Day fifty-seven

Winter is here, for sure. It had to arrive on the same day I have to be on the road. Its 30 below zero with the wind chill, and its snowing sideways. I'm so glad I got the studded tires put on this morning. Still, it was no fun driving here and I'll probably have the shakes until morning. There's my van parked and plugged in right outside my hotel room. I can see the highway from the window and all the poor souls heading one way or the other - I'm so glad to be safe and warm and off the road.

Day fifty-six

I hope there is a special place in hell for people who design packaging for children's toys. Is there a reason why so many of the SIXTY mega-bloks in Annique's new four seasons set needed to be WIRED to the cardboard? Not just around the block, but straight through?

Nothing says Christmas like 60 nasty little wires securing the parts of ONE toy to its packaging.

Day fifty five

Game Day/Santa Day!!

I don't know what they were thinking scheduling Santa Day on the same day as the Grey Cup. There was a magician, a frenzy of unwrapping after Santa came, and then everyone cleared out and headed home for the game. Thankfully, there was facepainting at Santa Day - a lot of the kids skipped usual canes and reindeer and went for green and white, or blue and gold depending on which side of the border their loyalties lie on.

Anyway, Annique's got her game face on. Its the best you can do on a two-year old to get some green and white stripes, and an S. That'll do!

Day fifty-four

Visiting my sister and my nephews - we had to get the kids outside for a walk. We brought the wagon for Annique but she was there to push or pull or walk - but NOT ride. My sister is indicating that there is a space in the wagon if she'd like. She would NOT like.

Day fifty-three

Or, maybe this is late in the evening of day fifty-two, whatever. But here we are watching The Polar Express for the first time this year. The girls really enjoy this movie, and so do I! I tell them we have to wait until its snowing to watch it - and now it is!

Day fifty-two

Mommy's little demon. After 20 minutes of trying to get a decent picture for the Christmas card, when I saw this one I finally realized - she's totally messing with me. This is not going to happen today. She knows *exactly* what I want her to do, and therefore - she's NOT doing it. :)

Day fifty-one

Ceci spinning in her Bilibo - obviously I played around in Photoshop, trying to catch the motion. If that's not good enough, I have video, too. : )

Day fifty

Yuck. But it was the only picture taken on my camera today. Not by me. This is not my thing. I keep getting startled when I go out to get something out of the deep freeze, I forget these stupid antlers are in the shed and so I usually scream just a little bit. I really hate having dead animal parts in my shed.

Day forty-nine

Short days and frosty trees

Despite the fact that we don't have snow and its the mildest November I can remember - its staying dark later every morning and the thick frost on the trees reminds me that we're getting close to December, even if it doesn't *seem* like it most days. It doesn't take long for the frost to disappear most days, after the sun comes up. But that's taking longer now. This was taken just as we were getting in the van to go to school.

day forty-eight

A hard day's night - she crashed at about eight o'clock, FURIOUS that her mother would dare to remove her fancy dancing dress and shoes to put her into the tub, and didn't quit screaming until everything was put back the way it should be - scrubbed clean but with her dress back on, shoes back on, and naked Barbie doll back in hand. I didn't even consider going through all that again to get her to bed - so she went to sleep in the dance outfit and shoes, still clutching Barbie. The shoes are two sizes too big but somehow stayed on until midnight, when I took this picture.

day forty-seven

Day two of the two-day sleepover - and the manliest thing he can find in the dress-up box is a space suit. "There's just a LITTLE bit of pink on it. Its not a girl costume!" - we really need to get some boy clothes in there. But he's surviving in a house with three little girly-girls, he just needs regular doses of Metallica, boxing, racing and James Bond on Playstation.

day forty-six

TWO SLEEPOVERS! - We have my nephew here for the weekend, but by Friday afternoon, he's already bored. I don't blame him - the girls are both at school and Annique's nonstop Bella Dancerella is wearing thin. Time to put her down for a nap and break out the Playstation.

day forty-five

Percy goes to school. You may remember Percy from his earlier adventures as a LOLcat on my other blog - and there was that skunk-spraying incident this spring. Today, poor Percy goes to school. Doesn't he just look thrilled?

day forty-four

CAUGHT! Red-handed, even. I have no idea what that is on her hands, but I thought it was funny.

day forty-three

Last year, my husband helped Madeleine with her homework most of the time, because he speaks French, and I'm just learning. She needs to learn the correct pronunciation of the words right now, and so he's a far better help with that stuff than I am. Even though I'm the one with a teacher's certificate - he's far better at that job. I had a hard time when he was off at school and I had to help with reading Paul et Suzanne, and my six-year-old was correcting my pronunciation.

Now Madeleine is helping Cecily with Paul et Suzanne. She's better at it than both her mother and her father. Its perfect because Madeleine still sounds out the letters slowly, unlike grownups who tend to rush through.

day forty-two

Kind of blurry but I liked the flame on this one, and I doused it right away because having a good steak is way more important than getting a good picture. Its mid-November, the grass is still somewhat green in the background, and I'm grilling steaks on the BBQ. That's just amazing to me - usually I'd be shovelling snow off the deck at this time of year, not running out there to check the steaks. Did I mention my Christmas shopping is done? Fall is really messed up this year, but I'm certainly not complaining!

Day forty-one

This one is blatantly stolen from my cousin, who posted it on her facebook. Sorry, Susie! I took a bunch of pictures of this, but none turned out as well as hers:


While I'm in a thieving mood, I'll steal the caption: "A barn built by my great-grandfather 101 years ago. It still stands straight and true."

Day forty

Why I am never in pictures - because my husband can't run my camera. But you get the idea, anyway.

Day thirty-nine

My dad is refinishing a table and chairs set for my kids. He's color blind so I picked the colors. Or, should I say he did it? The table is hot pink.

Day thirty-eight

SNOW!! And twenty minutes later, it was getting so that I was kind of scared to drive to my mom's house. The road was snow-packed and slippery - I would have stopped to take a picture except I didn't want to use the brakes unless I had to. The snow was mostly gone by the afternoon but it was looking like a Winter Wonderland in the morning- big fluffy flakes sticking to everything.

Day thirty-seven

Self-explanatory. :)

Day thirty-six

Today I went out in the cold and took some family pictures - not of my family, but my friend's family. I thought this one was kind of fun - the little girls and the baby boys are twins. The girls are identical and the little boys couldn't be more different. The oldest son is barely two years older than the girls - that's a busy mom.

Day thirty-five

So, I'm not at work today. Obviously - its Monday and I never did work Mondays, anyway. But still - it feels like my first day not at work. I brought a little bit of work home with me though - on my first day I got to pick out a mug from a small collection of handmade mugs with the newspaper logo on it. I picked this one not because I liked it the best, but because it was different enough from the others that I could be reasonably sure I would NEVER EVER mix it up with someone else's mug. It had yellow spots on it - none of the other mugs had spots. There is nothing that can make new co-workers dislike you more than being caught with their favorite mug the first day. I was always leery of that when I was teaching or subbing - very scary to reach into the cupboard and grab something that just looks like ANY old mug, and discover later that its sacred to someone. I *always* ask.

Anyway, on my last day at work I sort of dreaded having to put the mug back on the shelf, and knowing me, something like that would make me cry - but fortunately, I did not have to because they told me I could take it home. WOOOO! I get to keep the mug! So this morning, I had my morning coffee out of my mug, and I made a batch of cookies for everyone at work to say thanks - and it was a good start to the day. I'm going to miss it so much.

Day thirty-four

I meant to get a picture of the snow today - because we woke up to a winter wonderland AND a power outage this morning. By noon the snow was practically gone and not photo-worthy anymore. But it looked amazing out of my window this morning.

Now its past midnight and I have no picture. So here's one that amused me a few weeks ago but I didn't get to post because, remarkably, there was something better to post on the day this was taken.

Ok, so what is this all about? Well, I was amused that a company would be called "Portage Cartage and Storage, LTD" Also, I knew what the truck was for - it was delivering the new photocopier to the Village office, a very exciting day, indeed! The Village office is where I have meetings once a month because I am on Village council, and I get to vote on important things like, whether or not we should have a new photocopier after 15 years. Thrilling! If you look closely, you can also see our bilingual stop sign, my sister in law pushing my niece in the stroller, and my nephew pulling his red wagon behind her. I'd just dropped my kids off at school. I thought at the time it was a good snapshot of stuff in my life.

Day thirty-three

I took pictures of my friend's kids today, and I asked Cecily to come into the sunroom so I could check out how the light would work. Then Madeleine wanted to have a few pictures, and Annique was in there like a dirty shirt. I was just fooling around with the camera - they wouldn't sit still at all, it was past noon and they were still in their PJ's - but I didn't care since I was planning to just delete the pictures - but I got a few that I really like. This one is my 365 for today:

And, some extras just for fun:

Day thirty-two

Finally getting the Halloween crap cleaned up - the costumes put away and I have given up on keeping the girls' candy in separate bowls and bags (why?!?!) and just dumped the whole pile into a laundry basket.

Day thirty one

This picture is a bit blurry because she's running - today was Annique's last day at her daycare and so its my last chance to get a picture of her face lighting up when she sees me coming into the yard. I feel so loved when she drops whatever she's doing and runs over to me. I wanted to get a picture of her with her babysitter since she won't see her again - but she flipped right out for some strange reason and I felt horrible about that. Even worse that the babysitter has never even seen her with her bottom lip out - let alone a complete meltdown. I sure wish we hadn't left on such a bad note. Daycare has been so good for Annique - she made little friends and grew up so much and had so much fun there every day. I really regret pulling her out and if we lived closer I'd love to keep bringing her there. She adores her babysitter and is always so good for her. But she's still glad to see me at the end of the day - and I love that!