The Cinderella Ball

us!!!
Originally uploaded by the four mckays.

Wow, what a night! It all went great, and it turned out to be a lot of fun! Lots of people showed up in costume and ready to dance, and I think the whole evening was every young girl's dream - there did seem to be a sea of pink and purple glitter and shiny fabrics on the dance floor! We did a combination of renaissance music after the performers showed us a few steps, and then we played some modern Cinderella music (for example, from the soundtrack to "A Cinderella Story"). My leg muscles are sore, which is always a good sign after a dance, and I think we made enough money to cover our costs, an added bonus!!!!! If you click on the photo, you can see more snapshots from the dance by clicking "previous" on the right hand side. Now I'm off to join Tiegan in a nap as I am E-XHAUSTED!

Kids Sing

Kids Sing,
originally uploaded by westofmain.

And now that I know how to blog with photos, I thought I would add this one of Kea during her very first concert ever with her new choir! They sang three songs, one the choir had written last year about Mozart, one called "Grandfather Clock" and then the classic "Over the Rainbow". Kea LOVES singing with this group, and claims to have not been nervous at all! Our baby is growing up!!!!!!

Tiegan's pumpkin!

Tiegan's pumpkin!,
originally uploaded by westofmain.

Hello! I'm actually just playing around with my new flickr account, to see how I can use it in my blog. So let's see if this works, and if so, hopefully I'll be able to use a lot more photos here!!!!!

Aggggggghhh!!!

So the Cinderella Ball is coming up this Thurs, and I'm very much at the "oh my god, what did I get myself into, this thing is going to totallly flop, noone is coming" stage......and very much looking forward to the "Wow, this is so much fun, I'm glad it worked out" phase that is surely to come!!!!!!!! Until then, I'm just going to put my head down, and keep going forward, and whatever happens I'm sure it'll be fun and magical for Kea and the other kids!!!!

And Jamie's sister Meg was nice enough to come to town this weekend (she has a conference Mon and Tue) in order to completely distract us from the stresses of our lives right now! It was meant to rain all weekend, and instead we enjoyed some great weather - today we even made it out to the pumpkin patch! Yaaaaay for procrastination!!!!!

life in the fast lane

Wow, life is full right now! Our house has been gutted, holes dug in the back yard, trades sought after and bids accepted, and the renovations are in full swing. So far (knock on wood!) no huge surprises, just a couple of mummified rats in the basement walls and some 1910 workshirts....oh and a few wasp and bird nests! Otherwise we've just found a bunch of 100 year old dust and lovely ufi that we've managed to get rid of! Now our plumber is hard at work replacing all of our plumbing, the electrician starts next week and then we start framing, ordering windows and insulating! It feels soooooooo good to be getting this all done, and it's going to feel even better to move back in!

Not that it has been unbearable to move out at all....our friends Lorne and Natasha were incredibly generous in offering their basement suite to us while our lives are in this chaotic flux, so we've been enjoying comfy beds to sleep in and delicious meals everyday, not to mention great company! It has also been MUCH easier for the girls to have a constant place to stay that is not nearly as chaotic as our house, and lots of toys to play with!

The Cinderella Ball is fast approaching, and I'm left wondering how it's all going to turn out! I'm sure it'll be a lot of fun no matter what, but with the house renovations consuming so much of my time I've definitely had to scale down many of my grandiose ideas! I did manage to book some peformers, who will come in costume to show some Renaissance dancing and teach the kids some steps, so that's pretty exciting! Many photos will come, I'm sure!

And Aunty Meg is in town for a few days, for work. So we spent the afternoon with her hanging out downtown and tomorrow we will head over to her hotel to get some swimming in! The kids are sooooooooooo excited to see her, even Tiegan jumped right into her arms. I wish they lived much closer so we could see them more often :-(

Oh, and Kea had her first concert this morning, with the inner-city choir Kids Sing. She says she was not nervous at all, and I was amazed to see her singing loud and clear - the kids all sounded great! She is continually drawn towards music and dance, so neat to see!

With that quick update, I'm off to bed - never quite enough sleep these days! Hope everyone is doing well!

tired.

I am sitting here at the computer, willing Tiegan to go to sleep for the night, my body aching to just crawl under the duvet in bed upstairs and have my head hit my flannel pillowcase. Jamie and Kea went to bed an hour ago, and I got stuck with our little insomniac! I just don't get how she does it. Last night she was up so much in the night (she's sick right now, with a cold or flu or something that is making her rather miserable) that I had to wake Jamie up to take her before I hurt her, I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO desperate for sleep. I think I finally went to sleep at 5, she went down at 6 and we slept soundly until 9:30. And then Tiegan did not have a nap at all today, and is fighting sleep like crazy tonight.

Jamie had to go off to work really early this morning, so Kea was left to entertain herself by looking at books and playing quietly in her room while I caught up a little on my shut-eye. We had originally planned on going to a singing group this morning, but at 4:30 in the morning I realized that I probably would not be feeling up to it so had decided not to go. However, I woke up to Kea, fully dressed including a sweater, her backpack filled with a couple of musical instruments and upside down, practicing her headstands on the bed next to ours, wondering out loud when we were leaving! A little surreal to say the least, especially when waking up in a sleep-deprived fog!!! And how could I resist that enthusiasm?! So yes, we got up, got dressed and made it to the singing group.

And now, Tiegan has gone to sleep for the night (at 9:00 pm - did I mention that she did not have a nap at all today? How crazy is that?!!) so I'm heading up to dreamland! Hope you all have a good night! And if anyone is reading this after 10pm, check out this great link to a live camera set up at a remote African watering hole - last night we saw elephants at about 11pm! Very cool!