80's Dance

Our neighbourhood elementary school marked its 25th anniversary this month and to celebrate, they held an 80's themed family dance. I thought it was so fun to introduce my kids to the styles and music of my childhood and we all had a great time dancing away to Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Footloose, etc, etc. Here are a few pictures from the night.

I-Spy Quilt

I finally finished piecing together the top of my I-Spy quilt that I've made for my family. I had some leftover squares so I decided to cut them in half and use them for a border around the outside so it'd kind of a built-in matching game where you have to try and find the other half of each strip somewhere else in the border.

I'm going to take it to my aunt's fabric store in Lethbridge and use her long-arm quilting machine to quilt a fun pattern on it. Hopefully it turns out OK, I've never used one of those things before...

And sorry if this grosses anyone out but I think it's so funny how Howie sleeps. This is him completely relaxed on the armchair in the living room that he has claimed as his own:

My Favourite Smoothie

Two posts in one week, crazy, I know. I just wanted to share my new favourite recipe. This is a protein packed smoothie that I like to make for a post-workout lunch. It's pretty high calorie for a smoothie (I think it's close to 500 calories) but it's full of protein so it fills you up for a long time and it's really healthy: they're all good calories, no empty or wasted calories here. PLUS, it's delicious and creamy and I look forward to it, I don't make it out of duty like lots of other healthy/diet foods.

OK, so here it is:

Protein Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

1 cup regular soy milk (but vanilla or chocolate would probably be yummy too)

1 chunk of tofu (maybe 1/4 cup? I don't measure it. And it's optional, it just adds more protein and makes the drink extra creamy and smooth)

1 frozen banana

2 Tbsp of ground flax seeds (again, optional but adds nutrition)

1-2 Tbsp creamy low-fat peanut butter

1 packet of stevia

Blend it up and enjoy.

Also, I just wanted to pass on a fabulous idea I saw on a craft blog for a fun way to display your kids' artwork. I loved it so I copied it and here it is in my kitchen:

I took a piece of baseboard, painted it grey, and then nailed it to the wall. I used lots of nails and then I used rare earth magnets to attach metal binder clips to each nail. Pretty easy, and the kids love it!

My Little Princess Turns 4

Maira has always loved all things pink and girly so when I told her she could have her very first "friend" birthday party, AND that it could be a princess party, she was absolutely thrilled. I have to say I probably had as much fun as she did because of all the fun I had with the invitations, the decorations and the cake. Her friends each received an invitation that looked like this:

For decorations, I enlisted Shae's help to use paint to transform our front entry way into a castle. She and Connor also agreed to dress up in costumes and help greet the guests as they arrived.

Maira's friends all wore princess dresses and I had paper crowns for them to decorate and wear. I think the highlights of the party were when the girls went to the ball (aka played statues - they were adorable spinning around and dancing in their ballgowns) and when Jess put part of the cake on his head and pranced around the dining room (OK, maybe he didn't prance but he really did put the cake on his head).

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The next day, Hudson helped me finish off the cake!

We also had a low key family celebration for Maira's birthday. Since it was a different day from her friend party, I baked another cake. Her request for this one: purple flowers.

This is a really cute sequence of Hudson playing peekaboo with Jess:

As you can probably tell, he was roaring instead of saying peekaboo!

We all had a fun time but I have to say, I'm sure glad this annual run of kid birthdays is over for now (3 birthdays plus Christmas within 7 weeks of each other), no more birthdays until June!

And, one last thing from January of 2011: this was the month of the giant blizzards. Almost every day, I woke up and looked outside and thought "More snow? Seriously?!?!" This is a view of our front driveway. That arrow is showing the top of the snowpile beside the driveway - it's hard to tell but I promise you, that pile is taller than me. Makes shovelling pretty tough.

And here's my backyard, the snow is SO deep back there!

The city crews FINALLY came and plowed our street today so there is now a 2-story tall pile of snow in the middle of our cul-de-sac and the kids are SO excited to go out and play on it (there's only enough snow for the city to pile it up in the middle of cul-de-sacs every 5 or 6 years so this is a big deal for them) Shae was fondly reminiscing about the last time this happened, telling Maira and Connor all about it since they don't remember this happening before. At least the snow is good for something!

Family Home Evening with a 2-year old...

Hudson was on talent for Family Home Evening the other night and his talent that he shared with us was running around in circles while we all clapped. He had a fabulous time and didn't want us to stop cheering. Ever.

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Winter Wonderland

Edmonton was bombarded by a huge snowstorm last week and while Jess and I were out shoveling the piles and piles of snow off of our driveway, the kids came outside too to play in our little winter wonderland.

We bought bunk beds for Connor and Maira this week and these are the boxes their beds came in - they made a perfect fort for Connor to play in.

Here's a view of my lovely garden I blogged about this past summer, to show how much snow we've got. Those are my peas, almost completely buried now. Hard to believe I'll be planting new veggies in this garden in 4 months!

Shae loves to ski, she learned how by going to her school's ski club every winter since Grade 2. We try and go skiing at our little river valley ski hill here in Edmonton at least once a year and we've been taking Connor along with us since he was 3 1/2 but this is the first year that he really got the hang of it and therefore really enjoyed himself. He looks like he's about to fall down in this picture of me and him skiing down the baby hill but he's doing fine.

Here is a short movie of him skiing, first down the baby hill and then on a much steeper hill which we've never allowed him on before for fear that he would just try going straight down and end up breaking his neck - so this was a big accomplishment for him to go down this hill, even if he did have Jess' help the whole way! (That's Shae in the pink coat partway up the hill, beside the stranded snowboarder).

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My Baby Turns Two

My sweet little baby Hudson has turned 2 so I guess he's technically not a baby anymore. But he doesn't really talk yet and he's still in diapers so I can keep deluding myself for a little while longer...

My little guy loves dinosaurs. And lions and tigers and bears and anything else that says "ROAR", but especially dinosaurs. So, of course, he got a dinosaur cake (thougth more of a friendly dinosaur than a ferocious dinosaur).

OK, I'm done now, get me out of here!

We had a fun family party for him and we even had extra company: Grammy Rose, Uncle Spencer and Uncle Paul drove up to join in our celebrations so that was fun.

Hudson got a plush T-Rex puppet as one of his presents and he really, really liked it. Check out this movie of him showing off his very ferocious roar:

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A couple of weeks after his birthday, I took him to the Royal Alberta Museum to see the dinosaur exhibit and here he is looking at a model ankylosaurus and riding on the tail of an apatasaurus.

Love you, dinosaur boy!