This Year in Review---November

I really want to start blogging here more about our lives. I use Facebook a lot, but often want to get more into the meat of the status update....but I get sidetracked, LOL. It's easier to post pictures on FB too. We recently got our yearly family newsletter from my relative....got to hear about all her trips, all her kids' trips, her puppies, her baby ducks, her new kitchen, her new pool....I'm not going to fill you in on our last year (ie...if there could be a problem, there was a problem), but here's what's been going on the last couple months.

Meg got the monthly character award for her class, on wacky hat day. The award was for "empathy" which she is surprisingly really good at (although she still has times where it seems impossible for her to be so clueless as how her actions affect other people!). There are only 8 kids in Meg's JK/SK class, and 3 of them are girls. At snack time, all the kids went to sit at one table, but there wasn't enough room for one girl so she went to another table. Meg saw her alone, and went to sit with her!Lucy had a party for her birthday. We couldn't think of a theme, and then it hit me...how about "Diva/Red Carpet"? She felt a little too old for Princess theme, but did actually wear her princess ball gown. We had a red carpet, and punch in (plastic) wine cups, and hors d'oevers, and dangly stars, and make your own pizza (which was supposed to be on "crystal" plates but I forgot), and cupcakes cause they're all the rage (they were NOT arranged into some vaguely identifiable shape). The girls were supposed to watch a movie....but, as you can see in the picture...it was all a big blur.

Shortly after Lucy's birthday is Meg's. With only 2 other girls in her class, we decided to invite 2 or 3 girls that had moved on to grade 1. None of them responded with either a yes or a no. How rude! One of the two girls in her class couldn't come, and her cousins couldn't come either. So, only the last girl (the girl in the empathy story) could come, which was great for her as it was her first friend's birthday! The four kids decorated gingerbread houses. I had put them together the night before, and realized I didn't have anything to actually put them on, esp. for the girl to take home! Dug out some trays! It started off scary as Hayley grabbed the icing bag and squeezed in the middle, without twisting the top, and icing came flying out of the bag! But she got the rhythm quickly after that. Sorry about the sideways picture! Don't know how that happened! I was really impressed with Meg's house. She sat beside Hugh, and at first, she just started globbing on the icing. Then she saw what he was doing with outlining the shingle lines, and copied him...all on her own!
Her actual birthday was mid-week, so we invited Grandma and Grandpa over, and she wanted cupcakes like Lucy (for her party, I made her a 5 cake like Lucy had when she turned 5...just a big 5 on the cake (Rob made the stencil), filled in with pink sparkles). Since her birthday was on a Wednesday, we got to go skating too!

Hard to believe this is public "Parent and Tot" skate. There is usually less than 10 kids there. I wish I could have taken the other kids when they were young. I've seen some pretty tiny "real" skates here, and I wish I had known they came that small! With the outdoor rinks in Orangeville, we could have really got them going sooner if I had known!

The very end of November brought us our hot tub! After 15 months of indecision, Rob finally made up his mind. It's an "Alaskan" tub, the "lower end" of Arctic Spas, pretty basic model, but an 8 seater with two pumps, instead of the 7 seater, one pump model of their 'regular' line that would have still cost more. It's been lovely, although I'm still not keen on the position of the tub, LOL.