Hammy for Sammi

Here are a few pre-Christmas pictures, starting with Roman Hamming it up, especially for Sammi.

As promised

Matt got a Star Wars shirt for his birthday; now they have the same haircut and clothing.

Angelina loved this super wild ride in the back yard.

My little Christmas monkeys

Angelina sat with Santa for the first time, and had a great time

Done for this semester

Thank you Keira for the updates and all the pictures.

I love the Roman pictures where he is hamming it up; I can't believe he is two years old already. Before I know it, you will be posting first day of school pictures on the blog, and I will be hitting my head against the wall wondering where the time has gone.

I loved Angelina in her princess costume; she is a very beautiful young lady. You and Matt looked great in your costumes as well. It looks like there is so much more to do with the family in Oshawa which is great since Angelina and Roman are information sponges. The Viking group was very cool for the kids to see and ask questions...something different.

Do you have the house decorated for Christmas? What are your plans for the holidays? How is the winter weather so far?

Enjoy your holidays! I love looking at the pictures of the family.

Sammi

Spending a Little More Time Inside, These Days

The Last Baby Birthday

My bunny rabbit is two! I know a lot of people get sad as their babies grow out of babihood, but I am psyched. It's awesome that the kids are growing up. The older they get, the more we can talk to each other and do cool stuff and have fun.

Now that he can talk, I'm glad Roman can tell me what he wants, even though it is often pink cake. He can say a lot now, but the most frequent words out of his mouth are still "bump head" "hurt mouth" "hurt hand" "bump butt" and so on... he's a little clumsy. Another gem is "make toots!"

So my baby isn't really a baby anymore, but he's still the most squishable, sweet, funny little guy I know.

He likes his new ball pit. He yells "balls everywhere!" and goes ape shit.

Even though this was the easiest birthday cake I ever made, it was also the most appreciated.

He gets by with a little help from his friends, like Steve Harper.

me

I thought I would add a pic of me... Just for you

Party like it's 999

Angelina has a page about vikings in her favourite book (a history book) and this weekend we went to see a Viking re-inactment group. They had an authentic camp set up with a smithy and a cooking fire and stuff. Angelina was so happy!

This giant was Gina's best friend for the day. He kept showing her viking tools and weapons and stuff. He said "What do you think of that?" and Angelina said "I think that's pretty cool!"

She was a good sport about dressing up briefly but would not let me take a good picture.

The vikings showed Angelina all kinds of tools.


Here is Roman sparring with a viking. Perhaps he'll be a viking some day. They called him "bloody Roman" though, so he would probably choose a new name.


Angelina said the battles were her favourite part. Roman tried to join in, of course.

Roman Stories

Roman is spelling and reading a bit now, but he's as obsessed as ever with his beloved letters. But now his relationships are becoming more complicated I guess. The other day he was playing with an "M" toy and decided to bring it into the bathtub with him. He was playing, splashing, washing and talking to M in the bath happily as I left the room. Then a couple minutes later I heard him starting to holler and get angry. I came back and Roman thrust the M towards me, yelling, "Don't want that M! Don't want that Mmmmmmm!"

Here he is eatina raw onion becuase it looks like an O. If I can't get Roman to eat, I just make his food into a letter and he'll eat it.

This morning we were at the grocery store and I was looking through the spices trying to find Coriander (no luck). I looked down and Roman was trying to chew his way into a bottle of Mrs Dash. He's almost two, but he still eats everything! Even if it tastes awful and makes him cry, like soap or pepper, he's likely to do it again. Seems like a dumb thing for a genious kid. Anyway, I took the spice away from Roman and kept shopping, but Roman started crying and yelling "Doesn't taste good! Doesn't taste good!" And next thing I knew he was barfing his little guts out, barfing out bits of plastic from the spice bottle and green beans from the produce aisle. I was frantically catching the barf with my hands and then the grocery list and then his sweater. After that he was happy as can be, running around finding letters and numbers. The whole thing actually made me feel really grateful, becuase I realized that it's been awhile since he has barfed in the store and I am very happy about that.

Fall is Fun

The kids made a new little friend on our walk

I've never been afraid of snakes, but when my kids started poking and playing with one, I did feel a little nervous

Yay, remember playing in the leaves when you were a kid?

I bet you didn't eat them though, like my Roman. This guy eats everything!

Trying on the new snowsuits! They don't actually need to wear them yet, it's amazingly warm here still. Sometimes we don't even wear jackets.

Halloween!

People have been asking for my halloween pictures for weeks, and now that Halloween has actually happened, I have them! Here they are:

This is what happens when you take a little girl for a walk...

... she wants to wear her princess costume and pick up some "accessories" along the way.

Camping

These are a little old now. But I took so many pictures in the summer, I couldn't keep up. The last one is probably my favourite picture of Roman. He always gets so excited.

A New Nephew!

Nicole had a new baby! Here he is, Corbin Paynton.

Erin's Wedding

Roman always has fun with his cousin Ethan
"I got a feelin'...

... that tonight's gonna be a good night..."

One of these guys is good and drunk; guess who? I won't put up the picture where you can really tell.

Even More Pictures, Even Smarter Kids

Here are even more pictures from our BC trip; I sure took a lot. In the first one Roman is chasing a bug, and in the second one he caught it and is so happy.

Roman is actually starting to talk! I know that's funny becuase he can read more than he can say, and can even spell a whole bunch of words now. But he is only 1 1/2, so his level of speaking (but nothing else!) is normal. It's so exciting; he can handle words like "birthday". And he says cute little stuff like "read book!" and "little baby!" and "I love daddy!" It's so amazing to see him turning from a baby into a little guy.

Angelina and I are still enjoying our daily learning time. I bought her a very cool little kids' history book and she took a shine to the ancient Romans ("hey, that's Roman's name!") She's already learned her way through human anatomy, the french language, plant science, and continents and countries, just to name a few things. I have just ordered an actual homeschool curriculum, so we can be a little less helter-skelter and get some neat ideas. I know it's hard to keep track about other people's kids so I'll tell you: she's just turned three, and in BC would start kindergarten in two years (here they have two years of kindergarten so she would start junior kindergarten in one year). Obviously, I can't send her, two years from now, into a class where they will be teaching the abcs! Roman either for that matter. What a lot of sleep I have lost over this.