'Biever' Fever...

Someone in my house has the Bieber Fever, and no, it's not Mason. Last year, when we were looking for birthday supplies, when she came across Justin Bieber plates/cups/napkins/invitations etc. and asked me "When will I be old enough to have a Justin Biever party?"
[Keep in mind, that she calls him Justin Biever, not Bieber... Refuses to add the 'b']
To which I thought for a nano-second, and replied with "Well, probably on your 13th birthday you'll be old enough to have a Justin Bieber party" [smooth aren't I?] She accepted the answer without argument.

I can honestly say, I'm just not 100% sure where this fascination about him came from. She's watched Treehouse until just recently [another big score for Mum] But she talks about him, and she indeed likes him. In September I broke down and bought her this t-shirt:

Yes. It's her very favourite, the only t-shirt she actually requests on a regular basis. [I refused to buy a t-shirt with his name and face all over it, which she had seen and BEGGED me to buy] I know, mean Mum, but come on, she's 6 years old. So when I saw the one above, I gave in.

I rented the Never Say Never movie in November/December, and she watched it over and over and over and over... In fact, she liked it so much I bought her a copy of it for Christmas.

This year, Barry took the kids to Chapters one night, and let the kids pick out books to give each other for Christmas. Mason picked out this book:

It came with a 3-D poster, which is on the back of her bedroom door. Again, her mean-old Mum wouldn't let her put it up on her wall.

She also drew a picture and used some stickers to put on the front of her door.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked Mad up from a birthday party, and we just quickly ducked into Shoppers Drug Mart. As we entered the store, we saw the Beebs, in life size... Madelyn was absolutely smitten. She asked if I would take a picture of her with Justin. [Truly, it didn't matter that he was made out of cardboard, she got a picture with Justin Beiver...]

Now, coming back to this past weekend. Barry and I were tucking the kids into bed, and he picked up her Justin Bieber book, and as he did so, a little note slipped out...

She was terribly embarrassed and didn't want us to see, until Barry told her she did a great job on her letter, and we could actually send the note to Justin. Then she was all ears... So to get back to the point of this blog, we're still very into Justin Biever around here, and she has just sent a letter to his fan club address.

[She told us that "He's older than I am and I know it's un-appropriate for me to be his girlfriend"]

12 Instagrams on the 12th, March 2012

I'm a day late in posting this, because I KNEW I wanted to include a couple of pictures from last nights Bachelor finale... [which was absolute crap] However, we had a girls get together, and as always, the company was excellent, and the munchies were great. And like Nicole pointed out, Stephanie didn't shush us once, so obviously we weren't totally gaga over dorky Ben, and his evil counter part, Cruella Deville oops, I mean Courtney...

I was up late last night, and then had to be at the school first thing this morning to volunteer in grade one. So here it is...

It's March

So far the month has come in like a lamb, no a lion, no a lamb, no a lion... Actually, to be honest, I don't know what it's doing. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. We got a bit of snow the night before, and by noon it was 10°. The kids went outside with Barry and made a snowman. You know when the snow is at that perfect consistency, and you can so easily mash it together? There were some snowball fights too [much to my displeasure] but thankfully there were no tears.

This morning, we woke up to this...

To be honest, it doesn't seem like that much snow, but the city has advised that there is a snowfall warning in effect for Calgary... Good grief, say it isn't so... All the more reason to stay home. Do laundry. Dust and vacuum. Get caught up on emails. Update my blog, yadda, yadda, yadda.

This week I'm beginning Week 10 of Project Life. Can you believe it? Week 10! And I'm still loving it! It's totally not what I expected. I thought it would be really tough to keep up, and be extremely labour intensive. [Which don't get me wrong, there's a lot of time put into it] I'm just enjoying it so much. I try to kind of 'keep up' by doing a little bit every couple of days. I didn't order the official book, which comes with all the awesome page protector pockets. I've just been making little 4x6 layouts, and they slide right in the protectors I have. Usually on Sunday I get everything ready and put together, try to finalize things. Then I send the pictures off to Costco before I go to bed. Right now I have week 8 and 9 pictures at Costco, ready to be picked up! There is nothing like getting those new pictures to put in the album, I love it!

I wanted to include lots of pictures about our first trip to the mountains to ski as a family, so I added a trader card insert, and cut the pictures down. I even included the lift ticket and the map of the hill.

Martha Stewart has a new line of home office items available at Staples. I picked up one package of these 5.5 x 8.5 sheet protectors. In this I added specific things about how we celebrated Valentine's day.

I wanted to include the Valentine's Cards the kids got, so I added another trading card protector and just a 8.5x11 sheet protector.

I can't wait to add the next couple of weeks. It's shocking to me, that so much time has gone by... I'm now working on Week 10! Eeks. I love to look back and check out our every day.

Jimmy Kimmel and Oprah

This interview is Hil. Ar. Ious.
Watch it. Now. Go...

Extra Long Weekend

We had a fantastic long weekend. The kids were off on Thursday and Friday last week, due to teacher's convention, then Monday was Family Day.

We did a bunch of things. We met up with some Wick's on Thursday and we went to the pool. [Mason loves to be in the pool, when he's not required to swim lengths, practice his kicks and do proper dives into the water] He was thrilled to be there. No pictures however, because water and cameras just do not go hand in hand...

Friday we went up to Nakiska, this time for a full day of skiing. The day was incredible. I can't believe we were this lucky again. I hope the kids don't get lulled into thinking that's what skiing is like, because it's not... Miss Madelyn is our speed demon, Barry and I have to take turns skiing with her, and it's all I can do to keep up... Once she gets off the lift, she's heading down the hill. End of story. She doesn't see the need to stop once and awhile... Mason is our cautious one. And by cautious, I mean slow... By the end of the day however, he was somewhat less cautious and he even tucked it in a few places...

[we actually needed to buy sunscreen!]

We got 9 runs in. I thought that was pretty darn good with little kids and a lunch break. [and the pee breaks, etc, etc.]

Then, we got home from skiing and this happened...

She insisted all day, that her tooth was ready to come out. We told her it wasn't. She was right. I just hate that she's loosing the two top front teeth... My baby is losing her baby teeth...

On Saturday night, Ama & Baba took the kids for a sleep-over. It was a nice treat to have the house quiet. Kids = ruckus... My sweetie and I got out for a bite to eat, before his night out with the fellas. I stayed home and scrapbooked until the wee hours.


Sunday night we had family movie night and watched Megamind. It's cute. Of course Madelyn hides on the stairs for most of our movie nights, insisting she doesn't want to sit with us, only to recite lines and quotes from the movie all day long the next day. Even the draw of popcorn with dill pickle topping didn't lure her like it usually does. She did come eventually, and is always so glad she finally does. We're talking about having a Wizard of Oz movie night... I don't know if she'll make it through the flying monkey's or not... [Let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree... There's a reason I'm so cautious as to what these kids watch]

Family Day we went skating. In past years we've gone to Bowness Park to skate on Family Day, but I doubt the ice is very good there this year. It's been so mild, so we went to an indoor rink.

We took a few pictures, which everyone is embracing and being a really good sport about. [When I took the shadow picture of us on the ski hill, I could audibly hear Mason sighing... Trust me buddy, one day you'll be glad I'm so crazy with my camera!]

With her hockey helmet on, the missing tooth looked a little less out of place.

And then, to top the day off, we finished with ice cream snacks at DQ. I had suggested going to McDonald's for a milkshake, because you know when you just feel like a milkshake? But everyone else wanted DQ. I was the odd man out, so I just went along with it. But I made a major mistake. I ordered a mini blizzard, but not my usual Cookie Dough Blizzard. No, I thought the Reece's PB Cup Blizzard looked good... It was a mistake. In the future, so as not to be disappointed, just go with what you know and like...

Now the kids are back to school, the house is quiet, and I'm trying to get things tidied up around here. We don't get a big break again until spring break at the end of March... Oh how I love my 8:30 morning get ups...

Finally...

I finally finished up my December Daily album... Boy oh boy it took a while to wrap it up. I have to blame it taking so long on project life. Can you believe today starts week 8? And I'm completely up to date. In fact, I just got notification from Costco that my week 7 pictures are 'ready for pick up'.

Now this lovely little book, can be browsed through by the kids, and then I'll put it away until next Christmas, where I'll be so glad I followed through with this and did it.

Now if I can just figure out how to make this labour intensive project even easier??? I'll have to give that some serious consideration...

I included a few pictures, if you want to check it out in it's entirety, you'll have to come over and check it out!

Happy Valentine's Day

Today the kids had pizza lunch at school. I'll admit, I find pizza lunch a little bit stressful, when I'm volunteering... Let's face it, there is always a mix up. Always a kid who ordered a pepperoni, only to find you have nothing but vegetarian left... Or, 'I ordered a chocolate milk, not white milk' and all the chocolate milks are gone... Eeks.

It didn't help that I was handing out pizza to the grade four's, some of them stand in front of me and look me in the eye... Like how'd that happen? When did those kids from kindergarten get so tall and lanky? But they were also so willing to please, which warmed my heart. Mason came up and hugged me in front of a class room of his peers. At first there were 'Is that Mason's Mum?' then later, 'Are you Mason's Mum?' as they approached me to pick up pizza. I had kids who wanted to be helpers [thank heaven's they've had more experience with this than I have] and another Mum who finally came to my rescue, when we were short 7 pepperoni pizzas... In the end, it all worked out. Everyone got what they ordered, and the kids I didn't know before, now know which person in their class I belong to. I do love to be at the school, and I like to know who my kids hang out with.

I didn't go crazy this year with treats, my kids have way too many sweets. I made these sweet little matchbox treats I'd found, where else, on Pinterest... They got that and a card, that's it!

Miss Madelyn came home from school on cloud 9. She wanted to 'give people stuff'. She collected a few things, and had us all sit in the living room. There, she handed treats out [she collected stuff around the house]

She opened all her Valentine's from school and the package Ama and Baba had sent home on Sunday night. She told me, 'those people really love me' [talking about Ama & Baba] I guess because I decorated a matchbox and put 8 smarties in in, I wasn't included in that blanket statement... It's okay, I have broad shoulders.

Mason's class, being grade four and all, didn't 'exchange' valentines this year. They made hearts during class time, and everyone in all the grade 4 classes signed it. [We did however make Valentines, he handed them out at recess]

Madelyn had been to Safeway with Barry, she bought Mason a bag of Werther's Original hard candies. She then put a Heineken in a bag for Barry. She's nothing if not thoughtful...

We then went for supper to Boston Pizza, for our traditional heart shaped pizza.

I had a bit of a hissy-fit, and so instead of having just one pizza, we ordered a pepperoni for the kids:

And Barry and I enjoyed a Great White North, with ham and cheddar cheese... Mmmmm.

We came home and enjoyed strawberries dipped in chocolate for dessert, and Barry and I enjoyed a glass of wine with our dessert. It was terrific.


This was the cards I created for the kids, both of them were pleased with the outcome, as was I!

Another successful Valentine's under our belt.