Funny Gavin story #1

We don't have cable, and the one channel we get (CBC) is extremely fuzzy even with the antenna, so Gavin has never watched TV at our house. He does, however, get to rent a movie from time to time, and the last couple of movies he's chosen have been Dora the Explorer or Diego movies. If you aren't up-to-date with the latest preschool shows, Dora goes on little adventures every episode where she has to find something or help someone and during the show they always use a few Spanish words.

Over the last week or two, and particularly while we were in Florida, Gavin would be telling us a story and say something like "and the boy was very ixpay - do you know what ixpay means?" and of course proceed to tell us exactly what it meant. The first few times we kept trying to figure out what word he was trying to say, but eventually came to the conclusion he was just making things up. Which seemed very strange...until we realized that he was just copying the Dora shows! When they use the Spanish words for things, to him it must seem like they're just making up random words for things!

Now that we understand where it's coming from, it's pretty funny! Today he explained to me that 'limpit' meant when something was very messy and dirty. "So," he says, "my room is very messy and limpit today." :) (Which is true, by the way.)

Anybody have any good ideas on how to explain the concept of languages to a four year-old???

We're back!

We are back from Florida and we had a great vacation - I didn't even find the heat that bad! ;) Now I'm having WAY too much fun playing with all the many pictures I took while down there...help, I think I'm addicted to photo editing!

Here's my most recent edit:

Before ...

And after...

Oh, and guess who's starting Junior Kindergarten next week??? That will be funny to those of you who knew I was pretty set on NOT sending him! Long story, I'll post it later perhaps. :) But yes, we went in to see his teacher and classroom today and his first day is next Friday (the 8th). We'll have a full report of how it goes!

On the road again...

We are leaving tomorrow for a trip to Florida to see Greg's mom and sister and family. Well, actually Greg and Gavin are leaving tomorrow, and Abby and I are leaving on Friday (darned Airmiles!). We'll be gone until the 28th, and I don't suspect I'll have a chance to post here while we're gone, but don't despair, we will be back! :)

Back to my regularly scheduled packing...

Abby's one year stats

I forgot to post a week or so ago after Abby had her one year shots... she weighed in at 20lbs 15oz (with clothes & diaper) and 28 1/4". She is between the 25th and 50th percentiles for weight, and between the 10th and 25th percentiles for height - so she is a little peanut! No wonder people keep saying she looks too small to be walking!

Just for comparison, Gavin was about 24lbs and 31" at this age. Other interesting comparisons... Abby walked about a month and a half before Gavin (of course, since she was trying so hard to keep up with him!), and she seems to be getting her teeth sooner as well - Gavin was 15 1/2 months when he got his first molar, and Abby's first one looks like it will be through this week at just over 13 months. They seem to be about the same in terms of how much baby signing they're doing - Gavin knew close to 20 signs at 15 months, and Abby's got almost 10 I think already, so I'm sure she'll be close to that number in the next couple of months.

And, as someone pointed out yesterday, they're both so different, and yet both such goofballs! My kids are just SILLY!!

Thursday check-in

Not much exciting happening here...

Greg's at the Leadership Summit (a conference put on by Willow Creek church) in Grande Prairie for the next few days - people who have gone the last couple of years have been very impressed with it, so we'll see what Greg thinks of it...

I'm just hanging out with the kids while Greg's at the conference, and then I'm heading into work this afternoon for a few hours while the kids are napping...

Gavin's practicing his letters in his Explode the Code workbook and waiting for his turn on the computer... :)

Abby's napping right now and will get back to her systematic destruction of everything in the house once she wakes up. Just kidding, she's not really that bad! ;)

The RVs...

As promised, here is the picture of all the RVs camping at the Jamboree on the weekend. I'm a little disappointed it didn't turn out better, considering all the work I went to in order to take the picture (see below), but trust me that there were LOTS of trailers parked!

(Um, this picture makes it look way more precarious than it actually was...I was in the middle of getting down when Greg wanted to get a picture of me up there...that's not where I was standing to take the picture.)

More from the Jamboree

We had another great day out at the Jamboree yesterday! Here's a couple of videos from the crowd favorite, The Hunter Family. This is a farm family from Saskatchewan with five boys. All the boys help with the farming, and then they all play hockey in various places around North America during the winter (the oldest went to training camp with the Oilers last year before injuring his shoulder). But on weekends during the summer they travel around and do the singing thing. They just make me laugh because on one hand are these big manly guys who farm and play hockey, and then they get on stage and sing (which to some of their hockey buddies is probably not that manly in itself) and do all kinds of cheesy coreography/dancing along with their singing! Too funny.

(Oh, and in the first one there's no drums accompanying them, it's all their voices!)



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Video Hosting - Upload Video - Video Sharing

Jamboree weekend

It's the Peace Country Gospel Jamboree this weekend out at the museum grounds just about a mile west of Beaverlodge. We spent the majority of the day out there yesterday; both Greg and I volunteered for a few hours, and then we had supper out there with the kids. We quickly ran home and put them to bed with a babysitter (we did the same thing last year too - it's nice living so close!) and then Greg and I went back for the evening and got home around midnight.

I still need to get a picture of all the RVs that are on the grounds camping for the weekend - hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. It's a great weekend of fun!


Marty Stuart


The Hunter Family


Abby enjoying the music!

Our girly girl

Well, not really. Abby's favorite toy right now is Gavin's big Tonka dumptruck. She puts her big fluffy bear in it and pushes it around, pausing occasionally to hug the bear. She even makes the 'vrooom' noise as she's pushing sometimes!

Sunset on the prairie...

I went out last night to try to get some pictures of the sunset...it turned out to be a comedy of errors, starting with forgetting to get the release plate for the tripod off of the video camera, so I had a tripod but nothing to screw the camera on with (which pretty much makes the tripod almost useless). Later on I had a lovely episode of opening a Pepsi can (which clearly had been shaken by driving on the gravel roads) in the car and having it explode all over me. So there I was in the ditch on the side of the road taking pictures with a tripod to which my camera was not attached, with soaking wet slightly cola-colored jeans. Classy.

Hopefully next time will go better!

Birthday adventures

We spent Farrell's birthday yesterday out at Peace Valley Guest Ranch near Peace River with some good friends and some new friends! We had a great time even though we didn't get to do the boat ride part of the trip due to the river being too low with too many sandbars. Normally groups come to the ranch by boat, so without the boat we drove three or four miles down a narrow dirt path to get there. Not too much of a problem since we were in a truck...but then it poured rain while we were eating supper, which made the drive back up the hills very interesting! We weren't sure (and neither were our hosts!) if we would make it, but thankfully we did and we all arrived home safe and sound!