A few photos from our wanders in Mud Lake this spring......



Kea took this rare photo of the two of us......I think this is the day after we found out Jamie is bug-free, so we were feeling particularly relieved and happy!!!!




This tree stump has provided hours of play - Tiegan calls it her throne and can be found sitting on it during most of our trips along this trail.



There is a goose that sits on top of its nest on this tree stump. Every day for a few weeks we would see it sitting there and marvel at how patient it was........and then the other day we saw two very yellow, fluffy, freshly hatched goslings wandering around, SO sweet!!!!!!

Life here is crazy. What else is new.....busy busy busy and adding lots of get-togethers into the mix, just to make sure we're extra busy!!!! It's GREAT to see everyone, but it leaves very little time for other things like housework, computer updates and sleep!!!!! Ah well......

My friend Anja came up for a wonderful but far too short visit, where we went to the museum, walked in Mud Lake (and saw the sweetest little baby turtle - have I mentioned that I LOVE that place?!), baked cakes and did bits of yoga in the living room. Anja and I also slipped out for a glorious afternoon at the Nordik Spa (love that place too!!!!!), but I think my favourite memory is walking upstairs to hear Anja reading Tiegan a book before bed - Tiegan had picked the classic "Where Do You Come From", and Anja was reading all about how when two adults love each other they like to get as close as two people can get, and it talks about tickling and rubbing, and kudos to Anja she read it all with a straight face. Insta-parenting moment, I'm glad it was her and not me!!!!!!!! :-)

I had uploaded these photos a few days ago but haven't had a chance to publish them - the girls have been begging me for pioneer-styled nighties for AGES, and I finally pulled out the sewing machine and whipped these up. They still need buttons on the back, but as soon as the girls saw them they were ripped out of my hands:-) Now I just need to make another set out of lighter cotton for the summer - but perhaps that'll wait until we get back from our trip out west!!!!

Now to organize a couple of dinners with friends, bake a cake for dinner with family, pack a few things up from the house to get ready for our move at the end of June, and oh yeah, get our heads around flying out west in a few days!!.........

Lucas' Fifth Birthday

Here, finally, is a few photos from Lucas' birthday - we made him a dragon pinata which was a lot of fun and then we also gave him some dragon treats like sour cream and onion crickets. I hear they taste like chicken, but there was no way *I* was going to try one!!!!!!!! We played playmobile, tried out a new stacking game and ate another delicious homemade cake!!!!! Oh, and took a bazillion photos - but I mean, who can resist such an adorable face?!!!!!!

Hope five is a great year for you Lucas, and we're so glad to be here to celebrate it with you! xo

Can't wait until this movie comes out, looks really neat!



We're still surviving here - another round with the stomach flu, this time it was Tiegan. Seems like such an odd bug, I'm assuming we're just waiting for Kea to get it - in the next couple of days, or the next couple of weeks, who knows?!!!

I went out partying last night at a bar downtown with a good friend of ours who has sold her house and is leaving Ottawa. It was a lot of fun, but this morning I am reminded WHY I don't do such things anymore. ESPECIALLY after such a lovely cleanse - my liver is wondering WHAT THE HECK is going on!!!!!

I have a few blog posts lined up, and will update soon, but for now the girls and I are getting ready for a lunch downtown and an afternoon with the symphony with Marcia, Chloe and Maya - sounds like a lovely way to spend a rainy afternoon!

Music Monday

Check it out!!!!! Kea sang her heart out today at the City Hall, with about 700 other students, and was captured on video. I think she must have gotten her 'rhythm' from her dad, te he:-)

Family Photo for April

April was pretty much a write-off month for us. Jamie was still on the harsh drugs to get rid of his amoebic friends, and they really took a toll on him. He took them for almost 3 weeks, ending on April 16th, and much of that time he was in bed feeling absolutely disgusting. We watched a lot of movies, and really hung out at home a lot. Then, as he was slowly recovering from that and beginning to feel slightly more energetic once more, first Ryland kept us up all night long with a stomach flu and then we recovered our sleep before Jamie got hit hard with the stomach flu. As if he had any extra weight to lose!!!!!!!! However, after a couple more days of rest and recovery, he is feeling much more energetic, and we ended this month with the happy news that the amoebia's are GONE :-) So now we're re-emerging for a MUCH better month in May!!!!!



- the quieter days meant that I was able to accomplish a lot of knitting, though, and am excited to have finished a couple of projects that I'll photograph soon. I also tackled a sewing project the girls have been begging me forever for, old-fashioned nighties that they absolutely love!

- since the drugs Jamie was on were really harsh on his liver, our naturopath encouraged us to do a bit of a liver cleanse for the month, which really restricted our diet a lot but actually felt like a great way to cleanse our systems after a winter of eating more junk food than normal and preparing us for a more active summer. Essentially, the instructions were:
* Emphasis on steamed vegetables (lots of leafy greens especially), whole unprocessed grains (esp. brown rice), legumes, poultry and fish. ELIMINATE wheat, dairy corn, fried foods, soy, processed foods, sugar, preservatives, dyes, alcohol and caffeine.
*Drink hot lemon water as you wake up, 30 minutes before breakfast
*Exercise daily, walking at least 30 minutes and stretching lots
*Psyllium in a glass of water and drink lots of water once a day
*Deep breathing, minimum of 100 deep belly breaths per day (amazing how hard this one was for us!)
*Castor oil packs (ie poured on flannel, placed on belly with a hot water bottle on top) for 30-45 minutes at least 4 times a week (in a row - this helps with digestive function and lymphatic congestion)
*Having hot and cold showers in the morning, alternating the hot with the cold at a 3:1 ratio, 1-6 times and ending on cold
*Various herbs and homeopathic remedies

I have to admit, I felt like a million dollars during a lot of this, and have lost much of my winter pudge as a result, but it definitely felt like a full time job trying to keep up with it all! And unfortunately Jamie felt very nauseaous and the mere sight of kale, rice or beans made him feel like hurling. I made him a lot of soups, and he also lost a lot of weight. But hopefully we protected his liver a little?!!!!!!

- on the 15th, we celebrated Jamie's 38th birthday. It was a little anti-climatic, I did make him a millet cake and we had a special meal of halibut and asparagus on the bbq, but he felt like crap. I gifted him the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the four Indiana Jones movies, which he enjoyed watching. I booked a day at the Nordik Spa for us to go to and arranged childcare for that day (it's the place where you spend the day going in and out of saunas, very relaxing!), but it was the night before that he got the stomach flu and there was no way we could do that. Essentially, it was a write-off of a birthday, and we'll have to celebrate in in style another day:-)

- we did manage to go on many walks in Mud Lake, to see all of the beautiful changes that spring has brought. So many different turtles are out on the rocks, the geese and ducks are nesting and the frogs are out singing their songs.

- we celebrated Lucas' FIFTH birthday with a dragon pinata. I've FINALLY downloaded the photos from my camera so I'll do a separate post about that soon - the party included sour cream and onion crickets, but unfortunately due to our crazy diet we were unable to partake!!!! Poor Kea ate one - we thought she was rather brave, but in the end it turns out she didn't understand that they were REAL, and was very upset with the discovery that we had 'tricked' her into eating them by not telling her when we said 'crickets' that we meant 'real crickets'!!!!!

- Ryland has started sleeping more and more with his sisters on a little bed in their room. We almost don't know what to do with all the room in our queen-sized bed, it's been so long! Then one night in April, our good friend Andi offered to take the three kids for a sleepover. We weren't sure how it would go with Ryland, but apparently they all had a great time, and so for the first time in 9 1/2 years, Jamie and I had a night on our own! Crazy milestone for us, it feels like we're moving onto a whole new stage in our lives!!!!!!!!!!!