Friday Fun Days

Fridays have always rocked. It means the weekend, sleeping in and family time. Now that the weather is warm and sunny it makes weekends that more enjoyable. We can trade in our snow suits and sleds for gardening gloves and skipping ropes. Hooray! This Friday is especially awesome because my husband is off for the weekend and we have lots of fun things planned.

On Fridays I take the kids to our Morning Fun group at one of the church's in town. It's got snacks, toys and real live adults to talk to. The kids look forward to it as much as I do. It's a nice change in our week from the everyday routine at the house. It might take me a good half hour to get everyone dressed and in the van, but it's so worth it. They all know where we're going and they cheer about it the whole drive! Nothing better than a group of happy toddlers to begin my weekend.

Today we're meeting at the park because the church is being used for something else. Luckily the sun is joining us! I really enjoy our town park. It's got everything a kid needs and they recently built 2 picnic table areas with some shade. There is a paved area where they can play on their ride-on toys and a mini skate ramp.

I like to take the kids to different parks around town and it's really neat to see the different kinds and how they're set up. We discovered a "new to us" park out past our house last week and it even had a little piano built in! Every time we take a family trip away we keep our eyes opened for a park and always stop to try it out. It's something fun to add to our getaway!

I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend :) I'm taking the kids to the Tim Hortons Camp Day in Tatamagouche Sunday. We went last year and had a blast! Now we can add that to our list of family traditions as a fun way to begin the summer season.

When the Monday morning blahs start wafting in Sunday night, re-read my post about Monday Mornings . Enjoy and happy parenting!


Does your family have a favourite park? 

Family Traditions

Wikipedia states that Family traditions, also called Family culture, is defined as an aggregate of attitudes,ideas and environment, which a person inherits from his/her parents and ancestors.

I believe having family traditions help instil important values and bring us closer together as a family. I have wonderful childhood memories of many traditions and I want my children to have the same feeling of togetherness that I had growing up. I fondly remember waking up on my birthday every year to the sound of pancakes sizzling and the radio blaring, waiting for the Birthday Greetings to come on. Saturday mornings were spent scouring the county for the best yard sales and Friday night suppers were delivery pizza before hitting up the open swim at our local pool. All 3 of these I practice with my own family now. Mike has many traditions from his childhood that we share with our kids and we've created some of our own.

Many are simple events that might not mean a thing to others, but mean the world to our kids. A trip to Sobeys always includes a free cookie from the bakery and feeding some change to the Guide Dog (lovingly named Sam by my kids). Rainy days spent baking and watching Harry Potter movies and Saturday morning breakfasts at Tim Hortons on our way to soccer.

I doubt our traditions mean the same to our kids as they do to Mike and I right now, but I hope in time they'll come to appreciate them and how much they mean to our family. I look forward to introducing more of mine and Mike's childhood traditions and creating many more of our own.

With Summer approaching here are a few sunny season traditions my kids enjoy:

A trip to Waterside beach always includes a climb up "The Volcano"

 Every summer their great-grandmother hosts a Slip n Slide day for all the cousins

Our all time favorite - campfires in the backyard

I'd love to hear some of your family's traditions!

Picture walls

I like pictures. Let me rephrase that, I love pictures! Anyone who knows me knows that I love to display pictures..in frames, on my fridge, in albums etc. And why not? I love walking by and looking at the people I love, or remembering a magic moment I captured. Now that I've got kids that can draw, I've got lots of kid's art. So after we redid our playroom I thought it would be a great idea to post some art on the wall so the kids can see their creations everyday. Our playroom is still under construction and this area needs some more shelf space, but just like any home project, it's gradual.

My plan was to do just white frames but the idea of throwing some other colours in the mix is growing on me. It's still a work in progress. I think I'll grab some red frames to throw in a pop of colour to match the baskets. I love the look of a picture wall, there are so many different ways you can organize your frames and be really creative. It was tricky to balance out the frames so they looked uniform. (I've got a few extra holes in the wall)

Here are some picture placement ideas and some examples of picture walls I came across for some inspiration. Do you ever feel that everyone else's always looks better than yours? Haha!

Monday Mornings

I'm sure everyone feels the same about Monday mornings. It doesn't matter if the sun is shinning and the birds are chirping, Monday's just suck. Luckily, like other moms, I don't have to get dressed up for work, pack up all my kids for daycare, and kiss my husband goodbye. I'm fortunate enough to stay at home with my 2 youngest, in my sweats and entertain toddlers all day.They don't care that my hair is messy and Im wearing slippers, they're the best kind of co-workers! They even share their pudding with me!
The weekends spoil us, we get to sleep in (kind of), do what we want, and enjoy the fact that we are our own bosses for 2 days. The Monday morning blah tends to start Sunday night when we fear that we have only 1 more sleep of this glorious break from the everyday get-go. I recently read online some thoughts on how to make Mondays more enjoyable.

1.Watching tv - This must mean something other than Treehouse, I'll start a riot if I change the channel!
2.Sex - Whoever thought these ideas up must not have kids.
3.On-line shopping - I'm way to picky to buy anything online, except concert tickets.
4.Buying chocolate or makeup - I can rhyme off 12 types of chocolate but I wouldn't know the difference between mascara and eyeliner.
5.Planning a vacation - This I enjoy. Nothing pumps me up like planning and organizing a vacation! Whether it's real or pretend.I love checking out different hotels,restaurants and things to do in new places.

I think I'll be able to survive this dark and dreary Monday with tea, movies and maybe a trip to the "ice cream store" (as my kids call it)

Happy Monday!

Entryway Makeover

We share an entrance with my mother-in law and for quite some time, we've been discussing repainting our front entryway/stairway. Although yellow is my favourite colour, the walls were scraped, fading and just plain ugly. So one day she came home with a gallon of paint and we finally put it to good use!

I'm a big fan of Boomerang recycled paint. We've used it throughout the house and I've always been pleased with the look of it. Apparently they've come out with a new line of colours so their old ones were on sale (yippee!) We used a premixed colour called "cloud" and already it's brightened up this small space. 

Our basement stairs are next. She ripped up the old green carpet and the plan is to repaint the stairs white with a dark brown top. Something like this:

I think it's going to look amazing!

Weekend Getaway

Recently Mike and I were able to sneak away on a weekend getaway sans kids!
A shout out to our amazing army of grandparents and aunts for babysitting for us (you need a trained army to babysit these kids!)  We hadn't had a night, let alone two nights away since last March. We were well overdue for a relationship rejuvenation. Actually taking the time for just the two of us really was good for our soul and our relationship. Even if the majority of our trip was spent laying in bed watching Mad Men, we had the luxury of no interruptions, no cleaning, and no worries.
We decided on Halifax to revisit the city life that we loved so much when we first started dating. It takes me back to a different time, a time before 4 kids, house renos, bills and RRSPs. A time where all we had to think about was where we going to eat for supper or what movie we were seeing. Although I wouldn't trade my life for anything, I do miss those lazy, hazy days of no worries. It was nice to go back to that for just a weekend and remember why we fell in love in the first place. Although my outlook on the city has changed in the last 7 years. What I used to think was a romantic, moonlit walk down Spring Garden hand in hand with my husband turns into thoughts of getting mugged or kidnapped. Haha I watch too much CSI. His love for the city at night hasn't changed but I'm afraid after years of having little kids and an overly active imagination I've become more cautious.
We stayed at the Waverly Inn, a cute and quaint B&B on Barrington. I loved everything about it! 24 hour free tea and coffee, old antique furnishings and of course a giant whirpool tub in our room.
All our city dreams came true and I'm already planning our next getaway, of course.

Where do you like to get away to?

All you need is love

SO welcome to my blog! I don't know if I have time, creativity or inspiration to fill a blog but I guess it's worth trying!
 I chose "All you need is love" as my blog title because it's sort of become our family motto. When Mike and I were married, my late father-in-law Gordie performed our ceremony. Instead of spiritual scriptures and words of wisdom, he simply sang The Beatles "All you need is love" and encouraged the whole room to sing along. Those words always stuck with me, and as Mike and I began our journey (adventure maybe?) of maintaining a family, and a life together I thought those words were more than perfect to live by. I see them everywhere, I have them proudly posted on our living room wall, on a bracelet and a necklace. I try to remind my kids that instead of material objects, and large amounts of money, we would never get by as a family if we didn't have love. It will always come first. Sometimes I find it hard to remind myself of that and I still get sidetracked at what's important but at the end of the day I find myself singing along to the best advice I ever recieved.

So sit back, have a cup of tea and make yourself at home :)

Brooke