Happy Birthday Finnegan

It seems only yesterday (except for the added wrinkles) that my water broke and we were heading to the hospital!

A request was made this year for a dragon cake - so that's what was created!

Opened up presents in the morning, played DragonLance with his friends all afternoon and then more friends came over in the evening for cake and ice cream. Pretty good way to spend the day!

It takes some concentration and strategic planning to blow out all eight of those candles!

Christmas Carols and Violin

Over the holidays Tim and the kids played a couple of violin concerts - one at Oliver Place and the other at Luther Riverside Terrace. At Oliver Place, there were two other families who joined us, as we travelled through the building stopping at various spots and playing a few Christmas tunes.

The residents always really seem to love the kids playing their violins.

I also think it is a great experience for the kids to share their music with others.

"The Brown Trio"

My two favourite fellas playing Minuet #2.

LAS Youth Ambassadors

The Ladybird Animal Sanctuary has set up a Youth Ambassador Program for children to demonstrate their support of LAS and express their commitment to protecting animals and being concerned the welfare of animals.

From their participation in the 2012 Pet + Pose calendar, Finnegan and Keira were invited to submit a drawing/writing about their experience and were named the first two youth ambassadors of the program. You can check out their submissions on the Ladybird Kids Corner page.

As new youth ambassadors, they each received a Certificate from the Ladybirds and also these awesome t-shirts!

Irish dancing must be in their genes

Here are a few photos from the Queen Maeve School of Irish Dance winter performance in December. Fortunately this year there was hardly any snow and the temperature was pretty good, so even though we biked to the school again, we didn't have to thaw out a couple of kidsicles like we did last year before they started dancing!

One of the tiniest girls in the class, Keira really enjoys the Irish dancing (she's the one with the long pony tail on the right side).

And Finnegan - boy can that kid dance! I haven't seen him practice for some time and it was truly amazing (OK I'm also pretty biased) but it seemed that many of the girls where watching him to know what steps to do (he's the only boy in that class) and near the end of the show, he was up there taking part in one of the dances with all the adults and he sure could keep up well and knew all the steps and where he was supposed to be dancing.

Everyone on stage for their final bows.

The winter Irish Dance performance was a certainly a fun event, watching Margie, Finnegan, Keira and Sophia dancing their skip-two-threes.

Definitely happy to be with my little dancers!

Yoga books and more from Awesome books

Last fall, Awesome Books had a contest where they wanted people to post a photo to the Awesome Books facebook page and they would select two winners for 15 pounds towards shopping for books on their site. I had previously bought a few yoga books, plus a number of books for the kids, so of course I was interested in entering.

Unfortunately, I was not a winner....but it was still kinda fun (and it didn't require bmx-ing in the snow!).

Ollie and the Lobster

As part of the goody package from the Ladybirds in Hamilton, Ollie received a new squeaky toy lobster, for his participation in the Ladybird Animal Sanctuary pet + pose calendar.

He had great fun with it the first day that it was received, but unfortunately it didn't last long and by the next day the lobster was thoroughly de-stuffed!

One girl's outgrown shirt

...is another girl's new shirt! My friend Susan has two girls who are a couple of years older than Keira and she is often the lucky recipient of a big bag of clothes whenever Erica and/or Eva outgrow their stuff (we just received two bags today in fact!!!). Keira makes good use of the items and then we pass them along to cousin Alivia or other friends who have younger girls.

We are pretty fortunate as we have hardly had to buy much in the way of new clothes for Keira given the volume of clothes from Erica/Eva and also from Auntie Margie who likes to give lovely gifts of clothing for birthdays and Christmas.