Spring...

...it's almost here

This is what spring looks like around here.

But at least it's warm enough to do this!

March

 Jayna helping with the dishes. Gibb's so great to do the dishes after dinner and Jayna's been "helping" him do this since she was just 1 in Cleveland. 

Kepler trying plain yogurt for the first time. I think it was a little too sour for his taste.

Kepler loving the bouncer, this is the greatest thing for babies at this age!

Now that Jayna's potty trained pants are optional. Her panty bum is pretty cute!

More cute panty bum and wearing my shoes around the house.

Circus, Circus

We went to the Shrine Circus with our friends the Olsen's on the week-end. Let's just say it's a good thing we had some good company, it ended up being an interesting day.

The circus started at 1 pm (nap time anyone?) and then it started a little late (it's a good thing Jayna slept in the car on the way over). The first thing they did was turn off all the lights and everyone was waving around these lights.
And Jayna's reaction to that was this:

Then about 10 or 15 minutes after the lights went out I dropped my wedding ring under the seats in front of us. Gibb searched down there using the phone light forever, but couldn't find anything. I felt sick about it for the whole first half. Luckily as soon as they turned the lights on for intermission the people in front of us found it almost right away. This kind of ruined the whole first part for me, it was all I could think about.

Elysse & Jayna
The girls were being soooo good considering it wasn't even intermission until 3pm and this wasn't the most exciting circus ever. The Olsen's left at intermission, but we decided to stick it out since Jayna wanted to see the elephant.

Kepler & Chanelle
As you can see it was a good day for Kepler, he fell in love with little Chanelle, can you blame him, she's so adorable!

This was the big elephant act we waited for!

Well, at least Jayna liked it. Besides telling us repeatedly that she was scared of all the people with the lights, and watching baby Chanelle sleep more than she watched any of the acts, she actually had a good time. She loved the clowns and the acrobats. Yesterday I told her she was being silly and she said "Yeah, I'm a clown, I need green hair!"
Luckily Jayna fell asleep again on the way home because after this we headed straight over to our niece Jordyn's birthday party.

nine months

Kepler is 18 lbs. and 27 inches

This month he mastered feeding himself finger foods and screaming or yelling if I don't feed him fast enough. He's also figured out that he gets more one-on-one time with me if he will only nurse when there is no one else in the room, he gets so distracted otherwise. He gets around by scooting on his tummy or doing some kind of army crawl. He hasn't mastered crawling yet, which is fine by me! He's starting to seem a little bit older.

Green Party

On St. Patrick's Day, my friend Sue had a little St. Patrick's Day party. Jayna was so excited for the "green party" and to go to Teya's house, who she loves! Sue had planned so many fun activities, but Jayna and Zach were so into all Teya's cool toys we could barely get them to do anything else.

Eating yummy rainbow jello!

The highlight of the party for Jayna was this game where we went upstairs and each of the kids got to pick up a whole bunch of green shamrocks and put them in their bag. Jayna was in heaven, she was running around so fast trying to get as many as she could.

Jayna and Zach, I sersiously need to teach Jayna how to pose like him, he just smiles on command for pictures!

Teya, Zach, Jayna
(poor Teya fell and got a fat lip at the beginning of the party)

Poor Kepler missed out on all the fun, he just stayed home and napped, maybe next year buddy!

cold hands...not so warm heart

I haven't posted in forever! I think this is partly due to having a very severe case of the winter blues. You would think that I would blog more when we stay inside for days at a time, but I have lost almost all my motivation, and I'm pretty sure the only thing that will bring it back is spring (March 20th does not count, I want true spring weather with no snow). I can feel myself becoming grumpier and grumpier by the day (if you don't believe me, just ask Gibb).

One thing that definitely helped was taking a little week-end trip to Vancouver (blog post to come eventually). I knew I wasn't the only one craving warm weather when we got out of the car at our friend's house and Jayna ran to their lawn and yelled "GRASS!" It has been a few months since we've seen any here, and we drove to the airport in a blizzard and came to home to this:

insanely freezing temperatures (-30C without windchill) and tons of snow. If we get any more snow and/or any more -20C or below days here I'm pretty sure there will be some serious tears at our house.

So in my attempt to spread some Springtime Cheer I am giving a Formal Farewell to Winter (I don't care if I'm just jinxing myself or getting my hopes up).

Phrases Jayna has learned since we've moved to Edmonton that I hope to not hear again for the next 6 months:

• "Brrrr, it's freezing/I'm frozen" (said with teeth chattering)
• "Daddy warming up the car?" (while looking out the window)
  
• "I need my mittens" (in a tearful voice)
• "Is it snowing?" (also while looking out the window)
• "I want a blanket" (while in the car, already wearing a winter coat, hat, mitts and trying to steal the blanket from Kepler's car seat)

Other things Jayna has learned that are necessary for survival when you live this close to the North Pole is putting on her own mittens and boots, although they are on the wrong hands/feet 90% of the time.

Here she is drinking a smoothie with her mitts on because her hands were too cold to hold the cup.

Okay, silver lining so that this long post isn't a total downer...

1. Kepler looks so adorably cute in his toque!!

2. Jayna doesn't look too bad either!

Striking a mountain climber pose at the top of her slide (which is the equivalent of climbing a mountain for her)

3. Gibb is a cool Dad who does fun stuff with the kids in the snow!

Vancouver!

Gibb had a dental conference in Vancouver in the beginning of March, and we all wanted to go with him to escape this cold city for a while. (Actually what would have been great would be to go without kids, stay in a hotel and actually attend the conference with him, but I'm sure that won't happen for a long time). But that's okay, because instead me and the kids went and stayed with one of my old roomies Emily and her family. We didn't really do much, but it was so fun! We went to the park, played Rock Band, went to a girly movie, and it was so fun to actually get to see her adorable boys! Of course, I barely took any pictures, but we did remember to snap a couple of the kids right before we were leaving.

I don't know which one is better, or worse, but these were the best 2 shots I got. Emily got a couple cute ones too.

Thanks so much Leavitt's for having us, we had a blast! Can we make this a yearly tradition?