Budding Artist

Isabelle is growing in leaps and bounds. She is doing the "Frankenstein Walk", has 4 new teeth coming in and has started to become a monkey like her brother. Her favourite activites include climbing, pulling daddy's CDs out of his alphabetizied shelving system and pulling out all of Owen's art supplies.

In the morning while I am making breakfast or tidying the kitchen she makes a beeline for the easel. She stands using her left hand for balance and empties all the cups of markers, pencil crayons and paintbrushes...one by one...delighting in the sound of them crashing on the floor. She stops to sample a few on the way and then quickly gets back into wrecking-mode.

The floor is soon covered. She gets an impish grin and looks around surveying her destruction...so proud of herself. Our little budding artist...

~the tidyier-upper~

Road Trip

On Thursday Owen, Isabelle and I made the journey to London to visit with my sister Kaitlin at Western University.
After:
2 hours and 30 minutes on the road
230 kilometers
2 "nature pee" stops
3 video changes - Blues Clues, Dragon Tales and Scooby-Doo
4 bottles of Goat Milk
1 wrong turn due to bad directions from mapquest (I know what you are thinking, women drivers, but I have a great sense of direction and followed the directions to the letter and they sent me south when I should have gone north)
We finally made it to Auntie K's house on Huron Street.

We had a great day, went to the London Children's Museum went for a walk around the neighbourhood, took a driving tour of the university campus and finished off our day with dinner at Jack Astor's. Kaitlin told them it was Owen's birthday (it is in 2 weeks) and they brought him a cupcake with a sparkler and sang Happy Birthday, he was so surprised and happy.

Kaitlin's house is amazing. There are 5 of them living there; Kaitlin, Jessica, Tong Tong, Rachel and Peanut. The girls were so welcoming and played with Owen and Isabelle...it was so nice. Owen was so excited to see Auntie Kaitlin again, he really loves and misses her.

Sadly my camera ran out of battery power after only a few minutes at the museum...I guess we will just have to keep the rest of the day alive in our memories.

Thanks for a great day Kaitlin!

~jennifer, owen & isabelle~

First Day of School

I know..I know...we are almost a month into the school year and I am just posting this. What can I say, I have not uploaded pics from my camera in a long time and frankly, without the pictures it would be a pretty boring post.

Owen was not keen on going back to school after the summer holidays. He asked me all sorts of heart-wrenching questions:
"Why are you sending me away?"
"Are you and Isabelle going to have fun all day without me?"
"Don't you want to spend time with me?"
None of the parenting books I have read prepare you for these questions. It made me so sad, and yet I cannot pretend that I was not excited about having some more time on my hands to get home projects done and spend a little one-on-one time with Isabelle before going back to work.

Anyway, after helping make his own lunch, choosing his own clothes and walking across the parking lot himself...he decided that school was not too bad after all. He has the same teacher as last year (in Montessori schools, students remain with the same teacher and class for 3 years) and all his best friends are in his class. There were no tears as we left, not from him or me. It was a good morning.
He took a keychain photograph of himself on the trampoline in London to show his friends (we thought it might be a good icebreaker) and before we even left the parking lot he had pulled it out of his pocket and was showing it around.

We are so proud of our little boy!

~mommy & daddy~

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADRIAN

Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday to you

Happy Birthday dear Adrian

Happy Birthday to you

~jennifer, owen & isabelle~

Weekend Adventures

We are enjoying being back at home and playing outside in the warmth of the sum. Owen has re-discovered his roller blades and is thoroughly enjoying rolling around on them. He loves putting on all the protective gear; helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. After playing around the house we ventured out into the town for our first family bike ride with Isabelle. We have been on the hunt for an infant helmet, so if anyone knows where to get one please let us know. We rode to the park and the kids had a blast on the swings and slide. It was a big day of firsts for little Izzy..first bikeride…first slide…luckily she survived both ok and we did not end up with her first trip to emerg or anything more alarming.




Sadly the warm days are getting fewer and shorter , I am glad that we are taking advantage of the warm weather while we have it.
~jen~

We're baaaaack...

We have been back from England for over two weeks now and our lives are slowly returning to normal. It took Isabelle and Owen several days to get their body clocks back on schedule, the wee girl was getting us up at 4am for almost a week…but that is all sorted now. We had a really fantastic trip, a little sight seeing, a few “football” matches for Adrian and lots of time with family.
Here are some shots from the airplane. The kids were great on the plane both ways. On the way home they were unable to accommodate us all together, the airline actually had Owen seated on his own and Adrian, Isabelle and I together. This would have been fine with us but I am not sure the people around Owen would have been happy. So the boys sat together and Isabelle and I sat a few rows ahead.







Here are some of our favourite shots of the family that we visited:

Daphne and George have both had health concerns recently and we were so pleased to find them looking so well. Daphne is a wonderful host and made us a beautiful lunch.

We spent 5 days with Adrian’s Aunt Stella and she is just a delight. She loves to play with the children and of course the kids just love that! She always welcomes us into her home when we are there and make us so comfortable.



We spent most of our time with Alison, Nigel and Maisie. They are fantastic friends as well as being Adrian’s family. Maisie was a wonderful playmate to Owen and a big helper with Isabelle. They have a sweet dog Sniff who delighted the kids and provided us with lots of entertainment.




Maisie had a birthday during our visit. We had a great day in London and went to Rain Forest Cafe, it was a perfect birthday for a perfect little girl.
HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY MAISIE!!!




Maisie is an avid horserider and Owen and I got the opportunity to watch her ride one day. She is amazing and it was really a thrill to get to experience this.




Worthing is a costal town close to Brighton where Adrian's grandmother lived, it holds many special memories for him. We visit every time we are in England but this visit had to be the best we have ever had. The weather was fantastic, the kids played in the water and on the pebble beach, we had an amazing walk along the pier...the perfect day for making new special memories.





While sightseeing in London we happened upon this setup of large trampolines where people were harnessed in and jumping to huge heights. Owen was not interested at first glance, but after watching Maisie go he had to have a turn. Our big brave boy!!!



Just a few shots of us:

Adrian at the Star Wars exhibit in London:



Before I close this post off I want to send our love out to Iris and Dave. Uncle Dave is in hospital and although he is making improvements, his overall health is not great. Please know that you are never far from our thoughts or our hearts. XO