The weather reports have been wrong all week.  Tonight I am packing for a weekend of family camp.  I have the kids clothes finished but now looking at the weather for the weekend, it looks like rain the entire time.  Guess I better grab a few pairs of pants.  Oh and dh thinks this counts as celebrating our anniversary because we are staying in a cottage.  I don’t think so mister.  

All three kids have programs for them and they are all in separate age groups.  i’m really looking forward to not having to cook for the weekend.  All our meals are included in the $50 registration fee.  How sweet is that?

I think i better grab some games in case it does rain.  Bananagrams is a game we haven’t really gotten to play  but parker uses it with his homework words.  http://www.bananagrams-intl.com/index-us.asp

And I’ll take Whoonu  http://www.hasbro.com/default.cfm?page=browse&product_id=21404

Saint John is one of the foggiest cities you’ll find in eastern Canada.  We’ve had lots of fog and rain this summer and it was supposed to rain all week.  When we were greeted with sunshine this morning, Cara and I decided to meet up for a walk at the Irving Nature Park.    My older two were at the beach with a day camp put on by the city and at drama camp.   I was a bit early and I’ve been wanting to do a photo shoot of Lydia on the beach there.  I grabbed her dress on the way out the door as well as one for the little girl I was looking after for the day.

Make a Smilebox postcard

So for Lydia’s birthday, grammie gave her money to buy a new DVD player for the van.  We had one that was really cumbersome.  It had a vcr as well as a dvd payer and two monitors.  But you couldn’t use it without the VCR and you could either watch vhs on both monitors or vhs on one and dvd on the other but not both on dvd.  It really took up a lot of room and pluggiing it in was annoying.  Cords everywhere.

So I did some looking around and came home excited one day that I found one with a USB port.  Let me just say Future Shop is not known for their customer service and they couldn’t tell me if it played movies from a USB drive.  By the time we decided that was what we wanted, the less expensive one was gone but they offered us a deal on the one that was more money.  I thought I would try one more store first.  I saved us $80   I found what I was looking for for $100.  Woohoo.

Since all our movies are now on the computer, the USB port will be much handier.  I also picked up a 2 G drive for $10.

Lydia is thrilled to have her own “dbd’ player and she was so excited to spend her “million” dollars.  The guys at Wacky Wheatley’s were amazed that she had so much money in her Strawberry Shortcake purse and laughed when I told them she hid it in a book last night and slept with it.

Cuz it’s a girl’s night
It’s alright without you
I’m gonna stay out
And play out without you
You better hold tight
This girl’s night’s without you
Let’s go
G.N.O.
Let’s go
G.N.O
Let’s go
G.N.O.
Let’s go
It’s a girl’s night

Ok so we listen to too much Miley Cyrus around here.  We’ve been trying to have a girl’s night all summer.  Someone is always busy between soccer, camps, one kid having  surgery, husbands are busy with business dinners….

Tonight Cara and Joanne came over.  Cara picked up the mussels.  We thought we might have two others join us but weren’t sure since plans were just made today.  She bought 10lbs. 

So three of us ate about 9lbs.  Oink

Good thing Cara brought her big stock pot.  We filled both pots and this was all that was left.

Burp…

Thanks girls for a great gab session.  They might not be frequent but they are always good.

We had Lydia’s birthday party today.  Her birthday is tomorrow.  Aside from the weather not co-operating, the kids ahd a great time.  The original plan was to be outside with the sprinkler and water table.  We had a tea party and playdough instead.   Santa made a guest appearance.  Lydia sent him an invitation.  No one wanted to get too close though.  Yesterday Lydia started saying she wanted a million dollars.  Today she thought she had a million dollars.  Not quite.

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

 Growing up it was a family tradition that my parents made us a different cake every year for our birthdays.  My mom would bake and supply the tools and my father would cut, carve the cake and decorate.  This is one tradition that I carry on.  Other than MIL supplying Hannah’s first birthday cake, I have made all the kids cakes and a different one each time. 

 I just finished Lydia’s birthday cake and I loooove it.  It’s probably one of the simplest ones I’ve done but she really wanted a Strawberry Shortcake birthday.  I love that I was able to incorporate my Strawberry Shortcake figurines.  Two of the dolls on top are Hannah’s but the rest were mine.

I alos cleaned our bedroom, Lydia and Parker’s room, finished Mt Washmore, cleaned the bathroom and washed the living room, dining room and kitchen floors.  Today i am thankful for the fog which gave me a headache free day.

The weather this week has been really weird.  We started yesterday off with a thunderstorm and torrential downpour.  It dind’t clear the air but made it worse.  I had a massive headache all day.  then at 4 pm the fog strted creeping towards our house.  i have never been so happy to see the fog.  But it retreated.  What’s with that??  Last night was hot and humid and I had to bake a birthday cake.  This morning it’s still humid but the sky is dark.  Hopefully we’ll have some more storm activity and get rid of this system. 

I’ve got lots to do today.  I’m getting ready for Lydia’s third birthday party  on Sunday.  Next weekend we are going to a family camp and as I am doing the laundry, I’m pulling out what we’ll need to take.  then I won’t be hunting it down at the end of the week.  Our $50 registration fee covers all our meals for the weekend and we have a cottage for the weekend for $110.  Pretty good deal if you ask me.

Do you ever find it challenging to find music for the whole family to listen to?  We’ve just recently discovered the new Barenaked Ladies album, Snack Time.  It’s pretty funny and all of us like it.  There’s even a song about allergies.   http://www.bnlmusic.com/default2.asp

The kids are also Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus fans.  She’s easy to listen to and sing along with.  Even Lydia is singing Other Side, Other Side, Other Side of me.  We’ll be listening to Miley’s new album.  http://www.mileycyrus.com/official

More often than not, the youngest and loudest member of the family gets her pick of music.  She likes the La,la,la song.  It’s the first song on this album.  http://www.worshipmusic.com/wtd20371.html

Today is the first day of the summer where we do not have to be somewhere.  Kids are in their jammies watching a movie and I am in mine although I think I’ll get dressed shortly.  I’ve got a birthday party to organize and a cake to design as well as a meal plan to work on and grocery list.  Maybe I’ll get to decluttering.  First I’ll empty Lydia’s potty.  It’s at the other end of the house but I can smell it from here.  And then I’ll put the bran muffins out of her reach.

Today was Parker’s last day of literacy.  3 weeks of 1.5 hours a day and he has moved up two reading levels.  I’m so excited for him.  He has an appointment in August with a pediatric neurologist.  Last September he was assessed and diagnosed with dysgraphia   We take any extra help we can get.  We’ve purchased an XO laptop   for him. It’s a neat machine and he’ll be able to take it to school if we can figure out how to teach him to type. It is a definite learning curve for me though as it uses open source software and doesn’t run Windows. Just when we were getting it figured out, it crashed and it looks like it will reset itself one month after the crash date. Jeff will then fix the bug with a patch.
Anyway, I am thrilled with Parker’s reading progress but I am still concerned with his writing. He’s moving into grade three and I have a hard time understanding what he has written unless I am the one helping him with it. Aside from spelling, Hannah’s writing has always been clear and concise. Not that i understand her level of French. If anyone has any suggestions, I’ll take them. I’m going to look for voice to text software too. I hear Google is working on it.
Hopefully the neurologist will confirm my theory that Parker’s motor skills, speech issues and writing skills are all related. In my mind, he’s got all the connections there, they are just twisted and tangled and it takes longer to get there or he needs to find an alternate route. The motor skills have come along way this year and I am thrilled that he’s becoming a little dare devil.