No Chocolate for Breakfast

Tree Planting

Caleb helped his Beavers group plant 280 trees at Terry Fox park yesterday morning. In light rain, on less sleep than usual, and excited for his party later that day Caleb wasn't the most helpful or pleasant Beaver in the pond so we ended up making an early exit.

Caleb's Minecraft Party

We celebrated Caleb's birthday a little early this year and themed it around Minecraft, a building video game. I learned that party stores in Ottawa don't carry Minecraft supplies so I was thankful for Etsy. Chrissy made the cake and rice crispy squares and Caleb and I decorated and set up the games.

Decorating the basement and watching Lord of the Rings the eve before the big day

The grandparents came up for the party

Making foam pickaxes and swords

Double grandmas!

Some minecrafting happened

That Lord of the Flies moment when kids are hitting pinatas

Shooting creepers

With a Nerf bow and arrow

Aim!

"Was I in the picture?"

Cici & Co ginger cake (birthday boy's choice)

Not sure what happened here (maybe it was my singing)

Nat and mini-Martin

Helpers

Miscellaneous

Nothing to report! Here are a few picture of Evelyn.

Love me an overalls baby

Touring Perth

Becka, Evelyn and I met up with Debby for lunch in Perth last week. We then played tourists in the beautiful little town. At one point we were at the playground chatting with a mom from Arden who mentioned it was somehow already 3pm and we hurriedly raced back to Ottawa.

Grandma brought a new toy

and cookies!

Expending some energy

Cuddles before grandma returned to work

These prettier pictures were taken by Becka

Baby swings are now giggle worthy

Caleb is funny

I've heard it recommended that parents write funny things their kids say. Caleb says a lot of funny things and I tend to forget them almost instantly. Here are a few recent examples that I can recall.

Caleb was excited one morning because his grade 1 class was to go read to JK kids that day. After school I asked how it went and he gave me a nonchalant "good." To get him to elaborate I sometimes have to fire questions at him so the following conversation ensued.
me: Were the JK kids super cute?
Caleb: Well, only two were cute.
me: What was wrong with all of the other kids?
Caleb: They were all picking their noses and bums.
(This is especially funny because Caleb is quite proper for a little boy.)

For his upcoming birthday he'll be receiving an ipod shuffle. I was fishing for what kind of music I should include and asked what his favourite song is. His answer surprised me: "the national anthem of France." So distinguished!

Caleb has added being a Pokemon master to the things he wants to be when he grows up (masseuse, hair dresser, chemist, swimming teacher, singer...and Pokemon master).

Oh, Liana has one too. We were talking about puberty and she mentioned how a guy friend's voice was changing. The funny part was someone asked if he had bronchitis. Poor kid.

Liana projects

Liana worked on a few projects this week. She and a friend worked on a stop motion video for cinema class. It's kind of dark. I thought it amusing that it demonstrates 3/4 of life as a kid and only a short period as an adult. Not sure whether or not that's intentional. Here's the video.

She's also working on two abstract paintings for Casey. Casey: let her know if this one would work. She's waiting to talk to you about colours for the other one before starting.

She's also started volunteering for Fair Trade Ottawa Equitable and Ecology Ottawa. She's (by far) the youngest of the volunteers and I'm a little concerned she'll be stretching herself thin between this, babysitting, school work and hobbies..
.

Miscellaneous

Caleb is registered in his school science club that meets every Friday at lunch. It's facilitated by Mad Science and there's a different weekly theme - last week's theme was light.

Evelyn had an aunt Casey day while mommy and daddy went journeying into Nyx. She also had a new friend over to play last week. His name is Lucas and his mom is an old high school friend of mine.