The Weekend Update!

I think last weekend was the most popular weekend for going to the sugar shacks around here. You know how boxing day is the most popular day for shopping and Dec 23rd is the busiest day for flying. Well around here some weekend in March is time to sugar shack! Just check out Beth's blog, she went... :)

We went to Domaine L'ange Guardien just north west of Gatineau, and while the grounds are nothing to write home about (or photograph for that matter) the food and atmosphere is GREAT! It's an all you can eat breakfast with everything from french pea soup to pancakes to sugar pie (just in case you didn't get enough sugar with all the syrup and taffy, they have to throw in classic Quebec sugar pie!!).

On Saturday we had our own little sugar shack operation going on at our place. We (Eric) tapped about 6 trees and after two weeks we had enough to boil off. Saturday morning, Eric got up early, set up the fire and boiled for most of the day. His set-up isn't the most efficient, but it's sure is rustic and traditional, giving our homemade maple syrup a unique smoky flavour to it. Very good! Girls loved it, and spent most of the day outside!

Scrapped!!

I finally did a couple of pages!! Woo hoo!!! Back on the bandwagon... hopefully :) Got a lot of material anyway 7 months of photos for Madison...Yes, she is 7 months already. Boo hoo!

Pink and the will of a toddler!

I have 3 children and they are all girls. The oldest went through her Pink phase, and has kind of grown out of it (now it's the "flower" phase - anything with the greatest number of flowers on it the better). Now my 2 year old is well into her Pink phase, and dressing herself! It's beyond cute watching her choose her clothes, watching her dress and seeing how proud she is with the results at the end. Yesterday was no exception! Here she is in all her Pink glory!

Last post Jan 11th... ? WHAT?

I've been seriously neglecting this blog. Don't worry it isn't dead I am still here and it's often on my mind, but while I was swamped with life (loads and loads of laundry, one after the other and the other.....) and my other "job" (photography) I decided to just let this one "rest". I also felt like I didn't have much to say here. I have LOADS of photos to post, but it just felt all overwhelming to think of going through them and choosing ones! Sad. But the lack of something to write has been a pain. I think it has been the weather or something, but I've been super low on energy and creativity lately so I kept putting off updating my poor old blog! :)

So to sum up the past month or so, I'll start with Madison:

- She is now 6 months
- She weighs a whopping 19 lbs 6 oz
- She has two teeth on the bottom
- She is just starting to sit up
- She is the most even tempered child we have, and it's just wonderful!!!
- She has reddish hair and a very light complexion
- She is now bottle fed, I just didn't have enough milk for her and the blocked ducts were just getting me down!
- She likes to eat, but not a lot.
- She sucks two fingers (index and middle) and falls asleep on her own
- I think she is friggin' cute!! ♡ ♡ ♡
- and growing too fast!

Her sisters LOVE her!!

Gillian:
- she is now 2 1/2
- just like Abby, she is very agile, and athletic. We put skates on her and she was practically skating on her own after two tries!
- her smile lights up the room
- She isn't speaking as well as she should be for her age, so I'm going to look into speech therapy
- She LOVES to get dressed, and does it multiple times in the day so there are little socks all over the place because she changes them about 4 times a day!
- Is pretty much toilet trained during the day - haven't even tried at night!
- She still wakes up early - 5:00 am early, but is better at just lying quietly in our bed

walking down the tracks in Chelsea


My little Picasso!





The sulking princess


Gilly and her friend Paige


I wonder where she learned this???




At Winterlude 2010

And finally a little update on Abigail:

- she is now 4 1/2
- She will start school in September, and is pretty excited about it, especially taking a school bus
- She learned how to skate this year
- She loves to talk
- She loves her baby sister Madison, won't leave her alone really... !
- She whines - A LOT, but then when she chooses to be nice, she is beyond nice!
- She can make her bed neater than I can, I'm not sure how she does it... maybe she can teach me!
- She LOVES to wear dresses, the flowery the better!
- She loves to wear jewelery and have her nails painted

Her first "real" haircut!


Loves to paint!






Here she is saying what I say to them when I try to take a photo - it was priceless!


Gillian getting right into it!


Fell asleep watching the Olympics!


Can't get enough of Madison!

So that is my quick update, thing happen so fast and the girls change so much from day to day it's hard to keep track!! Hope to update more often, but we'll see - no promises. Bye for now!

Some shots from Christmas break...

I haven't posted much from Christmas, as I was very disappointed with my photos from Christmas day. And I'm ashamed, embarrassed, and devastated because I didn't even take a photo of Madison on Christmas day!! Her first Christmas, and I didn't even take a photo!! Clearly there was something wrong with me. Thankfully my parents and mother-in-law took some, but really what was wrong with me!! Anyway, here are some shot I did get over the holidays:

Christmas Eve skating on the pond


Christmas Eve Sliding!





A beautiful Gillian lying on the floor - I love this one!


Beautiful little Madison! It's her smile the cutest!



The Gingerbread house thief!

And then one from today I just had to post: Bender - the forgotten child! :)

Team Photo

So we didn't exactly "clean UP!" but if you give us a handicap of 15 then we would have still lost one game and tied another. But most importantly, we had fun. I think a few of the guys were a little frustrated to say the least, but they weren't sure how to play against 11 and 17 year olds. Do they go all out, or back off a little, thus allowing they to skate around them like pilons? I played all out, but really that meant I was playing like a bad 11 year old, so it didn't have too much impact!

Hope we get to play next year!

Happy New Year!

I woke up this morning with the determination that I was going to update my blog. Everyday I have so many ideas of what to write in the blog, but so little free time, that it never gets done! The kids and their amazing "mommy's on the computer" radar keeps me from writing. Then they go to bed, and I fall asleep. So needless to say, New Years was not excatly a rockin' late party here. We had our friend over for supper, they have young twins (5 months old) and a 2 1/2 year old so they also crashed early. But it was fun to get together, eat and have a few drinks regardless of what time we stayed up until.

On New Years Day Eric and I participated in the first annual Chelsea Pond Hockey Tournament. It was organized by a friend of ours and held at the pond just around the corner from our place. We had our first game and got thumped 15-6. Regardless of the score it was really fun and quite a unique experience to play on the pond. The organizers have build two full sized European sized rinks on the pond and today is a big day out there, games every 30 min from 9 am to 4 pm. We may as well wear our boots by the end of the day because with no flooding, the ice will be mush! I'll try and take some photos today between our games.

After we came home and warmed up, I decided it was time to introduce rice cereal to Madison. She has been so hungry lately and I'm barely able to keep up with nursing her, so at 4 1/2 months, I decided to try it. Abby, of course, wanted to help out so I had her feed her while I video taped and took photos. The only problem with that was Madison just wanted to eat her fingers so Abby was struggling with how to get the spoon in her mouth! It was quite funny. And not surprisingly she liked it and was happy to get some food in her!

Now working backwards from New Years... we had a wonderful week in between Christmas and now. The girls were home and we had fun hanging out together. They were a little sick, but nothing more than a cold developed, thankfully! On boxing day there was an ice storm here, and by some miracle our power didn't go off. It would would randomly turn off for a second then back on again, but nothing sustained, which is usually the case when that happens. The days following the storm were so incredibly beautiful. Everything had a thin layer of ice and when you stood outside in the quiet windless day, it sounded like tiny pieces of glass breaking all around you.

And for Christmas, I won't have much to post. It was a fun and tiring day, lots of gift opening, eating and family. I didn't take nearly enough photos and of what I did, they all really suck! I'm too distracted on Christmas morning to get my photo taking self together, it's funny! It happens every year and I look back on it kind of sad because I wish I had done a better job of capturing the day! It's just so overwhelming! Next year will be slightly easier since I won't be nursing anymore... but we'll see!

Anyway Off to bed - I started this at 7:00 am, it's 9:15 pm now, and my body needs rest after playing so much hockey in two days! Night!