Elisa’s Day

lots of black coffee and home made brownies. so good.

3 kids are playing a board game together and the smallest worden girl is pounding out her little baby heart on the piano. it’s a little melissa and doug mini piano. it’s a big hit with the nine month old set as i remember from my niece’s visit last summer, and molly agrees.

it’s been cold here the last few days, which sucks. but apparently it’s going to be very warm by next weekend so i’m holding out hope. ashley posted a picture of a tulip, it’s been too yucky to go on a search for green here, but i wonder if we did, would we find any? from the window it’s a sea of dreary brown.

had some friends from the city here yesterday for a visit which was awesome. although i did feel a little like all we did all day was eat. they brought lunch and then there was the above mentioned brownies. and grandma’s spaghetti sauce with homemade french stick. and apple pie. so good. and i sent them home with some homemade raspberry jam. because once you’ve tried homemade i don’t think you can ever eat weird gelatinous store jam ever again. the girls had a blast with their three little dogs. three of the best behaved little dogs i have ever met i might add. my grandma was also here, at my mom’s, with her new little dog. plus my mom’s dog. for a brief moment in time the dogs outnumbered the children.

molly did not go down for her regular afternoon nap though in all the excitement, which is probably why she woke up at 2:30 am all bright eyes and “da da da”s. never a good sign when that happens. good thing i always have some movies pvr’d for just such and occasion. nothing like being up for a couple hours in the middle of the night.

nothing exciting on tap for today. some cleaning up, maybe i’ll pull out the easter stuff. i can’t believe easter is already next weekend.

ryan and i have a huge cleaning and organizing job to do in the basement this spring, during which i hope hannah’s missing birth certificate turns up. though i am not holding my breath at this point, you never know.

march break is upon us, so far so good. some quiet days at home before we head off to my dad’s place to stay in his cottage ( which sits about 20 feet from his house….long story ) i hope the nice weather holds out.

ryan and i have been teaching the girls how to play cards. it started with family game nights and qwirkle, which i mentioned a few posts back. but qwirkle is a bit advanced still for olivia. sometimes we forget olivia is only five. because she tries ( and succeeds most times ) so hard to keep up with sidney that we tend to lump them in together. and sometimes 21 months makes no difference ( like the fact they both read at the same level, in fact, olivia is probably a better reader then sidney at this point ) but sometimes it makes all the difference. she understands the game well enough, she just doesn’t quite have the attention span for it yet. anyway……i’m wandering away from topic here.

so we got talking about all the games we used to play as kids. for both of us it was a lot. i remember spending so much time playing games with my cousin as kids, so many games. you know, the old days, before there were video games, and when cartoons only played on tv on saturday mornings, there were games. and since we’re kinda running our house like it’s 1984 what with the no video games or computer time and minimal tv, well we need to fill our time, so a quick google for the rules of crazy eights ( because neither of us could remember ) and we were off and running. and the very best part, they can play each other. so got 10 minutes to fill? lets play crazy eights.

love it.

then rummy. they picked it up pretty quickly too, olivia is actually a bit of a card shark. even hannah is learning her suits, often we play “teams” so that hannah is on someone’s team and can hold some cards and throw cards.

we had some friends over and got talking about the same thing, and it ended with some more idea’s of old games i want to get and with us having to haul out the ol’ fireball island to show them since neither of them had heard of it. and then of course the girls wanted to play. so there was some very very exciting games of that. now the quest for more games is on.

of the top of my head i remember spending hours with daniel ( my cousin, oh hi collinses who read my blog ) playing ( fireball island aside since it’s already mentioned and in play ) cards, so many cards, yatzee, backgammon, clue, scotland yard, and crokinole, which i had forgotten about until above mentioned friends reminded me of it’s existence ( it was at my grandma’s house, a big old wooden one, our main toys there, that, a metal doll house and tons of those porcelain animals you got with your tea )

and for whatever reason, seeing sidney and olivia sitting playing a few hands of cards together is extremely satisfying. and reminds me that they are all getting older so quickly. i kind of still think of hannah as my baby, maybe just because the gap between her and molly was the longest. but clearly that isn’t the case.

lets just see if i can bang out an update while the kids are playing outside and the baby is sleeping. that’s right……playing outside because it is beautiful and spring like out there. it’s going outside with no hat and mitts weather out there. it’s the sun actually feels warm weather out there. it’s a beautiful thing. i mean sure, the kids play outside in the winter too. but there is only so much fun to be had with the mobility of the michelin tire man. and it’s always a race against the clock, how long can you play before your numb fingers, toes and nose force you back inside? on a good day it might be 45 min, but more often then not it’s about 20 minutes. so it is a happy day when i can kick the kids outside sans hats and mitts and they’ll stay out there a good hour or so.

last week was a crazy one. i was on the go all week. which means my house is trashed in a serious way. i can generally keep on top of the mess (to a reasonable extent anyway) but if too many other plans start creeping into the picture, well, something has to give. so mess was left. laundry was not done. it all spirals out of control pretty quickly believe me. so today was spent cleaning. though sadly, not much laundry has been done yet, but i still have the afternoon.

and now i hear my baby crying, so off i go to get her, feed her etc. and will have to finish this later

okay, two hours later. baby is playing on the floor with the kids. roast is in the oven. ryan made our very first successful pie for dessert. we have both tried pie crust before and it always ended badly. but he did it !! yay. also the house is reasonably clean again and we even made bread. a productive day.

yesterday we spent the day in peterborough shopping. my grandma was nice enough to escort us to costco ( membership required ) and we even got to leave the kids with my cousins so we could shop in peace. i have had to start shopping at costco. it’s kind of annoying to drive to peterborough to do it, but the kids are getting bigger, they eat a lot and there is still one more to add to the collective appetite. imagine you buy on bunch of banana’s and then you doll them out three ( soon to be four ) at a time ( let alone if you want one ) well, one bunch doesn’t go too far. i need the giant bag of grapefruit. the giant bag of oranges. the huge box of granola. the 44 pounds of flour. the six pack of whole wheat spaghetti, because everyone here loves spaghetti and one box of noodles is barely enough. if we want leftovers i need to make a box and a half. you get the point. ryan says our basement is starting to look like a bomb shelter with all the overflow storage in addition to the home canned goods. what i really need now is a second fridge for the basement. ryan has a little bar fridge down there that is packed, but i’m going to start watching the classifieds for one. and i definitely can’t wait to get some new egg layers in the spring. ( or sooner ) we go through 2-3 dozen eggs a week. we’re also getting a freezer pack of local beef from a guy up the road to go in the deep freeze with our chickens this year.

not much else going on. another round of swimming lessons over with. and a few extra weeks in between this time, as the pool closes for some much needed renovations.

other then that, march break, no real plans, but we’ll head up to my dad’s for a few days just to get out of the house. i’m working on ryan’s sweater. it’s coming slowly, but coming along all the same. i finally got around to reading the Lost Symbol. it was fine. a more formulistic writer there may not be, but entertaining all the same. then my mom brought over Year of the Flood. i’m just trying to decide of i should read Oryx and Crake again first. i also have a few easy patterns and some fabric i picked up for next to nothing at our fabricland, soon to be closed. i’ll give sewing another try and see how it goes. i’d like to be able to make things for the girls.

and there you have it, the mundane minutiae of my life, but now my baby wants me and i need to switch the laundry.