OY!

I started composing this post last week sometime, but somehow have lost track of days.  That's what happens when I'm going into work every day of the week - only for the afternoons, but still, it's amazing how much it consumes my life to be working this much.  I'm just not used to it, and find it hard to come home at the end of a long afternoon to try to cook dinner and do homework and read books and be the mom I want to be.  Great for saving up some spending money for our exciting trip to Florida coming up, but not so great for day-to-day living in the McKay household!!!!!  Oh well, I'm sure we'll survive, I just need to consume a bit more coffee:-)  Anyways........

I often read blog posts where they send us to various websites, and I always enjoy finding things I wouldn't have discovered on my own.  So, with that in mind, here's some things we've been enjoying on the world wide web these days......

* The girls and I have been DEVOURING The Gilmore Girls over the past month, and I have to say we're all a bit sad that it's now done.  All SEVEN seasons of it!  Then I found this article, listing all 337 books mentioned on the show.  Rory is a voracious reader, and I thought that maybe it would turn our obsessive tv watching into something a bit more academic if we followed along her list:-)  It may take us years, and I'm not sure we'll get to every book, but we're game to start.   For those who want to join us, here's a blog that includes reviews of books read on the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge.

* Kea continues to be obsessed with all things Harry Potter, as she starts reading the series once again (for the umpteenth million time), and has been enjoying this version of Uptown Funk.

* Getting ready for Easter and bookmarking so - many - tutorials.  The kids have come to expect a scavenger hunt of sorts, with various clues, and this time they are hoping the Easter bunny will leave three different routes so they can each do their own.  I suspect this year there will be a bit of a spy theme to the hunt;-) Or a glow-in-the-dark evening hunt, we'll see.  I always struggle a bit about finding 'useful' things to slip in their baskets - I suspect this year there will be bike gloves along with some gardening stuff, EOS lip balms (as they're CONSTANTLY begging for them) and some bath bombs (to hopefully encourage more bathing from our youngest one!) slipped in with the chocolate and maple candy bunnies......

*  I'm starting to get ready for another season of butterflies at the kids' school.  I always enjoy the magic of this time of year, and the joy on the kids' faces:-)  This is an amazing video showing what we'll be observing - can't wait to feel them tickling my nose once more!

And that's all I've got for tonight - it was a particularly draining day at work today, so I think I'm going to call it a night early and hop into a bubble bath with the latest teen fiction Kea and I have been enjoying:-)  xo

Family photos

I was working on a project, and came across this old blog post from a photo shoot of our family.  I know I shared it here at the time, but I'd forgotten how much I loved so many of the images and the memories it created (during the building of our house, we spent hours every day at this coffee shop, eating the same snacks and reading the same book Ry is reading here.....) so I thought I would share it once more here.  Enjoy:-)

Ryland's Birthday Party!

Aaaaaaaand, a very photo-heavy post from Ryland's big party.  He had a really hard time narrowing down a theme for this birthday, we debated spy, harry potter, minecraft, hockey but he couldn't choose.  We also tried really hard to talk him into booking a place, like the Diefenbunker (that does a mean spy party!), or a skating rink, to make the party easier on us - but no go.  In the end, he just really wanted a party at home, with lots of fun games.  So we decided to just throw a "Ry's 8, let's celebrate" kind of party!  His one request was a rainbow layered cake with lego candy on top, and we painted up mugs with hot chocolate packets inside, marshmallows and hockey stick candy canes as the take-home....

To start with, everyone played inside while we waited for everyone to arrive.  The hockey table was a big hit, as was lego and rainbow loom....

Then we threw everyone outside for an hour or so.  Zip-lining, sledding, slack-lining and road hockey galore - 

Then, just as we were about to go inside for snacks, we discovered that someone had stolen the cake and had left a clue.  We needed to break various codes and heat up invisible ink to find our way.  Oh, and at the same time a big snowstorm came in, and we had to trudge through waist deep snow too.  We make kids work for their cake around here:-)

Once they got inside, Kea had set up a series of laser beams for the kids to navigate, everyone needed to give their fingerprints and then they were given all the letters to FINALLY spell out PANTRY.  Phew!

And you know, after this they opened presents and then there were 10 minutes left of the party - easy peasy!!!!!!!!  I think Ry had a great time, and he definitely felt well celebrated!!!!!

Ski Day at Pakenham with Tiegan's Class

Kea and I headed up to the ski hill last week, to join Tiegan's class for a day of skiing.  I was kind of surprised to see how many kids had never been on skis before, given that there's this great little ski hill just down the road, but on this day everyone got lessons and most of them made their way up on the chairlift by the end of the day.  I barely saw Tiegan at all, as she was hanging out with all her friends, and I really got very little skiing done myself as I was helping so many kids up on the chair lifts and down their first runs.......but I did get to ski a couple of runs with Zach!  I love that the mountain has adaptive skiing, with volunteers who will come up just to ski with kids like Zach.  Sure looked like fun - I was a bit jealous of him:-)

At the end of the day, Kea and I managed to do a couple of runs through the trees..........crazy to think that soon, this will be us biking:-)

11/52

Vernon shot this the other night at my favorite NY bar, Pleaiades. Thankfully it's on the other end of the city and we almost never go, but it's a great spot for date night. And that's his rose petal gin martini! ;) i had Earl Grey punch. 

The maple sap is not free flowing quite yet (-15 degrees today, with frostbite warnings overnight, oy!), but there's been enough over the past week or so for me to start boiling down - so I spend hours chopping wood and filling this wood stove, looking forward to a fresh batch of syrup, yum!!!!!

Hearing Tests

Ryland has been working with a speech therapist for about a year now, with some very subtle speech impediments (primarily around the letter s, and also using the letter l in the middle of words) and as part of this it was suggested that we take him in to get his hearing tested.  I got the referral from the doctors right away, but never got around to booking the appointment.  Then Kea started to feel frustrated by the fact that her ears are always feeling plugged up and she worries that it will affect choir and scuba diving and she'd really like to fix them.  So we've been seeing chiro and lymphatic massage and cranial sacral specialists and now we have an appointment with an ear doctor in mid-May.  As part of this journey, the doctor also wanted us to get Kea's hearing tested.  So FINALLY I got my act together and booked them in at the same time......and off we were on a grande adventure:-)

I'm not sure I've ever had my hearing tested before, this was all rather fascinating to me and I had many questions about the process.  Turns out Ry has perfect hearing (which doesn't explain the constant "huh"'s we get from him OR his tendency to YELL all the time.....) and Kea has almost perfect hearing - her one ear (that I believe she burst her ear drum in at the age of 6) was ever-so-slightly below perfect, but there seems to be a lot of fluid build-up in the tubes so that could be why. Hopefully we get more answers in mid-May, it sure would be nice to get rid of that fluid once and for all.........