Where the Wild Things Are

When the movie came out in theatres, Tag really wanted to see it. We have the original Maurice Sendak book and had read it many times. We never went to see it. Hudson thought it would be way too scary for Taggart anyway.

Renting it and watching it in the comfort of our own living room seemed much safer so that's what we did tonight. But Tag may be scarred for life. When someone is sad on TV, Tag has always been sensitive to it, bottom lip quivering, but this went way past quivering. My poor boy shed so many tears for Max and the big wild thing that becomes his friend. If any of you have seen the movie, close to the end, when Max gets in his boat to go back home and his friend is running to say goodbye to him, Tag was beside himself. "He's not going to make it Mom", wailing. So sad and sweet all at the same time. The funny thing was Cooper, Hudson, and Reagan were all worrying more about Tag than watching the end of the movie.

He is now all tucked safely into bed, hopefully to have a restful and peaceful sleep, with no wild things in his dreams.

Aaaahhhh....mazing

Need I say more. Dolce de Leche Sandwich Cookies.

Pure heaven.

Recipe courtesy of Joy the Baker. A webiste completely worth browsing of you like to bake or if you like to eat and are lucky enough to have someone bake for you, or if you like to eat enough that you will bake them yourself. I am the latter.

Edit: I knew I had blogged about this particular bottled Dolce de Leche when I originally fell in lve with it and when I found the post I saw that I didn't actually share the name of it. So here's a picture of the jar and it can be found only at Superstore. It's nice to find another use for it other than just sticking my finger into the jar.

Standing tall

If you love tulips as much as I do, but really hate when they droop over in the vase, this post is for you. We've all heard the penny in the water trick and recently I was told to add sugar to the water but I don't think any of that really worked. On Monday when a dear friend and I were out for a walk I picked up these tulips from a roadside stand and she told me to take a pin and poke a whole right through the stem about 1 cm down from the flower. That's what I did and here they are, on day 4, still standing tall. Hooray for friends with good information. Thanks Julie!

This...

This...after he stole her juice and started drinking it and she took it back and he screamed at her and hit her in the arm.

This...after she showed him the Curious George library book she got for him and he took it from her and threw it on the ground because he was still mad about the juice.

This...after he said he was sorry for being mean.

This...because she never holds a grudge.

Re-organization

A project I have been wanting to start for a long time finally got started. All my albums ever since I started scrap booking are in different books. I started with one kind and then moved to another a few years later, they are all different colors and it no longer worked for me. I knew what kind of system I wanted to move to and had the albums sitting on my shelf for months.

So for a few days I had albums and pages spread out all over my floor and now days and a few trips to Michael's later I'm well on my way. Fourteen years of our lives neatly organized into 12 streamlined books. Now I just need a new piece of furniture to store them in, one with room to grow because there's still much more to come.

Bainbridge Island tournament

A very long day of skipping. Well, skipping for Reagan, sitting for me. Gym bleachers become really really uncomfortable, really really fast.

This was her first official tournament. For the most part she did great. Luckily she is still young enough to not really worry about scores. Even when she messed up, she still came off the floor smiling. I know that I would have been a lot more nervous than she was. Her single freestyle routine (video) was done in front of a table full of about 8-10 judges. The only time she had a little breakdown was after their double-dutch relay. That one was also very painful to watch. Jumping into turning double-dutch ropes is a lot harder than it looks. I have a video of that one too, but I won't inflict it on you all. At least, she can only get better.

The great thing about these tournaments is that they really want the jumpers to do well and it's all about having fun and encouragement. So again she walked away with an armful of ribbons.

Now she is gearing up for Provincials at the end of April in Victoria. Another ferry, another gym, and a whole lot more skipping. This time I'm coming prepared with cushions to fight off the wrath of the bleachers.

Painting spring trees

This is an art project that I saw on this website months (maybe years) ago. As I browse the web I am constantly finding fun and interesting projects that I want to try. I am really good at finding the projects but not so good at actually getting my hands dirty and trying them.

Today was the day.

Here we go:

I bought some water color paper for this one and we taped them down to the newspaper which later would give our pictures a nice clean border.

We wet our paper with water and then used blue, green, pink and yellow to make our background.

We had to wait for that to dry so we had some popsicles to kill the time.

Then we dropped some brown paint in the corner and started blowing. After our trees looked like we wanted them to, we used a Q-tip to add little leaves and cherry blossoms.

Voila! Happy Spring!

Birthdays!

Hudson had been counting down to his birthday, first by weeks, then by days, finally down to hours. One night last week he was again calculating the hours until his big day. After he figured it all out, he said to me, "Mom only __ more hours until I'm TEN, and only __ more hours until you're 29!" Hudson, you really always were my favorite.

So yes, we were in birthday mode this weekend. Friday I was served breakfast in bed by Cooper and we all stayed there for a while watching TV together.

Nana took me out for lunch while Cooper babysat and then I took the kids to the park for a while in the afternoon.

Tony got home about 4:30, and after opening my presents (Lululemon pants and hoody, and Purdy's) we headed to Milestone's for dinner. Opa and Nana joined us and then we headed back home to play a game. Then later Tony and I watched "The Hurt Locker".

The day went by too quickly, as birthdays often do, but we managed to squeeze in lots of hugs. Tag gave me 40 cents from his piggy bank

Hudson's birthday was finally here and he really enjoyed the whole day. After he opened his presents, him and Tony and Nana went out for breakfast. Then he wanted to go down to Bellis Fair to spend his birthday money. So we all drove down and after carefully checking all the toy aisles of Target and Walmart he found nothing he wanted to spend his money on. He discovered that spending your own money is a lot harder than spending your parents.

We headed home, stopping at our favorite park in Lyndon to play for a while.

A quick few games of Rock Band while I cooked his birthday waffles.(Tag is our official dancer)

Happy Birthday Hudson! Welcome to double digits!

The arguing , whining, crying, complaining and the gunuine 'driving your mother crazy' behavior today was enough to make me want to bang their heads together. So when a friend called and said they were driving out to the Blue Heron Reserve in Chilliwack and did we want to come, I thought maybe that's just what we need.

A place to run around, look for some wildlife, burn some energy.

And that's what we did.

They had lots of extra binoculars at the reserve for the kids to use. There was a section of trees with about 100 nests and we saw birds in almost all of them.

At one point a golden eagle tried to attack and the herons all vacated their nests in a big hurry, all flying over our heads. A little scary as there was nowhere to take cover. We covered our heads and hoped for the best. Luckily there were no messes to clean up. this is the best shot I could get - sorry Willi

So after a few hours of the great outdoors, we headed home. Eventhough they all said they had a great time and they thanked me for taking them, the peace didn't last.

Cooper and Hudson were in their beds by 8:00. I thought it best for their safety and for my sanity.

Thanks birds, you tried.

Go Canada Go!

I was sad to see the torch go out on Sunday.

I really enjoyed seeing the city of Vancouver in a constant state of elation, however concentrated to a few blocks it might have been.

I loved watching it on TV and celebrating when they won.

I loved that the kids loved it too and we could all watch together.

I really loved all the Canadian pride everywhere.

On Thursday we went downtown to get our fix of the Olympic experience. We didn't have any tickets to any events but we wanted to go and take the kids to see what the city was like. Canada donuts for the ride set the mood.

We saw the cauldron.

We watched the Olympic Mascots on Ice show at Robson Square.

We walked and walked and walked. And we got really tired of walking.

We caught the last two minutes of the women's hockey gold medal game through the window of this restaurant. By the end, quite a crowd had gathered. Fun to part of that little celebration when we won Gold.

We found the skippers in Yaletown. Some of the older girls form Reagan's team were there doing street performing during the games. Reagan enjoyed when she had a chance to show her stuff.

Someone handed Hudson that cardboard poster and he (and I) carried it around for the rest of the day.Yay Canada!

I am missing the Olympics this week and wished it were still on TV. But life moves on and we are knee deep into our 2-week Spring Break. Been busy with nothing so far but going to try and plan a few little things to do before it's over.