Just Jordan

We started off April at a Family Dance at Hugh's school. It was amazing. The kids had a great time dancing. And by kids I mean Boone and Lawson. Calder was introduced more officially to the art of bottle flipping and spend a good portion of the evening flipping a water bottle with another boy his age. This was an amazing event and really cool to see so many people from the school community out. At one point they had a jigging contest. The adults went first and there was one man in particular who was AMAZING. When the kids' contest started, Boone meticulously imitated the jigger's moves. I wish I had a video. Boone didn't win the contest, but quite frankly, it was impressive. This is Boone's attempt at smiling. Typically this is the face I get from him when I pull my phone out. Although Calder may have needed a bit of coaxing to play with the boy his age, Boone needed none at all to engage with the kids at the dance. I won't surprised if Boone is one day...

We spent Hugh's birthday weekend doing one of the things he absolutely loves the most. . . Coaching.! Calder had his one out of town tourney last weekend in Regina. Hugh also loves a road trip with his family, so it set the stage for a great weekend. Hugh will tell you he had a little too much fun in the wee hours of his birthday, but what the heck, I guess you only turn 40 once. Hugh will also tell you he has a great coaching staff and wife after the following day! I truly feel blessed that Hugh is my partner. He is kind, considerate, smart, and loving. Hugh always looks for ways to take care of the kids and I. Honestly, I can't think of a better father to my kids. He has so much fun with them while still giving the structure and boundaries that all kids crave. I heart this man. Beard and all.   Happy 40th, Babe. Funny facts about Hugh's beard. . . . Because I know you can't live without knowing these. His beard is so long that he runs a comb thro...

January absolutely flew by. I think for me part of it was that I don't work the first few days of the month and the other part is that it is end of semester. This change in my day-to-day work routine made the month absolutely fly by! At the start of the month, I did a bit of cleaning in our pantry. We have a banker's box half full of Halloween candy sitting at the bottom. Yes. You read that right. I am really bad at throwing stuff out - particularly if it is something I might need or buy in the future. Treats come in hand on occasion, so I struggle to throw this crap out. And it is crap. Needless to say in my cleaning frenzy I realized that I needed to purge some of it. Subsequently, we had taco in a bag for supper. It was divine. Hugh and I just ate taco salad, but there were three little Halloween bags for the kidlets. Unfortunately, those were the only 3 items I got rid of in the Halloween box. I am a work in progress. Boone is so outgoing. Hugh and I often wondered ...

I absolutely love December. I love all the Christmas decorations, candles, and lights. I love the excitement the kids have. I love the baking and meal planning. I love the food. Hugh loves December too, but mostly for the eggnog.  This year he went through 2 double batches before Christmas. This may not seem excessive until I tell that you each double batch is 4 L and that Hugh drank around 3/4s of each of these. Oh, and did I mention each 4 L jug contains 24 eggs. OMG. Calder had a home hockey game around the middle of the month. The little ones and I trailed in right for the drop of the puck. Boone immediately saw some kids playing in the lobby. He didn't know any of them, but it didn't matter. He wanted to stay and play with them. Not wanting to miss a second of the game, I left him in the dust and took Lawson to sit with the other parents. About 10 minutes later, Boone finds us and is carrying an unopened Power-aid. I asked him where he got it and he responded, ...

We had some extremely warm days to start the month. The week before Remembrance day highs of 16 - 18. This was great for being outside, but not so great for our rink. November 17 Hugh decided enough was enough and he got the rink going. Here it is November 20th: Unfortunately, two days later the weather got warm again and it even rained. What work Hugh was able to do was melted away. You an see Hugh working on the lights here. The electrician came this week and got them hooked up to the breaker box. Hugh is more than a little excited. There is a website called hockeyshare.com and Calder's hockey team set up an account to keep track of the player's shots. The first day Calder went out and shot we logged on and added his 200 shots. We also looked at the rest of his teams shots there were a couple of kids with over 1000 shots already. Calder immediately put his gloves back on and went back out to shoot. Can you say competitive?  Since then Calder has literally shot until he g...

We spent 7 glorious weeks at the lake this summer. Highlights include: ·          Hours on the boat. Hugh dumped the boys off the ski trainer tube in June and it took a while to get them back behind the boat. Funny, but not funny!  My parents got the kids this giant tube for Christmas and it didn’t take long for Calder to be standing, jumping, and acting crazy in general on it once July hit. Boone didn’t love tubing, but he did do it. Lawson LOVED it and often would cry when we had her in the boat and not out on the tube. The tube was also great for floating. The kids loved jumping on it and off it. No one more than Lawson. She has perfected the belly flop and would do it dozens of times in a row (Hugh gained some serious upper body strength hoisting our girl back onto the tube). We also enjoyed many a picnic lunch on the boat. Meat sticks, cheese, pickles and veggies were our go-to. And nothing like a bag of chips on the side. Every. Si...

We started the month of September in a 100m dash. Any teacher will tell you that the first week of school is one of the busiest and stressful time of the year. This was particularly true this year as I have an intern (who is lovely and great) and Hugh's school was overstaffed so they had to lose a teacher. On top of this, Hugh and I are billeting a girl who is attending the softball academy at my school (she is also lovely). The softball academy takes place during the school day, but she also made the senior volleyball team, so we have been managing her practice and game schedule as she doesn't have her license yet. On top of this, Hugh is the vice president of our local hockey association which means that he had to attend every ice session of every age group's tiering. On top of this, the boys were in swimming lessons twice a week in the city. Calder started piano lessons (which he is really enjoying) and Calder also started hockey. On top of this, Hugh took off ...

All of Hugh's hockey buddies call him "Hammy". Hugh has been calling Calder "Ham" for a long time. I can't even remember when it started. Calder started calling Boone "Bean" when he first came home from the hospital. That evolved into "Boone Dog", "The Dog", and just simply, "Dog".  Boone is not a fan of nicknames. Often after we use one of his he will say, "I not Da Dog, I just Boone." Hilarious. Boone has called Lawson "Dawsie" from about month two. (He called her "baby" for the first two months.) Last week Boone called her Lawson for the first time ever. It took a long time for him to put the "L" on Lawson. He would repeat after us "La La La La, Dawsie". He has said "Lawson" twice since the momentous occasion last week, but I think he got too much attention for using it and has moved back to "Dawsie". "Dawsie" likely isn't goin...

Did you read Monday's post and thought I was making a joke about the title of today's post? No. Joke. I wanted to kill him. Here's why. On Monday and Tuesday the flu ran rampant through our house. Hugh even came home on Tuesday afternoon, because I was dealing with 3 puking kids and felt like puking myself. Hugh didn't feel 100% that afternoon either, but wasn't down and out. Wednesday morning came and the kids were perked up. Hugh came out of the shower and his face told a whole different story. You know that pastey, sunken in eye look you get when you are really under the weather? Well, Hugh had it. I suggested he stay home because he looked horrid, but he told me, "I'll be okay" and went in to work. That night Calder had a hockey game in Dalmeny. I drove Boone and Lawson home and Calder came with Hugh. As we were eating supper that night, Calder peeps up "Dad threw up at school today". I looked at Hugh. Hugh was GLARING at Cald...

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 ...