It is sometimes hard to know what date is more significant in my life - my birthday, my wedding anniversary, my children’s births…. each has a special meaning and significance but it seems that over time July 17th has become the most significant. July 17th, as it turns out, was the end and the beginning.

You know the term half glass full? - well that is what I am talking about. And actually, that whole way of thinking started about 6 months prior to July 17th when my husband Phil and I were told that our first child, Cale, had pulminary hypertension and that he would not survive. Unless you have experienced this as a parent you have no idea what this does to you . I remember sitting alone shortly after hearing this come from the doctors mouth and feeling like I have never felt before. The joy of a first child was about to be taken from us - they didn’t know how long - maybe today, tomorrow, next week or in 5 years. Through the tears and saddened feeling my heart was experiencing I made a decision that for however long, it was going to be the best it could be. It is hard to look at a situation like this with a glass half full mindset - but I knew that if I was to look back some day I would want to know that we did everything possible to insure our little guys life was the best it could be - for how ever long it would be.

13 years later I do look back and remember my son and his life, albeit many days in the hospital, as a great life. A life filled with laughter and smiles - stories and love. Cale taught us what life is really about - it is not how long you are here but what you do with the days you have here on earth. It is about focusing less on “things” and more on people - relationships and finding joy in the journey - no matter what that journey may be.

July 17th was the end and the beginning. It was the end of our son’s life here on earth but the beginning of the next part of our journey. I sometimes feel like I have had two lives - the one with Cale and the one after Cale. I take from my time with him so many lessons - and a new way of being. I have two healthy children now and because of Cale, I love them more - and, I believe, am a better person and mother for it.

As we remember Cale today we are filled with sadness but we are also filled with so much gratitude. Cale has made us appreciate life- he remains an important part of our family and continues to teach us lessons everyday.

Remember - life is a journey. Choose to find joy in it - no matter what challenges you face.

Helen

If you are a scrapbooker or a wanna-be scrapper pick a day of the week to call your scrapbook day. That is what I have done and it means I do something scrapbook related every Tuesday. In the school year I try to get out to a scrapbook night and at this time of year it might be organizing photos or creating a page. I love CPO’s smilebox because it is a fun way to scrapbook your photos and share them with friends and family. Today - my goal is to simply clean off my scrapbook table.

Now that school is done and we are all getting into the groove of summer I have to find a home for some of the special momentos the kids have from this past school year. I keep a file each year with hopes of scrapbooking everything - or at least some of the memories. Stacy Julian turned me on to School of Life Albums. Read her latest book, Photo Freedom, to find out more. You can also listen to a podcast with Stacy to learn more about her book and approach to scrapbooking) and a recent purchase of School Year Kits created by Becky Higgins (love Becky!) is making this goal a reality. I am in the organization stage of my journey as the kits haven’t arrived yet. I can’t wait to have the years of school in the albums so the kids can look back on what they have accomplished so far.

Here is a picture of my daughter at the end of last year. I take pictures like this every year - it captures who they are and in this picture, how many books they had in the school year. Grade one is a great year to do a photo like this because kids tend to have a lot of paper and booklets - and often “big” projects. The photo lets you rid yourself of the “BIG” projects eventually!

Ok, so it is Monday and home day. My “home day” is all about getting the house back in order after the weekend - cleaning, organizing etc.. Right now my biggest challenge is my storage area - too much stuff! We are planning a yard sale in the next couple of weeks with hopes of getting rid of some of the stuff that is taking up valuable space.

If home organization is a challenge for you why not join the CPO clutter club. I have found so many great ideas in this club - the daily bootcamp that gets you going is the best. Summer is a great time to join a club like this because you can get the kids involved - more hands make for quick work. Here’s a link to the club if you want to check it out CLUTTER CLUB .

Hi everyone - when I started this blog I thought, “how hard can it be to post a photo each day?” Well, hard! Life gets busy and time gets ahead of you. So, I thought I would break the blog up into the same segments my week is broken up into - Monday is home day, Tuesday: Scrapbooking, Wednesday: Projects & Errands, Thursday: Meal Planning and Friday: Family Day. With that in mind I will have a focus for each day in terms of finding a photo and hopefully you will all enjoy the various themes for each day - so here goes…

It’s Friday and Family Day at the Williams house. You’ll find a video in CPOtv (CLICK HERE) to help you pull this project together but for now I thought I would share the basics and something we do each summer to make for a fun few months. Mid June we all sit down for a brainstorming session to come up with a list of things we would like to do over the summer. Our list is longer than the summer so we don’t do everything, but we come up with lots of ideas to choose from. Because I scrapbook, I pull out my scrapbook supplies and we end up with a sheet of ideas that can easily be moved from our idea sheet to our calendar. The kids love to see things move over, either before or after we have completed an activity.

To help us know what is doable we break the tasks into big - like a theme park (but not Disney!), day trips, and around the house/town. This makes it easy to pull an idea to fit the time we have available. I used different coloured paper this year but you could easily pick a different shape to help the kids identify what’s what.

We usually plan ahead and pull a few of the ideas off our sheet and stick them on the calendar but most are planned closer to when we do them as our summer tends to be a bit more relaxed and we do things as we have time and a desire to do them.

For today… Well, Emmy is off to work with her Daddy and Sam and I are home alone. Sam has been wanting to do the “fondue” we have on our list so I think we will surprise Emmy and Phil by getting it all setup before they come home. We do broth fondues and I cook the meat ahead of time because my kids are young and I don’t want them to handle raw meat. We usually have some veggies along with chicken and shrimp. We finish things off with a chocolate fondue! Yummy with fresh berries! CPO’s Tracy recently had a fondue on her patio - so I think I will plan to have ours outside tonight. We have never had it outside on our deck so it will be something different and fun.

For those of you new to fondue - watch for a special in CPO Canada Cooks in the fall. You’ll learn all about fondue and we will share some recipes too!

Plan something with your family today - it doesn’t have to be BIG - just fun!

Helen

I know I am not alone in celebrating the end of school lunch prep! Funny how at the beginning of the year we are excited about new lunch boxes and we have so many ideas - but before long the job is just another to add to our long list of things to do each day.

I have been working on a CPO lunch special for back to school and as part of this special I have discovered the fun of preparing lunch Bento style. While the Bento comes from Japan, North American’s are adopting this style of meal preparation. My daughter Emmy and I put a Bento lunch together for the kids today and we had so much fun. I often put school lunch notes into their boxes to remind them that I am thinking of them - and the Bento is a new version of lunch note for me. I plan to send a Bento to the kids camps a few times this summer and may even try it out in the fall when they head back to class. Their school is among many who have adopted the Balanced Day and the Bento is perfect for this kind of eating. I can put together two small lunches and they can eat them at their two nutrition breaks.

If you have created a Bento box for your kids share what you packed it in and what kind of box you use. I can see how left-overs will be more fun when packed bento-style!

Happy Summer!

Helen

I love summer because I love vegetables and I really love eating my own vegetables. Of course, my not so green thumb has prevented me from really enjoying a big garden - that and a serious lack of sun on our backyard.

My dad had a garden every year when we were kids, and when we bought our home 10 years ago he came up every year to help us plant a garden. His plants, which he started in the winter, were always big and ready to be planted. Even with his help, I didn’t have a lot of success. Sadly, my dad has fallen ill and this is our second summer without a visit from him. My son really misses him coming to see us and asked if we could plan our own garden this year. I guess he hasn’t realized that the success of anything in our backyard has been my dad’s doing but I agreed anyway.

We have kept things simple, tomatoes, beans, herbs and some pickling cucumbers (Sam wants to make some pickles this year!) and we decided to go out on the limb and try a watermelon and a butternut squash plant - knowing that they might not give us what we want - but it would be fun trying anyway.

I am happy to report that so far…. everything is growing. Our tomato plants are doing the best of all of the plants but I think we may have a little garden to feel proud of this year!

I will have to jump over to the CPO gardening board (Bugs & Blooms) for some help in keeping things alive but welcome your feedback and tips as I am sure we will be in battle with bugs and weeds before long.

We are printing off some pictures of our garden to take home to show Dad. Sam is very proud of his efforts and I am sure my Dad will be proud that his little grandson will keep his annual tradition alive.

Helen

OK - if you take a close look at this stack of fitness videos you will recognize some from the 90s. There might even be one from the 80s… The fact is, since having kids I have had a hard time carving out time for myself - for anything at all including maintaining my fitness & health.

I decided, with my busy schedule, I would dust off the stack and get moving again.  I actually love aerobics - LOVE LOVE moving to music and I really love anything Kathy Smith - great instruction and modifications.  That said, I am eager to hear about some of you who might also be basement fitness junkies… what are you working out to?  I am on a search for workout DVDs that inspire us to get moving and fit.  I know that the trends have changed over the years, exercise tapes are not all the same these days.  Yoga, Pilates, Boxing, Ball workouts - and I am sure lots more.  If you have a favourite tape share it with me and I will put it on the list so we can help each other.

And while I am talking about getting fit…. I am wondering how many other moms are eager to get fit (lose weight in the process but focus on getting fit)?  I would like to start a FIT Mom Blog where a group of us share the blog - like a support group for each other and for those who are looking for support as well.  Post a comment to let me know if you are interested in joining a BLOG GROUP or if you would rather you can email me at  - helen@canadianparents.com.

Watch my blog this week for more on getting moving…

Helen

Despite being very busy, my husband does an amazing job at staying connected our two children. He juggles his schedule each year to help me host our annual pancake breakfast, he tries his best to be at all of our kids sports activities and recitals - he calls and writes emails when he is away on business.

Recently, he was away for an extended business trip. My daughter sent him smileboxes daily and he emailed them kisses and called as he always does. Then one night we put our heads together - his not so technical and mine a bit more technical and decided to download skype and use our built-in computer cameras so he could say hi LIVE!

What an amazing experience it was for the kids. They could talk to daddy, they could see his hotel room and he even showed them some of the treats he had picked up for them. That LIVE time was worth the time it took for us to get our two computers talking.

If you have a husband or wife on the road and don’t already take advantage of the technology the computer offers us - jump in. Skype is easy to use for both voice and video. So if you don’t have a camera you can still talk for free using your computer. Smilebox is another great way to communicate. The kids can send little messages via cards and slideshows - easy to download and fun to use. If you have a scanner, try scanning in a drawing from the day or a returned test from school.

It takes a bit of time but it is soooo worth it!

Smilebox:
http://smilebox.canadianparents.com/

Skype:
http://www.skype.com

Sorry for the long break. I had a week off and spent my time getting my house in order… that and planning my daughter’s 12th birthday party. Emmy was a new baby when I started working with CPO - where does the time go!

OK, so I am a HUGE fan of home birthday parties. Emmy didn’t want to have a big party this year because she wants us to do a bit of a redo of her bedroom - a bit older looking that what she has now. Of course, the mom in me couldn’t let the year go by without a party. So, we did a No gifts, No goodie bags, Just good old fashioned fun party. She had her best friends over for the afternoon and evening and we used her latest favourite movie as our theme… Hairspray!

Emmy loves to be creative, like her mom and her invite was an old album with the label put in the middle. The front was just a fun grab your attention heading. The back had all the details. Some of the girls had record players and played them!

I surprised her with a little hair station and I recreated the label for the hairspray too! The girls had a great time doing their hair. Emmy had fun playing the role of “Tracy” with her flipped up hair-do and too much hairspray!

The girls watched the movie and ate some sixties candies - we even had Pop Shoppe. You know it is a Canadian born pop and is making a bit of a come back! Remember Candy cigarettes and Jiffy Pop Popcorn! We even had Cracker Jacks and Dots!

Who knows what next year will bring. I have a feeling this may have been the last “birthday” party for my little girl. I am sure we will still have many celebrations but the whole party thing, sadly, kids out grow… until they turn 40!

I love BBQ season but time is not always on my side. My father use to visit us several times a year and in the summer he would always bring fresh pork chops from his butcher. As we create our family recipe book we are naming each of our recipes because they all hold a special spot in our hearts. So this one is “Grampa’s Chops” - easy, pretty quick and sooooo tasty!

This meal is a quick and easy dinner and one that the kids can help with. Here’s what you will need:

• Porkchops (or any meat or meat alternative)
• Carrots (Make lots because they taste extra good cooked this way) cut into pieces
• Potatoes cut into chunks

While your grill is heating up cut your carrots and potatoes into pieces, I make the potatoes large chunks and the carrots smaller chunks. Make foil packets for the carrots and potatoes adding a little olive oil or butter (spray if you are using a standard foil and not the nonstick) and salt and pepper. You will be turning the packages over so be sure they are sealed well to hold up to moving around.

When the grill is hot place the potatoes on the grill with the carrots ontop of the potatoes. This lets the potatoes get a head start of the carrots but the carrots start cooking a little too. Potatoes take about 20 minutes to cook so about 10 minutes into cooking I put the carrots down on the grill and turn the potatoes over.

Now is the time to put your meat on the grill, depending on how long it will take to cook. Our “grampa chops” take about 8 minutes per side so I put them on now. Another 5 minutes and turn both packages over. When the meat is done the veggies should be too.

We serve this meal family style with everything on one large platter.

Enjoy!