Galaxyland and K-days

We celebrated Mya's birthday last Thursday the 17th. We took the kids and their neighbor friend Avery who lives behind us to Galaxyland, the indoor amusement park at the West Edmonton Mall. They had a blast. Conveniently, the family rate was for 4 wrist bands and Ivy was free so Chris, Max, Mya and Avery got the wristbands and I got to do all the little kiddie rides with Ivy:) Amusement parks aren't really my thing anyway! I didn't think they were Max's thing either until the evening progressed and by the end, he was going on rollercoasters again and again! Chris was a total trooper. Mya wasn't tall enough to go on the rides alone, but could as long as an adult was accompanying her so since Chris was the only adult with a wristband, he got to do all the rides:) They also got to do the ropes course which was fun, but it took a really long time. We ate dinner at the food court and called it a night.




On Mya's actual birthday we went to Costco to get her a cake, but ended up with brownie bites! The cakes they had out were huge and I knew who would be the one eating the cake (me) so I Mya decided brownie bites would be okay! We went out to eat as a family to celebrate and came home, put Ivy to bed, and played Sorry! It was different than some of her other birthdays, but it was nice to have a low-key birthday and be together. We're going to celebrate more when we're home next week with her cousins!



On Saturday we headed out to "K-days" which is the big festival here every year. It used to be called Klondike Days, but apparently that was too long so they shortened it to K-days! We got there early and got out of there before the big crowds started coming in. We ate some yummy fair food and then toured all of the indoor exhibits. There was an awesome kids expo...we caught a My Little Pony live on stage show, a circus show, Max and Mya played some hockey, and they built some cool stuff in the construction zone.



After the kids area, we went to the farm expo and they looked at all the animals, planted some beans and potatoes, and rode some little mini john deere tractors around. Chris was pretty happy that John Deere was represented at K-days;) After the expo area, we went back outside and walked around the rides/games area. We didn't ride any rides because the line was really long, we had just been to Galaxyland and Ivy was pretty tired from missing her nap. All in all, really glad we experienced this "must-see" for Edmontonians!



Tomorrow, the kids and I are heading home to see lots of family and friends for a couple of weeks! Chris will join us for the 2nd half of the trip. We're pretty pumped to see this little girl:)

Happy 6th Birthday Mya!

Dear Miss Mya Pat,

Happy Birthday to you! You have been asking how many days until your birthday since about June 15th so I'm excited for you that it's finally here! Here's a little rundown of what you're like at age 6:) You make your dad and I laugh more than anyone else. You think your jokes are super funny and in fact they are...because they're so ridiculous that we laugh so hard! You haven't really figured out when enough is enough though because you tell the same joke over and over until we don't laugh anymore! You also have quite the evil laugh going on these days. Ivy is even picking up on it and trying to emulate! Speaking of Ivy, you are still my #1 helper with her. You love it when she calls you her "other mama" and you play together so nicely most of the time. Ivy is picking up on the fact that you don't really like it when she messes up your things. The other day I thought Ivy was napping and I went into your room and found her playing with your barbies! You are a good sister to Max most of the time as well. You play the Wii with him and go downstairs with him when he doesn't want to go down there alone.



Your stats...you are 39 pounds of pure muscle and 41 inches tall. Your height is climbing in percentile from around 1% at age 5 to 2 1/2% at age 6! You're probably just going to be a short person...the doctor put you on the scale and said you'd probably be 5' tall as an adult. You're definitely growing, just at your own rate! You wear size 10 shoe, size 6 shirts and size 4 or 5 pants. You are quite the little fashionista. Somedays you come downstairs wearing an outfit that is so well put together. Then other days you have some outfits that make me wonder if you're color blind! You have also started making barbie clothes out of scrap fabric. Who knows...maybe there is hope that someone will follow in your Grandma Linda and Aunt Kathy's footsteps! You love to rollerblade, scooter, hula hoop, do one armed cart wheels, ride your bike, pull Ivy in the wagon, walk Chloe, do the monkey bars, and jump on the trampoline. You love to win and need some work with how to lose more graciously:)



You still fall out of bed a lot. We have convinced you to sleep in the middle of your bed and also we have swimming noodles under the fitted sheet on both sides of your bed and that has helped. You love your ice water before bed along with an s-n-a-c-k. You've started spelling out anything that you don't want Ivy hearing, but again she's picking up on it and now she just puts random letters together when she wants something. You love to look at your long hair in the mirror and to talk about how long it is. Thankfully it's starting to get thicker too. You can put your own ponytails, pigtails and braids in your hair. Your ears are ultra sensitive just like mine and the only earrings that don't cause problems are the expensive ones! Your poor daddy:)

You had a great year of Kindergarten. You are reading anything and everything and we're working on reading comprehension this summer. I hear you retelling lots of stories to your barbies when you're playing with them and I smile from ear to ear. You took lunch from home 95% of the school year, but every once in awhile I could get you to try something new. Your favorite foods/meals these days are noodles with olive oil and parmesan cheese, chicken nuggets, hamburgers (as long as there are pickles) pancakes, chocolate cake without frosting, blueberry muffins, eggs, tacos, toast with cinnamon/sugar, smoothies, and vanilla ice cream. Your favorite color is turquoise and you want to be a gymnast and a mom when you grow up. You tell me your best friend at home is Livi and in Canada is Avery.

You have a very sweet side that comes out every once in awhile. Yesterday I was putting your hair in a "high ponytail" which is your most common request and you told me you were glad I was your mom. I melted. I'm glad you're my daughter too My-my. Happy Birthday!

Love, Mommy


July 18, 2008


July 18, 2009


July 18, 2010


July 18, 2011

 

July 18, 2012

July 18, 2013


July 18, 2014

Art Station

Back in May when the kids and I went to the Iowa City Children's Museum, I got the idea to have an art station in our unfinished basement at our new house. The museum had a room that was full of little bins containing all sorts of stuff to use to "make" anything you wanted. Max could have stayed in that place for hours. He and Mya love to create/invent things and I figured it was a really cheap way to provide hours of entertainment. So I took note of what they had, used some stuff I already had, ordered a few things off of oriental trading and we were set! I had been keeping some wipes containers because I knew at some point they would come in handy because of their size/stackability and because the kids could open them easily. Also during the moving process I found lots of little containers when I was going through my teaching supplies so those came in handy as well.



Here's what I have in the individual bins: Feathers, jewels and googly eyes, foam letters, markers, crayons, colored pencils, pencils, pens, pencil sharpeners, tape, glue, scissors, stickers, play-doh, paint, paint supplies, paint brushes, dobber markers, scrap fabric, foam animal stickers, clothes pins, rubber bands, popsicle sticks, and a bigger bin full of tp rolls and paper towel rolls, yarn, old leftover invites and thank you notes from past birthday parties, and index cards. I might be missing some, but that's it for the most part. There have been times when I've questioned myself on this because of the mess it can create, but the hours of time I get because of this is worth the mess. I try to have the kids help clean up, but a lot of the times it's Ivy that completely destroys the place so I feel bad asking Max and Mya to do it all themselves. I'm guessing it will just get easier as she gets older. It also doesn't hurt that this whole thing takes place in an unfinished basement:) But note...there is no glitter in this station. That's one thing I refuse to clean up! Also, I had tooth picks at one point, but they quickly turned into a weapon and are now in my pantry:)

Olivia is 6!

Happy happy 6th birthday to the beautiful little girl who made me an Auntie for the first time! We love you Olivia and can't wait to see you in just a few weeks and celebrate!

Canada--1 month in

Today marks 1 month since the kids and I arrived in Edmonton. In some ways it feels like we've been here way longer and in other ways it has flown by! Here's a quick post about things I've noticed/things that are different, etc. since I've been here....

I'm starting to get used to the metric system and using celsius instead of fahrenheit. I basically know that 20 is roughly 70 and I go from there. The weather here has been nice, but not very hot. I think there has been one day that we could have gone swimming since we've been here. We have no air conditioning in our house and none of our neighbors do either. Apparently it will be something we want for about 3 weeks a year so it's not worth the cost. This week it is supposed to get hot so we may be sleeping in the basement! As far as grocery shopping with the metric system....it has been pretty easy. Most of the produce has price per kg and also price per pound. Meat is the only thing that doesn't, but I can generally tell how much meat there is with some simple calculations. The only time I was caught off guard was when I was getting my license and they wanted my height in cm and my weight in kg. I had to use a converter on my phone for that! The highways are all pretty much 100 kilometers per hour which is about 60 and around town it's about 60 kilometers per hour which is about 35. I have adjusted my eyes to look on the inside ring of my speedometer instead of the outside where they normally look for mph.

(this week's forecast is gorgeous! notice it has the temps converted underneath so I can always cheat if I need to!)


The whole money thing is proving to be a little bit more of a pain than I was hoping. Chris is still being paid in the US so we have to get money to our Canadian account and we have to try to do that as cheap as possible. A previous ex-pat who was here with John Deere a few years ago was here a couple weeks ago visiting. He told us that he used to take his US Bank card, withdraw a bunch of cash from the ATM, Then turn around and deposit it into his Canadaian bank account at the same machine! Seems like there should be a better way, but we're not sure! We had a babysitter last week for a few hours. She was traveling to states with her family for a few weeks once school got out, so she asked if we had any US Dollars to pay her with so she didn't have to convert as much money! For a night away without the kids, we were willing to do just about anything, so paying her in American money was perfect! I have run into a few problems with paying for things online because my credit cards are going to a US Address and when they asked for the postal code for billing, they wanted a Canadian address. I suspect we will figure this stuff out the more we're here.

Growing up, we called dinner "supper". I think it's a small town, rural Iowa thing because when I met Chris, he called it dinner and I made the switch. Now, we're back to calling it supper here in Canada! I asked my neighbors about it and they basically said dinner is a nice lunch, but they knew what we were talking about. According to some neighbors, the garbage business in Edmonton is one of the best in the world. Thankfully for us, we can put out as much garbage and recycling as we want each week. Garbage goes in black bags and recycling in blue bags. Pop/Beer cans and bottles have a $.05 deposit which is normal for us, but what's very different is water bottles have a deposit. A 24 pack of the regular Nestle water bottles that we have at home cost $4.97 here. Then, they add on $2.40 for deposit! $.10 per bottle...we will be returning those out of principle!

We have Canadian nextflix here so they don't have the same shows as we do with American Netflix. We were in the middle of Revenge and they don't have that here. We're going to try to trick our TV into thinking we're in America somehow, but we haven't had time. I guess people do it all the time. For those of you that I text regularly, I'm done correcting the autocorrect. If you see that a word is spelled wrong, it's probably because that's the way they spell it here! I have been going back and changing it, but I'm going to just let it go because it's a bit of a pain to do that all the time:)
(a text conversation between Tara and me. She has only been a mom for less than a week and she already knows the importance of baby poop:)


Grocery shopping has gone pretty well. Most of the stuff I can buy the same as I buy it at home. There are a few things we can't get. Jif peanut butter is not here, so we had to switch to Skippy. Also, I can't get orange juice that has calcium and vitamin D AND is pulp free. I can get pulp free, but that doesn't have the added calcium that I like to buy for Ivy. They don't have the brand juicy juice so Mya is really missing her strawberry banana juice! Some other differences besides the prices...ritz crackers come in one bag instead of the 4 individual packs. And of course since Canada has two official languages, everything is labeled in English as well as French. We bought the kids Monopoly Junior the other day and even the properties, the Chance cards, etc. were labeled with both. Also, we're not mountain dew drinkers, but here the only mountain dew you can buy is caffeine free!

The Canadian post (mail service) has been sketchy on how fast we get things. One letter we got in 6 business days and another we got in 11! My mom sent a package to us and it got here in 10 days. She can ship things to my sister in Japan faster than that! (btw...jif peanut butter was in the package:) It costs $.83 per stamp to mail within Canada so I suspect when I get home in a few yers I won't mind paying $.49/stamp or whatever it is by then.

I'm sure there's plenty more I'm forgetting right now! I will try to keep track and do a regular post on how things are different here. Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the summer!

June one photo a day

Day 152: While we were up in Decorah for the weekend, I played a little tennis at Luther and got a chance to see the bench donated by alumni womens tennis in honor of my friend and teammate who passed away a couple of year ago, Ali Hill.
Day 153: Well child checks for Max and Mya before we left for Canada!
Day 154: One of the best kids around...definitely missing this little mama's helper Maggie!
Day 155: This black truck arrived in Edmonton on this day! Chris and his dad were here to help unload and get the process started!


Day 156: Last day of school for M&M and last day in Dubuque...very bittersweet. Lots of tears this day!
Day 157: A very welcomed sign hanging on our back fence after a long day of traveling from the neighbor kids!
Day 158: The kiddos thought dad needed a break from unpacking boxes. They hadn't wrestled in months!
Day 159: A collage of pics from the park! They have awesome parks here in Edmonton.


Day 160: Chloe got a new bed! We don't have much carpet on the main level so I thought she needed a bed. She still chooses to sleep under the table though!
Day 161: A rainy, cold day in Edmonton so these two were having lots of fun inside dressing up and playing babies.
Day 162: A John Deere tour for Grandma Pat..steel toed boots and all:)
Day 163: Didn't take the kids long to figure out what everyone does around here. Street hockey in the summer, ice hockey in the winter!


Day 164: Spent the afternoon at Galaxyland in the big mall. The kids loved it and we promised they could go back for Mya's birthday.
Day 165: Said good-bye to my mom this day. Good thing we're wearing sunglasses in this pic!
Day 166: Happy Father's Day to one of the best around!
Day 167: A bored little boy made his Christmas list today. It's a bit long for being the middle of June:)



Day 168: I'm a Jif girl, but they don't have it here. So I'm being forced to switch to Skippy. Don't worry...I e-mailed Jif and told them I was disappointed:)
Day 169: Enjoying a bowl of ice cream outside while Ivy sleeps!
Day 170: Our 10th anniversary dinner! We've had a busy 10 years...5 houses, 8 jobs for Chris, a dog, 3 kids, two states, and two countries. Phew! Ready for the next 10 to slow down a bit:)
Day 171: Enjoyed a bottle of the Prisoner from our neighbors who gave it to us 6 months ago! We were saving it for just the right day:)


Day 172: Some sprinkler fun in the backyard!
Day 173: We went to a spray park this day and Ivy loved it! It was a little chilly, but I think the other two will have lots of fun at this type of thing this summer.
Day 174: When Ivy is quiet, I know something bad is about to happen. This time she came out of the bathroom with some barbie lipgloss all over her face and stick on earrings inside her ears.
Day 175: Chloe is back to sitting shot gun for all of our errand running. I held off for awhile, but eventually caved.


Day 176: A fun bubble bath for these two! They love the jets...and so do I:)
Day 177: Ice cream truck, Canada style. Same song as in Dubuque so the kids knew exactly what was happening!
Day 178: It appears that this boy doesn't have any confidence issues.
Day 179: We decided to get the kids a trampoline instead of a swing set. They've had so much fun jumping!


Day 180: Didn't take many pictures this day, but found some of these Ivy selfies on my phone!
Day 181: Ivy sitting on the toilet talking to Grandma Pat about when little baby Quinn was going to be here!

July 1st

July 1st will now be one of my favorite days of the year! Not only is it Canada's birthday (which means a day off and lots of celebrations going on) but I now have a niece whose birthday is July 1st!! Quinn Rosen Brown was born at the Naval Hospital on Camp Foster in Okinawa, Japan today. We are so happy she is here and we can't wait to meet this cute little girl! Ivy calls her "twin" and Mya can't wait to take care of her like her aunt Tara promised. Max saw her on facetime and said "I'm so glad I have another cousin!" Pretty much couldn't have said it better myself. Her entrance wasn't exactly a smooth one, but I'll leave that story for my sister's blog! I will just say that little Quinn is one loved little girl! There were people saying a few extra prayers all over the world the last 24 hours:) Below are a couple of screen shots I took today while we were FaceTiming with them.



And to celebrate Canada Day, I dressed the kids in their best Old Navy Canada gear and we headed to the zoo! There were fireworks tonight, but they start at 11pm because of the sun, so we decided to pass on that! Tomorrow is a work day and I have a feeling some people will be dragging! The zoo was fun, but at the end of it, we decided we are still a good year to year and a half away from Disney World with Ivy for multiple reasons! She didn't like the animal characters and she was not interested in being in the stroller or doing basically anything we asked her to do! On a positive note, she did use the "washroom" and stayed dry the entire time. Today was not only Quinn's birthday and Canada's birthday, but it was also Lucy, the elephant at the zoo's birthday too! She turned 39 and they had her out roaming around a bit. She's a well trained elephant so they let her be in the grass without a fence and we took a couple pictures. Ivy was not a fan of being that close so those pictures are just of Mya and Max. The other picture is a collage of the day and one of Ivy's favorite spots..the prairie dogs. This one prairie dog just sat up and looked at Ivy for the longest time!