surpisingly still up for, we opened the champagne and cheered in the New Year! The best part, was Jay's mom and dad insist the kids wake them up in the morning, so we didn't even have to get up at 7:00! Jay's parents however will likely sleep all the way home on the plane today, as they have been up early EVERY day with our two kids.

Hopefully more posts to come, still haven't caught you up on December or Christmas. School and real life starts again soon, so we will see what kind of time I have for posting.

Happy New Year Everyone!

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!