Life's Whirlwind Adventures

I'm not a big fan of winter I don't care for many winter sports and I HATE the cold.  Despise, loath, detest the cold, after -15 it's all the same really, too cold to function, in my opinion.  So when I had boys I had to decide, did I move somewhere warm, or did I learn to embrace winter?  I learned to embrace winter.  I still don't like it, but it can be pretty, it can be nice and warming up after being out in the cold is a favourite activity of mine!! Lil Man loves being outside, he loves being active and he loves the outdoors.  It's not always his first choice, because of the generation he's apart he likes those technology things and covets time with them.  This may be because I limit his use of iPads, computers, video games etc to the weekends and then only for 2-3 hours.  Even TV is limited in the house, so if he thinks he can get me to allow him to watch TV, he'll try to play that game, but once you get him outside, he will stay out until he's ...

I am trying to ensure that Lil Man and I do something active each day he does not have school.  Something outside of organized sports so that we can have some fun playing, because we all love to play and it's a great learning experience.  Lil Man can be a bit, hmmm lazy I guess, but not really lazy, I mean he likes to run and jump and play and if he's with a friend at a park he can play for hours, but when we go for walks, I often get "I'm tired, my legs are sore" etc and he wants me to carry him or put him in a stroller. So I have to come up with some imaginative ways to get him to think he's not exercising even when he is... I remember back to my days in Wakaw school and one of the most enjoyable activities that we did was "going on a lion hunt".  It was such a fun song to play in gym, so I decided to play a version of that with Lil Man while we went for a long walk the other day. Do you know the song?   here's a video from youtube  to chec...

Summer is such  busy time! During the school year, school monopolizes your children's time so you only have to plan activities for two days a week but once July hits it's up to the parents to ensure their children are entertained for the summer (or the day care provider if you are working).  But let's be honest you are at least taking a week or two off in the summer where your children are home with you! So what do you do with them. I've posted some of the things we have done with the kids this summer, camping at Gull Lake, day trips to Gull Lake, The Spark Center in Calgary, Parks around Red Deer and today I'll tell you about the Lakeshore at Sylvan Lake. If you are from the Red Deer area or Alberta you have probably been to Sylvan Lake at some point or at least heard of it.  It's about twenty minutes from Red Deer on highway 11 and 11A.  It's a growing community of over 13,000 residence and I am sure it's population spikes in the summer time.  Weir...

Have you met Lil Man?  Whether you answered yes or no, I've talked about him enough on here and Facebook that you probably have some sort of idea about his personality and stuff.  He's an amazing Lil Man and I can see the amazing man he is going to become as he grows older as long as he stays true to himself and does not worry about what other people think. See little kids don't care as much as to what others think, they do sometimes, sometimes Lil Man and I have to have conversations about why it's not important that his friends not like something he does because he can be different from his friends and they can still be friends (he's four), but it's still not to the extent that adults seem to care what people think.  I've had similar conversations with his older brother at that age as well, my boys are very attuned to others emotions but also to what is fair and just. So let me tell you a little more about Lil Man. He loves babies, absolutely adore...

This year we had a long winter, a REALLY long winter.  It snowed in October, it stayed for November, December, January, February, March and we even got snow in April.  And not little amounts of snow, like record breaking amounts of snow.  I was sick of winter back in February and having to go through 2 more months of winter type weather just about drove me batty.  However, I persevered and made it through to spring which i am LOVING!!! But throughout winter we did make the best of things and here are some of the things we did!! Lil Man enjoys the snow much more than I do, thankfully we have a fenced back yard, so he was able to go out after the first snow fall and Hoe the snow off the sidewalks. He was determined to help with clearing the sidewalks haha. This is the first snow fall of the year!! It was a huge dumping and we got about three of four more snow dumpings just like this one!! It was a crazy amount of snow, nothing that I have seen in years, like yea...

So Chandlerman is in soccer. He really enjoys playing indoor soccer and he's not bad at it. He has played all positions. He does well at seeker, and he did pretty well at defense. He is a very positional player. If he is told to play right wing, he sticks to the right wing, if he's told to play defense he stays in his predetermined position. Last year he had an excellent coach. His coach was well versed in soccer and really knew what was going on. He was able to communicate to the children the positions he needed them to play. Sometimes he would use sayings like "touch tight", some parents would voice that the children didn't understand that. But, the kids did understand and they followed his instructions. The reason, he explained what he was saying so the kids knew that when he called out instructions they would know what to do. He celebrated the children's accomplishments and congratulated the children when they did what they could even if they l...