Thanksgiving

The kids and I spent Thanksgiving weekend at Mom and Dad's in Kirkland Lake this weekend, while Keith went moose hunting. I made the mistake of leaving the city during rush hour, on a long weekend Friday no less, and got held up for some time on the highway because of bridge construction. This has been going on all summer and this was the longest line up yet at 5kms!!

I, and the rest of the city cannot wait til the work is over!!

Saturday morning the kids were treated to their early Birthday present from Papa.

They had a wonderful time bombing up and down the drive way in the beautiful autumn colours! Sydney even used it to take a drive over to the neighbour's to peddle her Girl Guide cookies.

Sunday we went over to the cottage to close up.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures of all the snow on the ground earlier that day!

I didn't really take that many pictures at all. I really need to get back at that!! I even missed out on the very cute moose sugar cookies with little painted bull's eyes that I made for the guys at camp!

Lady Antebellum and Keith Urban at the ACC in Toronto

Official Canadian Boy

You aren't truly Canadian til you try playing hockey.

Today was Cameron's first day, in all his equipment, out on the ice. I was away this weekend, on my date with Keith Urban (pictures of that later), so these picture were all taken by my other Keith.

I'm told he had a great time despite the time he spent laying on the ice!

He was much better once he found a helper.

You also aren't a Canadian Mom til you have to figure out how to get your hockey player to one end of town for 5pm and your ballerina to the other for 5:30 and pick him back up at 6:00 and her at 6:15. I think we will be recruiting Papa Bob to help out!

Cheeky Mother Nature

First it was a twin egg.

Then we discovered the veggies were being silly.

When we left for dance we discovered all the blankets around the garden did very little to protect the crop from the frost last night.

So, I harvested what was left, pulled out everything but the brussels sprouts and started looking for salsa verde recipes.

We were sent this great picture of Gramma Allen driving her Big Green Tractor in the Fall Fair parade!

Sydney is coughing, Cameron has the scoots.

Fun was had by all today.

Chicken Soup

Once again, I am renewing my efforts to keep up with this blog. Since Keith is working out of town, I really should be doing this daily so he can keep up with our goings on. In family terms, a lot happened in the past 24 hours so today is a good day to start. Mostly mundane stuff to outsiders, so you are forgiven if you just want to stop in for the pictures.

Rough day today. My misadventure of making hot pickles without latex gloves cost me hours of sleep last night. Who knew that those suckers could burn so badly! I got up and came on to surf the WWW for relief. Sure enough it turns out that soaking your skin in Maalox and/or milk takes away the sting. So along with a big dose of Advil, I did the soaks and finally fell asleep with my hands cuddling a lunch box ice pack. Unfortunately my blissful sleep only lasted until Cameron woke up puking. Yeah. Middle of the bedroom all over the playmat kind of puke. Thank goodness my hands weren't burning while I cleaned that up. Had to laugh when he said "it smelled like peanut butter". Guess what he had for supper? Soooooooo thankful he didn't have KD...without a doubt the WORST smelling kind of puke.

Got Sydney off to school and we just hung out all day. He had another round of yaking late morning, so he stayed sprawled out on the couch all afternoon too. Not such a bad way to spend the day really. When Sydney came home I found a letter from the school saying her teacher quit and they have a new one coming in on Monday. For those keeping track, that means this will be 3 out of 4 years where she starts the month of September with one teacher and ends it with another. The only year she didn't, the teacher missed big chunks of time in November and December when her son was sick and then passed away. We've got a great track record going. Good thing Sydney is resilient and does pretty well with change.  I could sense that something was wrong in the class so I'm glad it seems to have worked itself out.

So, I made chicken soup for supper and everyone seems to be a bit better tonight.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

Future NHLer?

Cameron tried on his hand-me-down hockey gear from a good friend today. I thought for sure he'd be annoyed with the process of trying everything on, but I was very wrong. He loved it and thought he looked so cool....right down to his jock which apparently is a very funny piece of equipment. Best of all, everything fits perfectly...yeah!! His feet grew 4 sizes since last year so he needs new skates, and a mouth guard, stick and long undies. I was also impressed with my ability to figure out what each piece of equipment was an how to put it on him....except for the little doodads that hold up his socks (nifty little things). I must be a natural Hockey Mom. Yeah me! Hopefully the genetic variant - SHHOCHM gene (screaming her head ff crazy hockey mom) is recessive.

Random Shots

One of my garden helpers.

The new guy we hired to work with Cameron.

Please don't feed the animals!