Day 179

This bird is called a Bobolink. We don't see them much around here, so I had to stop the car and get a picture. The plant it is on is called Poison Parsnip and it's everywhere around here. If you ever see it, stay clear. The juices in the plant will stick to your skin, and when the juice is exposed to UV light (the sun), it will cause a reaction that burns and blisters your skin. The blisters will cause scars that will last for years.

Day 178

How cute are these guys? If we ever get the room and the money, I totally want a llama!

I have also been practising making roses out of the kids Play-Doh. I figure maybe one day it will come in handy if I ever make a cake with flowers :)

Day 177

Today I brought the kids to a few parks thinking that I'd tire them out so that I wouldn't have to endure more of their fighting and screaming once we got home. It didn't work. We were out for about 4 hours, and when we got home, they still had enough energy to pester each other. And here I thought they'd just veg in front of the tv while I made supper.

Julian helping me make supper

Trying to tire out the boys

Day 176

For some reason, one of the kittens thinks this cactus is a tasty treat. I don't know how he's managing to eat it with all the spines, every time I get near it, I end up picking splinters out of my fingers for days.

Day 175

The kid falls asleep anywhere. I left him playing a Thomas the Train video game while I went to make supper, 20 minutes later when it was done, I came in to find him like this.

Day 174

Ryan forgot to give some cards to his teachers, so we cruised by his school today to drop them off. On the way home we stopped at this old water tower near some railway tracks. It started to pour rain so we couldn't explore it, I only managed to take a quick picture. The town is now pretty much dead, but I guess back in the old days it was a big stop where steam trains refilled with water. There are 2 tracks so I guess more than one line came through.

Day 173

Today was Ryan's last day of school. He's really come so far in the last year. His speech has improved significantly, he speaks and understands french now, and he has made so many friends. I'm so proud of him. Here he is holding the little card he made for his bus driver.

Day 172

Cupcake?

Day 171

Ryan officially graduated from Kindergarten today. His school had a BBQ, a little graduation ceremony, and a concert. It was very cute, I'm so proud of my little man ♥

Here he is accepting his diploma from the principal and teacher

Showing it off for the camera

The cake and cupcakes I made for the BBQ

We picked Alex up from the baby sitter's ( I didn't dare bring Alex to Ryan's graduation after his performance at the hair dresser's the other day) and then let the boys explore some near by train tracks.

Day 169

The garlic plants we transplanted from the woods have started blooming, so I guess that means they like their new home in our garden and we'll have lots of new plants popping up in the spring.

I baked the cakes for Ryan's school BBQ tomorrow and ended up with my feet looking like this...Apparently, I make a real mess in the kitchen when I cook and bake.

Day 168

It was the last Aqua fit class for Ryan's school today and afterwards, we drove the kids over to the park where there is a huge splash pad and a bunch of play structures. One of the moms brought a bunch of pizzas with her, they were so good. The pizza place is only a 15 minute drive from our place so I think we have discovered a new place to frequent for our weekend pizzas. Even Ryan gobbled it right up when it usually takes him forever to eat a few bites. On the way back to school, we brought the kids to Dairy Queen, and every one pigged out on sweet treats.

Day 167

Today I brought the boys in to get hair cuts. Ryan has his graduation on Monday, and Alex is just getting shaggy and poofy. Alex screamed his way through the whole thing. You would think he was being tortured or something. He was crying, screaming, and snotting all over himself and me. I had to sit in the chair with him on my lap in order for the hair dresser to be able to do anything. I had to really restrain him as he scraped his running shoes down my bare legs. Can't wait to see the bruises. The kid gave me a real workout!

Mr. Kitty also stopped by for a visit, I haven't seen him in a few weeks, he's looking a bit skinny.

Day 166

Today I tried my hand at making my own roti. I had a chicken and potato one in Toronto 2 years ago and it was so good, but the place has since shut down ,so I'll never have another one like it again. I tried my had at it myself when I found this yummy curry sauce at the grocery store that reminded me so much of that roti. The bread is hand made, it was a bit tricky, but I'm sure it will be easier next time. I'll definitely be having it again!

Day 165

Our usual baby sitter wasn't available today, so I had to take Alex with me to Ryan's school Aqua fit that I car pool for. I expected Alex to be a handful in the water but he really surprised me. He's never taken swimming lessons because last year the pool was closed for renovations. Within 5 minutes Alex was swimming by himself (with the help of a floatie suit and a pool noodle) and he was even doing cannonballs, with me cacthing him, into the deep end. He's a total water rat whereas Ryan won't stop clinging to the side of the pool.

After we dropped Ryan back off at school, Alex was all sad and pulled this awesome pout:

All the excitement of the day left him totally pooped. I gave him a juice box in the car and he fell asleep half way through it:

Once I brought him inside, he slept on the couch for over an hour. He hasn't napped in so long. The quiet was so nice :)

Supper today was steak with peppercorn sauce, tomato and basil rice, and corn on the cob.

Day 164

Ryan has been asking me to make his hair into a mohawk every time it's wet, usually I just brush it up after his bath and eventually it falls down on his own. This time I got out all my hair goop, the blow dryer, and froze his hair into place.

The boys were playing upstairs with Wally while he puttered around tidying up, when he decided to shed some papers. He came downstairs for a few minutes to put things away leaving the boys alone with the shredder (it was unplugged) Can you see where this is going? He went back up and all I heard was "Oh my God! What are you guys doing?" This is what they were doing:

Day 163

Heading out to some more garage sales today we passed by some of the damage from the storm last week. Turns out that crazy storm was actually an F1 tornado! This is the farm down  a few houses down the road and what's left of the big tree that fell across the road:

According to eye witness reports, and an article in the paper, this is the approximate path of the tornado. The red dot is my my house...a little too close for comfort!

Day 162

I was running around getting ready to meet my parents in the next town over and go garage sailing, and didn't notice that Alex had gotten into my make-up bag. When I went to get him to get him dressed, this is what I found. Of course, for future bribery purposes, I ran to grab my camera.

Little imp!

Applying his mascara

You look fabulous dah-ling!

This bull posed for a picture on our way home from garage sailing

For dessert I made a strawberry and blueberry galette. It was divine with some ice cream.

Day 161

Leftover potatoes + an egg and some shredded cheese = Potato pancakes!

Day 160

This little shack on the side of the road makes the best poutines, I craved them so bad when I was pregnant with Alex. It's only a 20 minute drive away, and I was too lazy to cook tonight, so I called in a pizza order, popped the kids in the car, and went to go pick it up.

Mmmmm!

Day 159

Terror on the tracks! An unknown giant tunnel monster had been seen terrorizing the passengers of the local express train...

Oh wait...it's just Julian :P

For supper today...

An asparagus, mushroom, and bacon galette

And Salisbury steak, with garlic chive mashed potatoes, and roasted brown butter beans

Day 158

In the summer, the flea market in Lachute, Qc is open every Tuesday. We cruised up there today hoping to find some treasures. Mainly, we were looking for an old victorian doorbell for the house, and some Where's Waldo books for Ryan. I managed to score four new Peterson's guides on mammal, fish, bird, and reptile identification for $15, and Wally picked up a few old books as well. No luck on the doorbell and Waldo books though.

Where's Wally?

Day 157

I carpool on Mondays for Ryan's school. Here is Ryan and some of his school buddies goofing off while I drive them to their swimming lessons. It's hilarious hearing them giggling in the back and singing along to my Lady Gaga CD.

The Backseat Bozos

This one's a bit out of focus, but I love Ryan's expression

Day 156

The forecast called for more rain all day today, so we decided to pack up the kids and do our weekly groceries and shopping. The boys love train tracks, and we knew of some near the shopping mall. We decided to turn right to take the train track road, looping around instead of going straight to the mall.

As we drove over to the right to turn, we saw a guy in a truck with a trailer coming from the right trying to sneak up slowly and cross over to turn left. Unfortunately, he was on his cell phone, and even though we saw him looking both ways, he was too distracted and didn't notice the car coming up from his left, behind us. He went across anyways, and she ended up smashing right into his front end. We saw it happen right in front of us as we were turning. I told Wally to turn around, and I scribbled our phone number on a piece of paper. By the time we looped around, a few other people had stopped and made sure she was ok. Wally took the paper over to her, and told her that if she needed a witness, to call us because we saw everything and thatwe saw him on his cell phone.

Here is my drawing of the crime scene (ignore the fact that it is horribly out of scale). We are the black square turning right

This is the scene after we looped around. I took a pic of the guys truck/ licence plate just in case he decided to take off. If the boys didn't have that love of train tracks, we never would have turned, and we would have probably been the ones to end up smashed into his front bumper.

Day 155

The kids and I went garage sailing again today. We hit a village where they were holing a town wide garage sale. We were lucky in that we were just finishing up when it started to pour rain. When we got home I had a weather warning flashing on my computer, and sure enough, we ended up having a vivacious thunder storm blow through.

We were watching the action outside when I noticed that the patio umbrella was still up. I wanted to close it incase the crazy wind got a hold of it. I didn't want the glass tabletop to get knocked over and/or smashed. It's only about 5 steps from the back door, but in the few seconds it took me to run over, close it, and run back, I ended up completely soaked as if I had just stepped out of the shower. This is how my t-shirt looked:

Suddenly we got a crazy amount of wind and we watched the blankets fly off of our clothes line across the yard. One of our sheets ended up on top of the camper and the wind managed to rip our laundry line pole out by the screw. Shortly after that we lost power.

I checked around the property and 2 of our trees came down in the front yard. Once Wally got home from work, I took Ryan to go pick up some McDonalds. I only got about half way down our road when I saw a bunch of flashing lights and saw the source of the power failure. A huge tree had come down across the road and fell right on the power lines. I had to turn around and take the long way to McDonalds.

Power didn't come back on until 11:05 pm, but then went off again 15 minutes later until 3am. Ryan slept through it for a bit, but ended up waking up. He was scared and somehow ended up in the hall closet totally disoriented, crying and banging on the wall for us. We put him in our bed for the night, but he is a very restless sleeper. He tossed and turned all over the place, and ended up shoving his knees, elbows, and feet into me every few seconds. I barely ended up sleeping at all.