Chiquarita

Noe AKA Chiquarita
Noe is our artsy girl and she loves to dance, draw, and write stories. She is pretty witty too. The other day Len and I were talking about how tiny Teague's bum is. She overheard us and said she could write a story about him called, "The Pirate with No Booty." We laughed so hard! She had her dance recital this Saturday for her Jazz class and she did just great. Her studio is huge offering classes in ballet, jazz, tap, hip hop, lyrical, ballroom, theater, highland, and Irish for all ages and levels. They actually had 3 recitals so all of their students could get a chance to perform. I'm so glad Noe loves to dance- she is beautiful to watch and I can live vicariously through her too (tee hee!).

She's our hot hot hot fiesty freckle-faced beauty that we just love so much!

My 3 Sons

I always dreamed of having the "Brady Bunch" for my children- 3 boys and 3 girls.


Who knows if that wish will come true, but for now I am happy that I have 3 darling sons!


Kaleb AKA Asia Boy
Kaleb loved our time in Taiwan and is always asking when we will move back. He also wants to visit Japan, China, and Korea. When I ask where he hopes to serve his mission, he'll mention 1 of those 4 countries. He's in his third year of studying martial arts, his favorite food is sushi, and he loves making origami figures. He wanted to make 1,000 paper cranes, however we encouraged him to just start with 100. It took him most of this school year, but he finally did it! (I was so glad he wanted to recycle them after, and not put them back in his disaster zone, I mean closet.) Over the years he has had several crushes on little Asian beauties. I could see us having an Asian daughter-in-law some day. His dream is to build a 10-story apartment building for our family. That way Len & I could have a floor, and each of our children with their spouses and families could have a floor, and we could also have a few community floors with a pool, movie theater, and bowling alley. Build it son, I'd love to live there!


Gavin AKA Just Ducky
Gavin is our happy-go-lucky kid, who is always cheerful (except when it comes time for Primary, in which he cries and asks to go home- oh dear!). He loves everything about Thomas the Tank Engine, the Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that, and Super Why- not just the TV shows, but books, music, and of course toys and games. He's usually singing some fun song and recently his favorite is the Duck Song, you should listen- I love it!


Teague AKA Mr. T (for Trouble, Tornado, Tyrant of Destruction, and Tenderheart)
This little guy is our smallest 2 year old (at his last check-up he barely weighed 25 pounds and that was in the afternoon, fully dressed with diaper and heavy shoes!), but that does NOT stop him! He is so fast and before I can finish a sneeze he can turn our house upside-down! He can get into any closet, drawer, cupboard, and wreck havoc with all of the contents. The more we "childproof" our home, the more clever ways he finds to create chaos. He is such a sweetheart though and has been loving to cuddle a lot lately.

I just love my 3 sons!

Cake Walk

Last year for the school carnival, I just made 2 vanilla round cakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles. This year I wanted to make a "fancier" cake, but I don't really have any skills. I found this Pink Poodle cake idea from Family Fun and gave it a try. My husband said it was the cutest cake at the fair. Thanks honey!


Our family also won another cake this year. We chose the second cutest cake (tee hee), this yummy guitar.

Gavin is our lucky charm- he won it for us both years in a row! Thanks for sharing with us Gavin!!

This week has been crazy busy with an extra appointment each day and evening. I completely missed the last American Idol performance show, and I got home with 10 minutes to spare for the results show. I think Scotty is a cutie, plus he's a great singer and performer. I still think Lauren should have won though. Girls unite, let's vote for girl power next year (tee hee!).

I've only ever watched a few episodes here and there of So You Think You Can Dance, and most of SYTYCD Canada in 2009, but I am passionate about dance!! We watched the first episode last night, and we'll try to watch the season, but it's summertime and we don't watch much TV. Anyway, Melanie Moore's audition made me cry! I'm sad because I know there is a time and season for things, and that season has passed for my dancing career. I look forward to strengthening some talents as I "mature" and I hope to strengthen my painting skills, take piano lessons again, and maybe study design down the road. I loved dancing in my youth and would love to pursue it again, however I think that ship has sailed (sigh).

Junk Food Haul

Monday was a holiday here, which means EVERYTHING is closed. We needed groceries, so we decided to drive down to America to get some. This time we went to Massena, New York and I fell in love with their Walmart (sigh).


We brought our cooler so we could get milk in JUGS and butter in 1/2 CUP STICKS!!



I have been craving Cream of Wheat, Grape Nuts, Raisin Nut Bran, and Kix- yea! I can eat them now. We also let the kids eat sugar cereal in the summer, so we got some Cap'n Crunch, and Honey Smacks to tide them over.


Len couldn't resist the Jiffy blueberry muffin and cornbread mixes- yum!

For our school carnival this week I am making a pink poodle cake, so I got some Strawberry cake mixes and frosting, and my favorite German Chocolate with Coconut Pecan frosting- I'm dreaming of that now.

I've done a whole blog post about the pink and white iced Circus Animals, so you know I had to get them (2 bags!). I also needed (a pregnancy plus!) Nutter Butters, Fig Newtons, Cool Mint Oreos, and Heads or Tails Double Stuf Oreos. Don't worry I'll pace myself.

We also got some Little Debbie cupcakes, and orange slices. You can get some Little Debbie here and the orange slices, but they were just $1- so hey. We had to get some Red Vines too, all you can get is Twizzlers (NOT my fave) here. The kids were giddy as the shopping cart got piled up with all this junk and kept saying that we were spoiling them as they laughed with glee. We really will pace ourselves, only one treat bag every other week. It should last all summer.

Noe had red and blue polk-a-dot bows, but lost the red one, so I had to replace with these cute stripe ones. Again, they were just a buck!

I love crib bedding and each of my babies gets their own set. I had been scoping out stores here and seeing what I liked. I decided to take Babies 'R Us off the list as everything there was about $200 for a 4 piece set. I found some cute ones at Walmart here for only $85. Well, when I found these 2 darling sets for only $25 each, I got them both! I'm set for a boy or a girl, and since I have 6 friends in town that are pregnant, I would be happy to give the other set as a shower gift.

We also got a new pet frog.

Teague loves to sit on him, but hasn't done anything else yet. I'm hoping maybe he'll be potty trained before the new baby arrives!

I also must mention that we got Orange sherbet push-ups (that we ate in the car) and Taco Bell for lunch (it is a completely different restaurant here).

Now don't get me wrong, there are lots of things in Canada that you can't get in the States that I miss when we're not here, but it was fun getting some good ol' fashioned American sugar!

The Canadian dollar is now stronger than the American one, yet retail prices here are 30% higher (plus 13% sales tax)- yikes! America has a free market between States, where as Canada has trade barriers between provinces that raise all the prices. 80% of Canadians live within an hour of the border, and the other 20% live within 2 hours. It would be nice if more Canadians hopped down to the States to shop, so maybe the Canada market could get the hint and adjust their prices. Although, Canada is the country that is surviving the world recession best, so who knows? We did see some friends from church while we there that head down every 2 weeks to stock up the pantry. I think we're going to make this a monthly outing for sure! (At least while the weather's nice- tee hee).

Lovely Lilacs

Spring has finally decided to visit Ottawa. The city has decided to stop using herbicides, so dandelions, allergies, and asthma are all growing exponentially. Luckily so are the lilacs!

Our sweet neighbors shared this beautiful bouquet with us. Every time I see it, it makes me smile and the scent is just scrumptious!

Kissing Tulips

We found some time to head over to Dows Lake for our favorite Tulip Festival. I took 96 pictures (do you think I like tulips?), and it was so hard to narrow it down to my favorites. I've been doing huge picture posts lately, so enjoy my top 15:


My sweet little family. My poor Noe ended up feeling really sick, but she still managed to smile. I love you girl!

Love the frayed edges.

There were several of these painted tulips scattered around. I'll paint one for next year!

Peaches and cream.

My little Teague-y boy.

These ones were wearing lipstick!

An enchanted little pathway.

I love tulips that are like huge pompoms and these ones have the frayed edges too.

These were lavender with peach edges- very lovely.

I wanted to go swimming in this fluffy white one.

We found some other cool flowers on the street we parked on. Bluebells are so tiny, but so darling!

I've never seen these crazy purple ones before- they stand out in a crowd!

A gorgeous magnolia tree in full bloom (I love the carpet of petals below too).

This shot is from our own little garden. Oh I love the tulips!

Motherhood

This year I had a wonderful Mother's Day. I didn't feel the guilt I usually feel about all of the mistakes I've made while mothering, but instead I felt tremendously happy and grateful for the amazing, beautiful people that I get to share my life with that are my children! Many people have commented on how "brave" I am for having a 5th child. I don't feel brave at all, I feel greedy. I just love all of my little munchkins so much I want more! My friend Jenny posted on her blog, "No matter what your situation, and despite your failures, your children love you and count on you, and to each child you are THEIR best mom ever." I'm so thankful for my wonderful husband who is ALWAYS there for me cheering me on. We are a team and I couldn't do half of what I do without him!

Church was really great. We had an all-sister Sunday in Relief Society that was fabulous and an awesome Sacrament Meeting as well. Our last speaker is the cutest little lady in the world. She is so passionate about life it is contagious! She speaks several languages, is into music, dance, and was a fabulous painter. I say was, because now she is blind. That doesn't seem to stop her though, she is so vibrant and full of life. She spoke about how grateful she is to be a mother and a grandmother. She also spoke of the love she has for her mother and grandmothers who have passed on and how she looks forward to being reunited with them in heaven. She also spoke of her love for our Heavenly Mother and how she can't wait to see her again. This is something Mormons believe, that other Christians might not. We believe that we have a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother that are both the parents of our spirits. As their offspring we have the potential with our spouses to become gods and goddesses and create our own spirit children. It was just a very uplifting and rejuvenating meeting.

I too am so grateful for my mom and the example she is to me. I'm also glad to have a step-mom that is so dear to me too. I miss my mother-in-law, but see glimpses of her in my daughter and I know we are all a family forever. I have many grandmothers that are all precious to me. I hope when I am a "grammy" that my posterity will feel that way about me.

One of Leonard's colleagues from Taiwan was in town for training so we had her over for dinner. It was so wonderful to see you Shannon, and thanks for the cookies and peanut nougat (I'd been craving them!). By the way, you look really good with 4 kids (tee hee!)

#14

4 days after the big royal wedding, Len and I celebrated our own wedded bliss- our 14th anniversary!! It was a rainy Tuesday with chauffeuring kids back and forth to activities.

However, my honey did bring home a brownie chocolate cheesecake for us to munch on.

I love you Leonard!