New ages, New Chores!

Anyone who knows me well, knows that the bathroom is my most hated place to clean. I don't mind dusting, I don't mind dishes, I don't mind laundry, but I hate cleaning the bathroom. Ever since having kids, I've been waiting for the opportunity to pass on this chore to my girls. Yup! I have 2 bathrooms and 2 kids! Guess who isn't going to be cleaning bathrooms soon?!?! hahahaha

I decided that 5 is probably a pretty good age to start teaching how to clean the bathroom. So I put Brooke to work (she was quite eager to learn!). Chloe, of course, wanted to help too, so we gave her the chore of sweeping the floor and I started Brooke off with the toilet right away.

Chloe's even got an apron on for her chores! Well prepared little girlie. lol

Nellie really likes this shelf so it gets quite dirty with kitty prints and hair, so it needs to be dusted off. 

Have you EVER seen ANYONE this excited to clean a bathroom???? haha, this is going to change in a few years I'm sure! 

Of course, she can't completely clean the bathroom on her own, but I was there to help her out when she needed it. After all she's the one who wanted a bathroom in her room, this is as close as she's going to get, so she needs to know how to clean it

I even got a video to show her excitement! lol This is to show to her when she tells me I'm mean for making her clean the bathroom. hahahaha

Baking on the First Hot HOT Day of the year

I decided that even though it is supposed to be the hottest day so far of the summer, if I needed to bake bread, and heat the house up more, I might as well back cookies and muffins too. lol

I let Brooke take control of the muffins. She went and got her baking hat and apron on, and we set off to work.

She put all the ingredients in herself, she even measured them herself and here she is whisking it all by herself. She only needed a little help with the mixing.

Here she is measuring out 3 tablespoons of mixture for each muffin. She also did this all by herself! She did fantastic work. These peanut butter chocolate chip muffins are going to be awesome!

Here is the finished product! You can find the recipe for these muffins here. The recipe only uses 3/4 a cup brown sugar and that's it for sugar!

 For Chloe's turn we decided to make chocolate chip cookies. mmmm...she was really excited to help. But I'll tell ya, 16 months between Brooke and Chloe really showed today. Things that Brooke was just ready and knew how to do, Chloe needed more direction and I really had to do most of it myself.

She was not less excited tho.

The butter was messy as Chloe thought she should put the butter in the cup with her fingers. lol 

By the time we got to the flour, her hands were covered in butter and just about everything else. lol The flour tho, she had no problems measuring and putting in the bowl.

Ok now you've seen Chloe's work space, scroll back up and see Brooke's work space. Chloe is quite a bit messier of a baker then Brooke. She was very proud of herself because she got to crack the eggs all by herself!

And of course, the best part...licking the beaters!!!

And the finished product. These cookies are sooo yummy!!! I'm not sure where I got the recipe for this one...but they remind me of the subway cookies. :)

Of course, as the mommy, I get stuck with all the dishes! lol I washed a lot of dishes today! 

This day was actually June 25, 2013.

Assiniboine Park English Gardens

This is the first of many many trips to Assiniboine Park, especially to the Engilish Gardens. Jeremy seems to love the flowers and trees there. I also like looking at all the beautiful flowers and I think it's a great place for photos. 

 So I decided to take a few on this trip, Brooke and Chloe sitting on the rock fence at the beginning of the gardens. Brooke's got an awesome look on her face eh? This was after she asked to have her photo taken. lol

 I never thought to take a photo of the whole thing she found her way into...lol but it's like a tower, Both girls found their way into them and stood up in there, so I snapped a quick photo of Brooke.

 And like every other time we go to the park, the girls need to have their photos taken with the bears. lol 

Magnet Spelling

I don't know about anyone else out there, but it's an exciting day when you turn around and see that your kids have spelled their names with the fridge magnets! I can't wait to see what other messages they will come up with once they start to learn how to spell anything other then their names!

Stupid Moving Company

So...This move was dreadful. First, they told us the truck would be delivering our stuff before we would even be at the house and before our allotted time was up. Which had us extremely stressed out. Second, they send us 5 packers to do a 3 packer job. They started out like this...1 guy in the kitchen, 2 girls in the basement, 1 guy upstairs, and 1 guy in the living room. I started in the kitchen telling the guy in there what not to pack, then I ran down stairs and folded some last minute clothing before heading upstairs to tell the guy not to pack the girls suitcases. The two girls in the basement asked me a bunch of questions.

By the time I got upstairs, the guy had packed the suitcases. Seriously, I'm moving and gonna be staying in hotels and it never crossed your mind to ask if I wanted them packed before packing them. So, I made him unpack the 2 boxes to get those out. This guy also would not pack my snow globes, because they had liquid in them, or an old glass ornament that i've already glued back together once. Even after I told him to pack it and I would just glue it back together once we got there...Nope had to move those by myself. I would have been more pissed off if I had of been moving further.

I had a really hard time managing 5 packers, and if it was to happen again I'd tell them to send at least 2 of them home. 

When we get to the new house, there are 4 of them to unload counting the driver. I wanted our wardrobe in the basement, they try to fit it in the basement and scratched the shit out of it, and put a hole in the back of it. OMG, seriously our unloaders were definitely not very gentle, only one guy and the driver were gentle the other two were very coarse with our stuff. 

Now for the whole reason for this post. Those sneaky little assholes...broke my biggest suitcase, the wheel is completely off the bottom of it...and the part that holds the wheel on is broken off the suitcase. As if that isn't bad enough that they broke it, and said NOTHING to me or Jeremy about it, they tucked the wheel inside the suitcase as if hoping I wouldn't notice. WTF'in Hell! I found this while I was already adgitated about the paint brushes. OMG, I nearly lost my mind! I'm still extremely pissed off. I hope they come here to finish off our claim, as they are going to be getting an earful from me. That is only if I don't find a business card before they show up. lol I'm gonna lose my mind on them...I wouldn't be nearly as pissed if they had of told me, I don't even know if they will cover new luggage, as I didn't notice it the day they unloaded. Trust me...if I have my way, they will be getting me a new suitcase, here is a photo I took.

Crafty Day

On Monday, June 24th, I had the most productive craft day ever!!

I started out buy making this floor length curtain into 2 shorter curtains to fit the window in the girls play room. That room gets a lot of afternoon sun so I wanted to get the curtains up. I figured out how to sew the curtains, but couldn't figure out how to make a curtain rod the size of the windows from the pieces the moving company left me. So for now it's tacked up until we get a new curtain rod to fit. I had to use white thread because that's what I had on hand...Jer mentioned it, I said I cold have went and bought new thread. He says No that's ok, white is fine.

Next, I decided I wanted to make this sign. which started out saying "Take a Deep Breath, You're Home Now..." but I didn't have room for deep and afterwards Brooke said Big and I might have been able to fit that...ohh well. Anyways, I had quite the problem with this task, as I couldn't find the pink plastic cup that holds all my paint brushes. I was getting sooo angry as I couldn't figure out where the packers could have possibly put the cup and brushes. I was almost to the point of nervous breakdown, when I found them. lol

This picture shows the sign not quite done yet.

The actual finished product. Only a couple of things that I would change...like maybe putting 2 hanging hooks on the back, those keys can get heavy and my sign is gonna go sideways. It was a good learning experience for sure. 

While I was searching for the paint brushes so I could paint the sign, I took a break to finally get the back put on Chloe's chair. Maybe on my next crafty day I'll actually get the seat finished and then have one chair completely done...provided I get the seat put on right away. LOL

YAY For Crafty Days!!!

Winnipeg Zoo Trip 1

I didn't take a lot of photos on this trip, I'm sure we'll be heading back to the zoo sometime as the girls and I both love the animals and they have lots of special events throughout the year too. Maybe some day we'll get a annual membership.

Brooke loves Hudson the Polar Bear and Chloe loved the Penguins who are visiting and will travel to a new Zoo in September. I, of course, did not get photos of either of those. lol

The Camels were pretty exciting for the girls. Brooke seemed to know quite a bit about camels, however, she did learn why one camels humps weren't standing up. But she knew you rode on them between the humps. 

 What's a trip to the zoo without seeing a bunny??? This little guy was right at my feet. 

 4 trips to 3 Zoos and I finally got to see Zebras. They were always hiding at every other Zoo we went to. lol  Just to prove it, I snapped a photo of them. lol

The other exciting exhibits are the Australian walk about...where you can actually walk around inside the fence with the Kangaroos and Birds (I forget what kind). That was lots of fun, altho the Roos weren't jumping around...they were also quite a bit away, we were told they are very shy.

There is also a Butterfly area where you walk around inside of the a dome while the butterflies flutter around you. It's quite neat.

There are tons of Prairie Dogs that run wild around the Zoo, the girls loved watching them run around.

Pre kindergarten Graduation!!

I'm a couple of days late Geting this post up but Friday, June 21, 2013 was the pre-k graduation for Brooke ane Chloe in Shilo, Manitoba.  Even though we have moved to Winnipeg,  Brooke, Chloe and I made the 2 hr (one way) trip back just for the graduation. They were very excited on the way there and sang and talked the whole way. I found out that Chloe loves the song "I love it" by Icona Pop and Brooke's favourite is "Crazy Kids" by Kesha,  so of course we had to turn the music up for those songs. We also sang the great hits...ABC song, You are my Sunshine,  and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Lol

After many are we there yets we arrived in Shilo. We went right into the MFRC,  where the girls were wisked away by their teacher, Miss Chelsea. To start preparing for the ceremony. I went to find a seat on the aisle so that I could get good pictures of the girls. Since Brooke is actually graduating to kindergarten she had a blue cap and Chloe who will be returning to pre-k in the fall had a yellow cap. The director of the MFRC gave a speech and then Miss Chelsea shared some tid bits about the kids with us. Just before the kids came out Miss Chlesea stopped and told me a funny thing Brooke had said to her. Chelsea said I feel like I haven't seen you two in  forever to which Brooke replied with "well,  we've been in Winnipeg cuz we moved there you know" lol

Next the kids made their way to the stage. First the returning students and then the graduates. So Chloe passed by me first,  followed by Brooke.  Brooke came in holding hands with Cale,  who she calls her best friend. It's odd because it's been a long time since she seen him. 

Tanis (Cale s mom) got a good photo of them.

Then the kids sang their favourite songs from the year. Please see the video. 

And then we jumped right into their binders and gifts. Chloe first then Brooke

After the presentations we had a bbq and carnival games in the outdoor rink. The kids had a fantasic time playing the games and they really enjoyed their hotdogs and juice. When we were ready to go we stopped for a photo shoot with Miss Chelsea and the girls cashed in their tickets (from the games) for prizes.

But before we could leave Shilo for possibly the last time we had one last play in the splash park.

Overall,  it was a great day.