Monday Gumbo...

LauraC and Erin who are the keepers of the 500 Miles in 2010 blog do these gumbo posts and I like that concept... so I am going to swipe it! I think they won't mind...

Let's see... where to begin...

We finally were able to celebrate Amelia's first birthday on Feb 5th... it was rescheduled twice. Once due to illness and once due to snow... but we got it done. She didn't notice and went to bed at 7 so really... the party was more for us to get together with our friends and drink some wine. We appreciate her being the catalyst though!

The last 3 weeks have been SO MUCH FUN with that baby! Her personality (and A-TI-TUDE...) are literally exploding out of her every day now. Her newest thing is to say "ticka ticka ticka" while TICKELING HER OWN FEET! OMG it is the funniest thing. She is climbing the stairs with lightening speed (translate: gates up all over the place again - it's like having Lexie back at puppy stage!). She's eating lots of different things, but in particular loves chicken nuggets, pasta of any kind, avocado, goldfish and every veg you throw at her. She ate roast pork over the weekend and loved that too. We're not doing fish, eggs, seafood or any form of nut/peanut - but she's getting milk IN things, although no straight up cows milk yet. Maybe in a few more months.

Ainsley won an award for sportsmanship with her soccer team and the ceremony is tonight! Very cool... she cannot wait to start soccer again. Practices start next week and I am assistant coaching this year with another parent off of Matthew's team so it should be a fun season. She told me over the weekend that she is going to do swim team again this year - I really hope she does because it's good for her, Matthew does NOT do it - so it's "her" thing, and she is really, really GOOD! Ainsley is blowing the doors off with her reading at the moment - she has made amazing progress with comprehension and her ability to retell stories in her own words is awesome. She's really getting it! Her favourite books are Cam Janson and anything with the Magic Treehouse...

Matthew is just wrapping up an 8 week indoor soccer "tune up" session... 5 of the kids from his CASL team signed up together to be on the house team for MVP sports at the Factory and they have SMOKED the competition. His CASL team starts up again next week and we have some new faces on the team... it's a much bigger team this spring which will be interesting - but hopefully good. CASL seems to be struggling with coaches... so the teams are getting bigger and bigger. Good that kids can play - but it tends to translate into limited time on the field for the kids in game situations. Matt is at 1829mg of peanut flour now, and ramps up to 2286 this week. (every 300mg = 1 peanut...). He's doing great - and putting on 2lbs a month right now with the peanut milkshake every evening! :) For some people this might be a bad thing - but for him, not so much! He might be back on the growth chart for his 9 year well child coming up in March!!

The Olympics are on! Alex Bilodeau's first ever gold medal on home soil last night had Ken and I jumping up and down like 5 year olds in our bonus room - screaming, hooting and hollering (we woke Matthew up!) just so full of pride! I think that the pieces NBC did prior to the actual opening ceremonies spotlighting Canada in all of it's different lights were fantastic... even better than the ceremony itself! Tom Brokaw had me in tears as he talked about the beauty of my homeland and compassion, friendliness and vibrancy of the people that live there today. Yes - for any of you that have never visited - it really, really is that beautiful. :)

It looks like we are going to be able to finish off our attic space after all. There was some question as to joist sizes and live load versus dead load... but we had an engineer inspect and he explained the underpinnings to us - bottom line is we are approved to go ahead and permit/finish the space as heated square footage. Which is good... it helps. It doesn't fix everything - but it will buy us some time for this crappy market to turn around.

The talk of construction *might* make you wonder if we've finished our kitchen yet. You know - the one we started renovating last MAY??? Sadly - it's still not done! It is close - but we cannot for the life of us figure out PAINT! It's so un-Ken-and-Jodi-like... we are totally stuck on what to do! It's to the point now that I think we should repaint the family room because our new colour choice in there is going to impact how we see the kitchen...

So that's about it for now. It's been a long 6 weeks... cold and snowy. I am ready for NC to get back on board with the kind of weather we love... hopefully soon!