Who Has Seen the Pictures...

I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home!

For serious, this last week has been BAH-RUTAL! So I was over-joyed when Steve called me Monday night and whilst on the phone I get this knock on the door and guess who walks in? It was basically the best surprise of my life thus far- I am hoping there are some to top this in the future. Tuesday I went out to do a job with Steve in Rocky Mountain House- it was SO fun, I basically sat down and had an afternoon of great conversation with this older lady while Steve worked- I did however, did help take things out of boxes and assemble them, Steve's such a slave-driver! LOL It was good fun, and nice to have a day of just he and I. Thanks Mom for watching our girls so short notice! Kalea and Brynlee were pretty happy to see Steve when they woke up this morning, haha little did he know...

"Fun" w/Our Munchkins (this is only from today)

• Stampede Kids Day: Kalea enjoyed her first cinnamon sugar covered donuts and is just as addicted to them as the rest of us! She also got to come face to face with the barnyard animals who she imitates everyday. However, she is not a huge fan of touching them, which was pretty entertaining. Brynlee LOVED petting the horses, we know this because she was flailing limbs excitedly and laughing the whole time. It was great, the kids were great and we got a good workout hauling them and their stuff around the grounds for 3hrs.

• Home: The girls fell asleep before we left the grounds, so we were hoping to get them home and into bed before they woke up, we didn't and that is what I partly blame (the series of unfortunate events) the rest of our day, on...
  
  1. The Great Whining of Kalea: Where to begin? It was incessant, never-ending and NOT music to our ears. It also landed her in time-out more times than I even care to recall.
  2. The Great Tackling of Brynlee: I must preface with this part, Kalea enjoys playing with her toys in the basement. While Steve was trying to get a catnap in this afternoon, Kalea came up to the mainfloor diaperless and holding a paintbrush. Clearly I ran downstairs to inspect the damage, no harm no foul, grab the diaper and get back to the kids. As I reached the top of the stairs I hear Brynlee doing her annoyed "get away from me big sister" cry and I look to where the kids were and Kalea has tackled Brynlee from behind and is smooshing her face into the floor and then the edge of our ROCK fireplace. I screeched "Kalea Noooooooo" and she ran to hide, but Brynlee, Brynlee had that horrible silent face of pain. The silence before she let out the blood curdling scream was indescribable. I don't think I've ever waited that long for the cry to actually happen, but when it did, it could break glass. Steve ran down the stairs and quickly returned Kalea to her bedroom- and yes we do swat our 2yr old when she does stuff like this, read "The Strong-Willed Child" and then judge our parenting style if you must. Then he came back downstairs to make sure Bryn and I were okay. I was so horrified I couldn't even cry, it was a weird weird headspace to be in and I hope not to be in that place again for a long LONG time. Bryn's face is fine, she had a bump but after icing and cuddles, she is mostly left traumatized with a red line across her forehead.
  3. The Great Flooding of the Bathroom: You'll hear in a second why Kalea was there, but when we did our "kid switch" I went upstairs to supervise Kalea while she took a bubble bath and found her playing Noah's Ark. I mean the water was seeping into my hallway carpet. So I threw down some towels, raised my head to the heavens and said "You've got to be kidding me" and went to sit down on the toilet seat... And we'll continue the story further down our list :D
     
  4. The Great Pooping of Both Kids: We'll start with Kalea. Hilarious child that she is, sometimes she will not lay down for a diaper change, it's a wrestling match. But sometimes it's because she's not finished, and really there's no way to tell because asking her questions while she's eluding being captured for said diaper change basically is like asking your walls to tell you how their day was. So Steve wrangles her and starts to wipe, etc... and just when he's taking the yucky diaper away, well, more yucky starts coming out... Have I ever mentioned the girl that Steve becomes when dealing with feces? It's pretty hilarious. That was the first fun poop of our day. The next came while Kalea was stuck in her room after The Great Tackling of Brynlee. Usually she lays by her door and hollers at us to come let her out, this time it got eerily quiet. Steve went upstairs to survey the situation and as soon as he opened the door Kalea hands him a WAD of poo-filled baby wipes. Basically she stuck her wipes in the back of her diaper and tried to wipe. I mean, we have to give her props for trying to sort it out on her own right? Steve threw her in the bathtub with a load of bubbles and I hollered "kid switch" so he could eat dinner and go to his install. Well after dealing with "The Flood" I hear Steve calling me in his girlie freaked out voice- the one he only does when he's dealing with feces. I run downstairs to find him standing with Brynlee in an outstretched football hold. She has a weird brownish/greenish colored glob of something on her back and Steve's opposite arm is streaked with the same brownish/greenish glob and he also has a brownish/greenish glob of something falling from his hand. I HAVE NOT LAUGHED SO HARD IN A LONG TIME! It was the laughter of a crazy person, really. I collapsed in a heap of laughter while said globs were falling from Steve's outstretched appendages. Brynlee was happy as a lark, Steve was very concerned and I was just a heap of laughter. It was priceless. Once I got myself together I proceeded to help Steve get cleaned up and strip Brynlee of her grossness as well. Then Steve showed me the amount of poo in the Bumbo and the laughter started again. I didn't know it was possible for so much of that to come out of an infant?!

So that was Steve's grand welcome home from the kids. I suppose if I hadn't been laughing hysterically I definitely would've been crying. I am glad today didn't happen when I was on my own and I am SO happy Steve got a taste of what he's missed while he's been away. Is that bad?

Sunshine-y Days

We had been enjoying the fabulous sunshine for the past few days- not so much today, but everyday can't be heaven right? We enjoyed the farmer's market yesterday, but will look forward to going on a Saturday when there are more vendors set up and a bigger crowd, not that we don't like being the only patrons :S LOL The park across the street from the market was awesome and Kalea found some friends to play with. I fell off this "modern carousel" contraption, that was so hard to hold on to, and Steve was spinning it so fast. No worries, I'm tough and I love the spongy playground stuff, so it was a fun fall- we laughed and so did all the other moms there- great to be known as "that weirdo mom"! With the nicer weather comes more opportunities to explore Saskatoon, we're hoping to get out to The Children's Festival next weekend- please send good weather vibes our way. I guess this is so far, the wettest summer in Saskatoon since who knows when- just our luck! Anyways, I am so excited to have so much space for the girls to play all summer long! We went out to Wal-Mart and got a sweet kiddie pool- will post pix as soon as it's nice enough to set it up again, hopefully tomorrow!

This pic is just to show the "scale" of the yard- see plenty o' room for playing!

Check out Brynlee's TWO front teeth! Crazy that my "baby" is growing up so fast :(

Post Christmas Post

SO I totally had my Pre-Christmas Post on a roll and then I didn't get it posted.
Anywho, my Christmas post would've been awesome...
Let's recap the events of the season...
BIL and SIL get into town at midnight-ish a few days prior to Christmas... we HAD already been sleeping for a few hrs... HAD... I'm just glad Kalea stayed asleep through all the ruckus!
What else???
We spent Christmas Eve day/early evening with Steve's family- we had a turkey & ham dinner with all the fixings-YUM. And Santa came while we were all huddled in the basement.
Kalea definitely got spoiled this year- but I mean she is only 4 mths out of heaven and has been a perfect angel so she kinda deserved it!
Us big kids must've been pretty good too because Santa gifted each couple with a Samsung camcorder- YAY!
I really was happy with this gift for many reasons, but most of all because it means I don't have to beg Steve for one for the next year!
After we were done at Stringham's we went to my parents for the night and Christmas Day. They invited Annet- our African friend who is definitely an inspiration. Last year she couldn't sleep over, but this year she did, so that was AWESOME! We sang carols, watched It's a Wonderful Life and ate too many homemade chocolates. It was really fun though. We also got spoiled over there with gift cards and clothes and more stuff for Kalea- including a BUMBO which is my new best friend.
I'm so glad I can put her down on the counter now and she doesn't fuss because she can watch every move I'm making! My back is so grateful.
BONUS: We got to talk to my missionary brother on Christmas morning!
I love that kid so much, he is the coolest. I love talking to him, especially now with his little California accent, it's so cute- he doesn't appreciate it as much as he should. He's having a lot of success out there and is really wishing time wasn't going by so fast. I'm so impressed with how he's changed- well not really changed, just let himself emerge I guess- he's always been this way, I think he was just scared to really just be himself before the mish. I'm glad he's figured himself out, cuz I've always thought he was pretty great.
For selfish reasons I'm excited that the year went by so fast and I hope this next one speeds by too!
All in all it was a great Christmas with lots of family time,
and by that I mean hours of playing Rockband!
I hope everyone else had just as much fun as we did!