Just Jordan

The Hamiltons love ourselves a road trip. We went on a great one this summer and another great one two weekends ago. It was a shorter jaunt to Calgary than Vancouver, which allowed for a few fewer adventures, but that didn't take away from the fun. Our main goal of the trip was to visit some friends that we haven't seen since Calder was Lawson's age. . . 6 years!!! It had been way too long, but because of circumstances out of everyone's control this was the first time we were able to make it work.  Alstyn LOVED Lawson! Like I mean LOVED!  It was so cute. She also loved having Boone as her side kick. As you can see from above, Boone loved being her side kick! We took in the Calgary Zoo. It was gorgeous out and such an amazing afternoon outside. I even got in a picture thanks to Calder! For the record the penguins were very cool. And VERY smelly. . . Sort of like a hamster cage that was left in a hot steamy bathroom and not cleaned for a couple months. ...

I haven't been finding the time to blog and have been feeling guilty about it! Why do I do that to myself?! LOL Here is a quick catch up . . . Mostly in photos! Halloween came and went. These costumes will likely go down as my favourite of all time. I am actually hopeful that the kids want to dress the same next year. It was a gorgeous evening on the 31st. No snow, no breeze, no toques needed. We had our usual 150 trick-or-treaters who were all done by 7:30 pm. I took the ultrasound photos down from our fridge about a week ago. This was emotional for me. Those big ones on the bottom were Tripp's, so they have been there 5 years. I have looked at them many times and wondered how long I would leave them up. They likely would have been up longer, but Lawson's picture at the front is starting to crack. I felt like if I was taking hers down, they all needed to come down. Hugh noticed right away that I removed them. It was a moment for him too. I don't know a ...

Two weeks ago I woke up to a door closing. Hugh had fallen asleep on the couch so I did a listen to see if it was him. My ears perked up immediately as I heard Boone's voice. I crawled out of bed and slowly opened Boone's door. He was standing just inside the door. His sleep sac had been pulled off and left in his crib. I asked him what was going on and he said, "I go pee. YOU GO. I go bed self."  He then closed the door in my face. I wearily crept back to my room and slunk down into bed. I looked at the clock. It was 1 am. . . 1 AM. I woke up a bit as it dawned on me that I had let my 2 year old climb back into his crib and put himself to bed in the middle of the night. At this point I got out of bed with a bit more purpose. As I opened the door to his room he was already back in his crib, laying down. Boone and I then had a battle to get the sleep sac back on. I won. Boone is good like that if he has options. When he didn't agree off the hop I told him shirt or ...

Hugh woke up Saturday night puking. He spent all day Sunday on the couch and I spent all day worrying I was on the brink of being sick. Monday rolled around and Hugh began to feel human again. Unfortunately, that evening I began to feel my guts roll. Envisioning the night spent on the toilet, I curled up on the couch to enjoy a couple shows while I still could. I woke up Monday morning shocked. I had slept through the night. I began thinking that maybe Hugh had gotten a flu the kids and I had already had. There have been a few times where everyone but him has been hit.  At 9:35 am that theory was blown out the window. I got a call from Calder's school. Calder had puked. I asked him if he did it in the bathroom and he said, "No, in my class." Ugh.  When I picked Calder up from the school he was surprisingly near 100%. He told me how he didn't even feel sick. He just puked. As we walked out of the school I glanced at his pants. Is that puke?  Yep. It was. He puked s...

We were so lucky to have Deena come and shoot some photos of us at the end of August. Or was it the beginning of September? Obviously it was long enough ago that there were leaves still on the trees and there was some seriously nice lighting at 6 pm. I truly value these pictures. I take lots of photos but never seem to get a collection like this even when I snap dozens. For me it is worth the money to have someone come in and take them. If my BFF wasn't available I would definitely be finding someone else to try and do the job Deena does. These photos seem to capture our family perfectly. The one above of the three kids is my favourite of the whole shoot.  This is a narrowed down collection of my favourites. My job this afternoon is to get Picassa working on my computer so that I can create a large collage for our living room wall.  I purchased school pictures of Calder for our immediate family this year, but really debated it. They are SO expensive....

Things that make me happy: Connecting over the phone. This is sort of a weird one for me, because I typically don't phone people and my introverted self occasionally even ignores the phone when it rings, but after having a good chat with someone I always feel elated. I need to figure out a way to make phone calls more a part of my routine. . . such an easy way to get a bit of a high. A good book. The problem with this one is that it typically will consume me. I will binge read it until it is finished. I won't do housework. I won't cook. I will even ignore my children. oops.  I haven't read anything since the summer. Clearly this is for good reason.  Coffee. Man, I love this drink. My acid reflux does not. I have found a product that reduces the acidity in the coffee that allows me to have the occasional cup. It has been a little piece of heaven on the occasional morning. My kids getting along. Don't the sounds of siblings who are working, sharing, and playin...

Boone-isms He calls cats "meows" and fire t rucks and ambulances "ah-wee-ohs". He likes to pretend sleep all the time. Even did it at Costco last week. I felt seriously jealous. I wanted him to shop so I could crawl in the cart and actually sleep.  Calls his fingernails toenails. This caused some laughs before we realized his mistake. He would say, "I chew my toenails" and "dare toenail in my mouth". Chewing fingernails isn't all that appealing, but it is certainly a step up from toenails! Lawson's new moves She is seriously motoring these days. The forward crawling has picked up speed and she has figured out how to get herself from crawling to sitting. This accomplishment has meant a much happier girl in our eyes. She doesn't get stuck places and can stop and play wherever she wants. Lawson eats a lot and will eat just about anything. Some of the more interesting things she likes include salmon, souvlaki pork chops, lasa...

 Who knew that those onesies with the folded neckline like Lawson is wearing above are designed to open up wide enough so you can slip them off over their hips if they have a poop explosion?  I didn't, but my friend, Heidi's, husband did. We were both wishing he had shared this with us when we had our first kid, rather than wait until we had our 3rd - 3rd at home for me! Who knew Q-tips were good booger pickers? I didn't. My friend Danielle was using them to grab some visible boogers out of her son's nose. I thought it was brilliant and a bit disappointed in myself that I hadn't thought of it. I hate visible boogers, eye sleep and ear wax. My kids will attest to my constant picking. Lucky for Lawson, my days of trying to put my fat fingers into her tiny nose are done. Who knew you could do a baby book online? I didn't. My sister, Jes, was wanting a 2015 way to organize her son's milestones and found a great one.  OMG. I haven't done a NEW AUNTI...

I am SO behind on making videos. Here is a peek at last year's September video.  Video Q & A: How often do you make videos? I try to make monthly videos (the odd month there is no footage. . . . sometimes I am relieved when I discover this!). I am almost a year behind, but my goal is to make one movie a month. These videos usually take between 1/2 an hour to 45 minutes to create. What do you use to make the videos? We have a Mac, so I use iMovie. If you are interested in making videos and in the market for a new computer, I would definitely recommend a Mac. iMovie is easy and when you purchase your computer you get 3 months of free support (I believe. . . and you can purchase more, which I did). The support is AMAZING. You can call them and ask them to help you with any issue (including "How do I make a video?") and they will help. They will even remotely access your computer to show you around.   Are all the videos similar to the one you have s...

Common phrases Boone says: "No thanks. I'm good." and "You. Time out. Over there." The first one he says almost every single time he says no to something. It is awesome. For a while this summer he shortened it to "I'm good."  This led to some seriously confusing conversations, because it just sound like a blur and it was a while before we could figure out what was going on!  As for the second phrase, we give time outs in our house and because we hand them out to Calder and Boone they feel the need to hand them out to each other, Hugh, myself, and occasionally even Lawson! Calder also says "Time out. Over there."  Boone is a bit of a copy cat when it comes to Calder. Getting information about school from Calder is like pulling teeth, but we have gotten a few snippets from him last week. At supper time on Thursday we asked him how he was enjoying sitting by one of his buddies (I knew he was sitting there only because I dropped him off o...

I know I may be ahead of myself, but I am already thinking about back to work and it is making me a little crazy. I will be starting semester 2 (Start of Feb.) in a new school and my teaching load has a number of challenges. One of the challenges will be the kind of students that typically take the classes. The majority of the students I expect to see in my classroom in February will not like math, nor will they be motivated to do it. I want all kids to succeed in my classroom, so this will be hard (particularly when some of these students will not care if they are taking away from others'  learning in the process). The other challenge I will be facing is that I haven't taught two of the 4 classes I am scheduled with. I am a planner, so right now this seems overwhelming. I found out about the assignment at the end of August and I am feeling a bit deflated that I wasn't told sooner. . . I am not blaming anyone. It is just how it worked out. . . Doesn't mean it doesn...

I have so much to say about our summer, but I am afraid that I have left it so long that it will likely be a collection of photos telling the story rather than me. It has been a while since a wrote (a month!) and I think I am going to start off with something easy today. • • • I made my first pumpkin spice latte today. So yummy. The recipe is  HERE and I followed it to tee, minus the whipped cream on top - I added some cream in with my milk instead.  I also used frozen pumpkin rather than canned that I got from Deena last fall (we traded - I can't remember what I gave her, but this is my last bag of pumpkin and I think she got the raw end of the deal). Oh and I guess it wasn't a latte. It was a steamer. Because of my reflux I didn't add the expresso. So I guess I didn't follow the recipe quite to a tee, but it was absolutely delicious. And on this cool fall day, a yummy treat. • • • With Calder I often play an "I love you" game. We alternate turns telli...

July 23 I have been surrounded by dozens of lovely people since the start of July, but since the beginning of the month there has been a constant nag pulling at me. I just can't seem to shake its weighty pull. In fact, it has gotten to the point that I am reveling in the nag, even encouraging it to consume me. Grief is a horrible beast that I will likely never truly understand. It started on our first family vacation with Lawson. She completed our family and as we drove I realized that we were at a new beginning. Life is full of new beginnings and our van packed to the rim with our three little beings was just the most recent. I thought about Tripp at every turn. Where would he sit, where would he sleep, how would he travel, what would his excitement look like, would he like to swim, would he look more like Calder or Boone. My "what ifs" have continued to haunt me since we returned from the coast. I know it is dumb. I know I need to stop. I am torturing myself. It...

On Sunday, July 26, Lawson and I were having a good little sleep in (past 7 am J ) , so Hugh decided to take the boys to the park. They arrived home a little after 9 am. Hugh had a sullen look on his face as he carried Boone into the cabin. The first words out of his mouth were “I think this might be really bad”.  He was right. Boone was playing on the monkey bars and fell. Hugh thought he was hanging from them the exact same way he had been doing the last couple of weeks and just dropped to the ground (2 – 3 feet). Hugh didn’t see it happen and felt so bad. He was preoccupied with the 5 random kids that were climbing all over our golf cart at the moment of the accident!   By 11 am Boone was still refusing to walk, so we took him into the Tisdale Hospital. We were lucky to see a doctor and have x-rays quite quickly. There was a slight bump at the bottom of his shin, but very little swelling. The doctor couldn’t see a break, but told us they don’t a...

Lawson, aka "Dawsie" is best known for her cheeks. People can't seem to get over their size. And I get it. I mean look at those things. Don't you just want to squeeze them! At almost exactly the 4 month mark our perfect sleeper fell off the wagon. She started getting up during the night - inconsolable - and sometimes multiple times a night. I was stressed. I was used to sleep and didn't want to go back to a place where it didn't exist. After a few nights of chaos . . . Sometimes I fed her, sometimes I tried to console her, but mostly just listening to her cry (that tired, "I can't get to sleep" cry), I messaged a sleep specialist. I had done some googling and read about a 4 month sleep regression. I guess it is a thing . . . In fact Boone likely had it as well - I just didn't google it! I knew we had a good thing going with Lawson. She was on a 4 hour schedule during the day and she had just stopped having fussy nights, so we were actua...

Calder has had a loose tooth for almost 2 months. It was so resistant to come out that his permanent tooth starting coming up behind the baby one. It looked hilarious. My sister, Jes, started calling him “shark teeth”, since sharks have two rows of teeth. In the end the tooth basically fell out randomly into his hand near the end of July. Calder’s exact description, “I put my fingers on it and pulled it the tiniest bit and it popped out!” Calder didn’t want the Tooth Fairy to take his tooth. Sigh. So we told him to say it out loud when he put his tooth under his pillow and he was glad to see in the morning that the Tooth Fairy had delivered a toonie and left his tooth. I thought that Calder would be more excited about the Tooth Fairy coming. I had actually thought he might have a reaction closer to Easter or birthday excitement, but he was very calm and straight faced about the whole thing! Calder doesn’t even have the gap toothed grin. His permanent tooth...

A week before we headed to Vancouver on our way to the lake, I caught Boone starting to have a poop while in his car seat. I asked him if he wanted to go on the side of the road instead and he surprisingly agreed. We knew we only had moments to act, so Hugh slammed on the brakes and pulled over. He grabbed Boone ripped his diaper off and cradled him in his arms before sweet talking Boone to go poop. It looked so awkward. Boone was almost lying down in his arms with his butt just hovering over the ground. Boone didn’t go for it, so Hugh set him down and I showed Boone how to squat. He immediately started pushing and had his first poop out of his diaper (well, the first poop purposely out of his diaper, anyway!). This started a trend of Boone pooping on the side of the road when we were in the van. Our trip to Vancouver had a number of stops for Boone to poop. We quickly found out that is not nearly as easy to find somewhere to pull over in the mountains as it is in Sas...