New Music Tuesday: Weakerthans

For the longest time, well probably 10 years.  My favorite band was the Barenaked Ladies.  They wrote great songs (bank robbers cannot rob banks because it's filled with nuns or window washers etc. ) and had stunning harmonies and rounds in there songs.   I would listen to them all the time.  I would attend all of their concerts, once I did this and another time we did this (best vacation ever).  Then Steve left the band.  I was heartbroken.  I love music and without Steve BNL is just not the same, I had trouble listening to their music.  So while on the best vacation ever, I found the Weakerthans. 

They are a Canadian band from Winnipeg.  They are the best song writers EVER.  Their songs provide such imagery and they are not all about being in love or being out of love.  They are about loving or hating your city, about moving out of your apartment or about cats.  Here are a couple of treasures for you.  The cat one is in honor of my neice Mackenzie, who loves cats and who turns 18 today. 







Hope you enjoyed my favorite band. 

Jenn

Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I've said it every year.  This year I worked for most of the day and then came home to Darryl's delicious turkey dinner.   It's exactly the way it should be.  Having all the people and delicious food, all things I am thankful for.  As our usual tradition we went around the table and talked about all the things we were thankful for. It ranged from all the children of the world, to a safe house, to living closer to family and being able to see well again (Oma had her cataracts removed)  But the number one thing most of us are grateful for was the people in our family.

Hope you all had a wonderful Monday!

Jenn

Nathan's Monthly Newsletter: Month 54

Dear Nathan,

Today you turn 54 months old.  I haven't wrote you a monthly newsletter in ages, but with the advent of blogging again this month here is a newsletter for you.



This month you started school, preschool.  It's only two mornings a week, but you are enjoying it.  It was great cause there was no drama with you, you ran off without knowing anyone, see you dad.  It's great that you are feeling so confident and social. You are enjoying all the different activities and the teachers.  You have yet to make a good friend there, but it may still come.  One other good thing about preschool is that they did an assessment of all of your skills, fine motor, large motor, language skills and all of them were fine.  We weren't sure about your language skills as you still talk like a little kid and not a big kid yet, but we were happy to hear they are right on track to where they are suppose to be.   It's good because you are really will to try and put your tongue in different positions if you are pronouncing a word incorrectly.



Speaking of good friends, thy other night we were having a conversation about your friend Cameron and that he was only going to be at Lesley's for a couple more weeks.  Although it's been mentioned to you before, this time it really upset you.  It's nice that you know you are understanding what it all means, even though it made you very sad.

You had a great summer.   We all loved being together.  We did so many fun things.  Going to Kelowna, rafting do the elbow river, science center, zoo.  We taught you lots but had such a fun time doing it all.  You are a lot of fun to be around.  You are still in a stage where you like to snuggle (which I hope lasts a long time) and you tell people you love them and you give kisses.

We all love you too Nathan, you make it pretty easy.

love mom

What I Wore: October 06

One of my favorite bloggers, Ali, use to work outside the home and she would post a weekly roundup of what she wore. I loved those posts on the weekend to see what cool clothes she wore.  I wear nothing as cool, but I thought for this month and to fill the Saturdays I could post what I wore during the week. The only glitch with this is most days I wear scrubs. Which I love and are ridiculously comfortable, but don't make for the most entertain fashion post. So for each of the weeks the clothes will be limited to what I wear on my days off. So here we go:

 Tuesday

Pants: Old Navy (a couple of years old, but wide leg with cool pockets)
Shirt and Cardigan: Gap Outlet ( I was smart this time and bought the matching color at the matching time)
Shoes: Teva Sandals.

Friday

Pants: Roots, green color skinny leg
Shirt: Old Navy, grey, boat neck, again a couple of years old
Shoes: Polkadot Toms!

Saturday

Pants: Seven for Mankind Jeans
Tank: Navy blue Old navy
Cardigan: Garage (which I normally never buy stuff there but it was cool, and a good deal)

Jenn

Lucas in the garden

We had a killing frost here this week, so most of the garden is looking very sad.  It is litterally droopy and looks like it's frowning.  One of the few plants that don't mind it is my purple mum in the front.  Here's Lucas on the hunt for ladybugs today and the purple mum in the forefront.

Happy Friday!

Jenn

Dude, we were in the middle of the state

September started off... super awesome.  For Tammy's birthday this year I bought her tickets to a Dave Matthews and Avett Brothers concert at the Gorge in Washington.  Here is the Gorge:

It is about a 10 hour drive the the Gorge.  We drove the first 8 hours through Alberta and BC, including Yahk, to Spokane.   We had MANY laughs, including not telling all the truth at the border. 




In Spokane we stayed at a lovely hotel, The Davenport, which was very based on African animals, and had a really nice dinner, Clinkerdaggers.  Spokane was... nice.  You could see the recession had more of an effect in Spokane then Calgary.  But the city itself is beautiful.   We headed down to check out the pool and fitness and heard a couple of guys talking about the concert we were heading to the next day.  One guy said "Dude that's in the middle of the state", which again made us laugh, as we had been travelling all day, and we tend to laugh when people use the word dude, as part of their normal vocabulary. 

The next day we looked for a Target, which I did not find, but I did find us Target Tires (damn iphone maps).  Then we headed to Moses Lake, which was a nice little city.  There I had a delicious asian salad, which I have duplicate, many times now at home.  Then we headed to the concert...

We were in general admisson, so we headed in early to sit on the lawn.  Once we got our customary concert t-shirts (which I have quite a collection of), we found a spot on the lawn.  After that we got the most difficult bottle of wine I have ever bought.  Took 3 trips and once we had to leave our blanket with strangers. 


The concert was.... interesting.  Avett Brothers were fantastic.  Later that night, we we were trying fall asleep in our Econolodge, I was trying to find some of the great songs from the Avett Brothers.  They are crazy songs, and while listening to them, I said, if we hadn't been to the concert we would never listen to these songs, but now we've heard them life, we have this affinity to them.  Which made us laugh uncontrollably.... again.    Any the Avett Brothers were great, loved their energy, loved the music.  They sang my favorite song of that moment.

Next were Dave Matthews Band.  Now I've always considered myself a Dave Matthews fan.  But for the three and a half hours he played I knew one song.  And they spend lots of time "jammin", some of the songs seemed to be 30 minutes long.  It's the first time in a long time I went a concert and wasn't able to sing along with most of the songs.

After that the rest of the story is pretty down hill...saw the Northern lights, a deer sleeping at the side of the road, sleeping at the Econolodge, friendlier border guy coming back into Canada, lots of traffic in the Crowsnest pass...

But it was a great way to spend labour day weekend.  If you ever get a chance to go to this beautiful venue I highly recommend it.

Jenn

A funny picture

Lucas is a gymnast.  Not really a serious gynmast, but he loves to go to gymnastics.  The other day he was climbing the door frames, mostly I'm sure, because Darryl told him he use to do it.   Lucas practiced and he made it up this far:



So I sent the picture off to family and today we got this one back:  It was titled: Boy escapes lava flow

Which is a combination of Dad's Hawaii pictures of lava and Lucas climbing the door frames. =)

Funny when pictures come together like that!

Jenn

New Music Tuesday

Around these parts I have a "club" called New Music Tuesday club.  If you have ever read this blog or know me at all I LOVE music.  I buy new music all the time.  Sometimes it's good and sometimes not so much.   I thought I would share new music Tuesday on the Tuesday of this challenge.  I'm going to share two songs with you this week. 

The first one is an Ed Sheeran song.  It was my theme song for September, since it was a very busy month, with both fun and work activities.  Ed has become one of my favorite artists (at least for the moment).  I like how he raps, uses a loop machine and an acoustic guitar. 

 

Next is the CD which has been on repeat since it came out last Tuesday, Mumford and Sons.  Almost all of the songs on the CD I really love.  Here is one of my favorites.  Mumford is great becuase of the power in his voice, banjo and the way there music builds.  This might be my favorite one.  I love it how there are times they just harmonize. 



Now it's your turn?  What's your favorite song this week/Month?

Jenn

October Challenge

This year for my birthday Lesley gave me a challenge (along with a wonderful mug and delicious tea and makeup).  We are going to blog each day this month (even the weekends) and 5 of the 7 days need to have pictures.  Lesley and I have been friends for 7 years now so I'm figuring she knows me very well.  First off the tea, I love tea, but more on that later, but she also knows that I can't turn down a challenge.  Or if someone says I can't do something it motivates me to do it even better!  She also probably knows I'm pretty cheap and whoever looses this challenge has to take the other one to the movies.  So I'm pretty on board for this challenge. 

For Lesley's first day she posted a great blog about her superfun weekend.  My weekend was not as fun, so instead I'm going to post my 10 favorite things about Monday, because really Monday is a pretty crappy day, but I try to always be the optimist, so here we go:

1. I got to car pool with my best friend.  Which makes for car rides to be 1000x more fun then going by myself.
2. Somehow I am always organized on Monday mornings,  I think I prepare best on Sundays. 
3. We made the bus!  Which got moved up by 15 minutes two weeks ago and we have had trouble catching it.  Also see point 2.
4. We had a crazy situation at work, and sometimes there is comfort in just accepting it and knowing nothing you can do will change it.
5. Also at work I got 5 things crossed off my to do list
6. I also got a package at work, that I was very excited about (but then when I saw everything I had to read I realized it was just alot of work)
7. There are new 'mots de semaine' which is exciting to see what words Lucas is going to practice this week. 
8. It's beautiful outside.  I'm sitting outside enjoying the weather (as it is suppose to snow here tomorrow night)
9. Totally smorgy-ing it tongiht for dinner.  I don't have a real plan, so it's fish (but not the chips) and maybe kraft dinner instead.
10.  We have great neighboors and the kids are playing happily with them while I write this. 

Hope there were some good parts about your Monday!

Jenn

Summer 2012

As the last couple of days of summer are upon us I'm trying to soak up all the wonderful parts of summer and all the wonderful things we did. It does feel like summer pasted so quickly. We did so many fun things, both here and in Kelowna. Some of the things I really relish about summer is the lack of schedule. I love sleeping in and not having to rush in the mornings. Even on the days I had to work, there wasn't a bus to miss, so it seemed less busy.



 The summer started out (as it does every year in Calgary) with Stampede. My work sponsored a dinner, so we got to see the dress rehearsal of the bandstand show and it was great. I got to add Paul Brandt to my concert list, even though I never thought I would. They also had really tasty food. Gourmet barbeque. Then Darryl's work had a Stampede breakfast and we had our picture taken with Kelly Sutherland (who is a big chuck wagon racer). I also took the boys to Stampede which was busy, but a fun experience.


 The week after Stampede we headed to Kelowna for the first time with our best friends. It was a week of great laughs, food and fun. The weather was perfect, no one got sick and everyone got along.  One of the most memorable days was when we floated down the canal in Penticton.  The boys loved it and so did the girls.  After we headed to Davids Tea in Penticton and Wendy's for lunch.  After Nathan drank a bunch of tea and a drink from Wendys he had to pee about half way home.  So we made a stop in Peachland.   We took Nathan to the visitors centre to pee and when we came back the boys were all throwing rocks in the water.  We sat there for 5 minutes and I was hot.  I saw a dock and suggested we jump off it.  Once I did all the kids were willing to try.  And that water was cold!  We were all nice and refreshed after acting crazy!  After a week of working on our tans and smiles we headed back home.


Lucas went to gymnastics camp and I went to work. Then we headed back to Kelowna. This time with Darryl. Again more good weather, good food (Darryl's traditional gazpacho) and great laughs. Kelowna is definitely one of my favorites places. I love sitting on Oma and Opa's deck, having breakfast. Chatting with Oma about gardening, or reminiscing about their lives when my mom was young, going to some of my favorite beaches. Floating down the canal, picking cherries, eating fruit, drinking wine. It's all heavenly. And I'm glad I have such a wonderful (and affordable place) to spend my summer holidays.  This year we had a couple of funny experiences with Emma.  One day we were in Peachland and we took Darryl to "our" dock.  There we threw the stick off the end and she jumped right in.  The only problem was it was a big enough jump that she went right under the water.  I was almost ready to jump in and rescue her when her head came bobbing up and she swam, with no stopping to get the stick, right to shore and did not jump off that deck again!  Although shortly after that we rented a peddle boat and took her for a boat ride. 






When we returned Grammie came out for a visit. The boys were so happy to have her around and it made Darryl and I really happy too. It was her birthday while she was here and they went hiking in Johnston's Canyon.  We also had lemon meringue pie and sang her happy birthday. 

Lastly Lucas turned seven.  We had a really fun drive in party for Lucas where we showed a movie outside and had popcorn.  For Lucas's birthday he got a lot of fun stuff.  Shows how he's growing up.  New rollerblades and a new bike because he is a sporty kid, who is growing up!

Hope everyone else has had a great summer !

Till Next Time

Jenn