Too long!

I am here to apologize to those who actually take the time to stop in here and read my blog occasionally. I have been a terrible blogger so far this year. There are of course, a variety of legitimate excuses I could offer because our life has been very full and busy but I won't take the time to list them all. I will just show you some pictures of what we have been up to and try to post again soon (soon being less than a month).
My birthday on February 1st passed by without too much fanfare. It was a very busy day for us and by the end of it, I was in bed with the flu without much of an appetite for the lovely salmon dinner and chocolate birthday cake Ryan had made for me. :( I was feeling better the next day though, so I didn't have to miss out on my birthday shopping trip. It was a treat to get to go out for the day with Ryan and also to buy two new jackets and some clothes, courtesy of Ryan and our parents who had all given me spending money or gift certificates for my birthday. Thanks everyone. :)

The morning of my birthday was our very first Learning Centre. The Learning Centre (TLC) is organized by the homeschool association I am part of. It is in essence, a giant co-op. There are over 50 families involved this year with children ranging in age from newborn right up to high school. It runs every other Friday morning from February until May. The children get to take three different classes and each Mom is responsible for teaching one block, helping one block, and then everyone gets one coffee break block. This is the eleventh year TLC has run so the organizers have had lots of time to work out the logistics of it, but it is still an organizational miracle the way this thing runs. Anyway, my kids and I are all really loving being a part of TLC, even the girls, who I thought might be a little nervous around so many people they don't know. I was happy to be proven wrong though!! Here are some pictures before we left for our first TLC. Rachel was beyond thrilled to pack her backpack with her snacks and scissors, glue, and crayons and go to "school" for the first time! :)

Here are some other pictures of what we have been up to over the last month. I will try not to be so wordy for the rest of the post.

The kids were thrilled when we got a big dump of snow because they got to try out the sleds they got for Christmas.


We've been learning about space so we took and awesome field trip to the H.R. Macmillan Space Centre in Vancouver. I was too busy to take many pictures but it was very cool - I highly recommend it.

Ryan got some free tickets to the Monster Truck show so he and Evan and Evan's buddy enjoyed a night of noise and testosterone!

All three kids enjoyed a set of swimming lessons in January. They all love the water, especially Rachel, my little mermaid. At the beginning of February we got an addition to our family. Hiromi is here from Japan for a month and she has been a pleasure to have around.

In an effort to make science a little more boy-friendly we decided to try blowing something up last week! I had asked Evan what he really wanted to learn about in school and he said he wanted to do science. When I said, "But we've been doing lots of science," he countered with, "It's been fun learning about space but I want to do science experiments, the kind where things explode!!"

So, one day, after having been the night before to listen to a speaker about parenting boys, I packed everyone in the van during school time and we headed off to Walmart to buy diet coke and mentos. Some of you may have watched this youtube video before but if you haven't, it's quite entertaining. Ryan had showed it to Evan and it was the inspiration for our little excursion. We had lots of fun and got nice and sticky and it was the highlight of Evan's week. So now I have decided to let him pick one experiment a week out of my great big science book. I'll let you know how it goes. :)

So there it is, our month in a nutshell. Hope you enjoyed the update. :)