Cupcakes and Crafts

Well, it's Wednesday again so that means it's a school day for Cameron. What was special about this week is that I was the parent helper at school. The parent helper is responsible for helping out the teacher as well as bringing the snack for the kiddies. I always struggle with what would be an appropriate snack to bring. Of course, I always try to think of something healthy but this time I decided to give the kids a treat and I made cupcakes. The cupcakes were definitely a big hit and only a few crumbs were left uneaten.

At school today we took the kids for a walk so that they could collect some leaves for their craft. The walk was very slow...it's amazing how slow 4 year olds can be when they are out for a walk but yet they run wild when they are indoors. Oh, and it is also a very big chore for them to stay with they're partner and walk in a line...very tricky business. We eventually made it back to school and the kids did a lovely job of creating a picture made out of the leaves they collected. Despite the amount of glue used to stick all of the leaves to the paper, I'm not sure how long this craft will hold up for. I'm hoping Cameron's will last until Saturday night when Cory returns home from his course for work.

All in all, it was a pretty fun day and I look forward to being the parent helper again in November. Although, I must add...being a teacher is definitely a job that I couldn't do on a full time basis. It is a very challenging job and I applaud all of the teachers out there.

My many vacations to The Sunshine State

Our family vacation to Orlando, Florida is fast approaching and it got me thinking. I have had many trips to Florida throughout my life. I have counted 7 times that I've been to Florida for vacation.

Trip #1 to Orlando, FL was when I was approximately 14 months old. This was not a very memorable trip for me as I was so young and simply don't remember the trip at all. However, my mother has one memory from that trip that she will never forget. We were traveling with a family friend and their daughter and we all went to The Magic Kingdom at Disney World. During the noon time parade my mother discovered that I had managed to escape the stroller and she started to panic. Then she noticed many of the parade spectators laughing and pointing at a little girl chasing Winnie the Pooh in the parade calling, "Ninnie, Ninnie!" Yep, that little girl was me!

Trip #2 to North Reddington Beach, FL was when I was 7 years old. My parents decided to take an extended family vacation to Florida for a total of 6 weeks. We did drive to Florida for this trip so I suppose we were actually there for about 5 weeks in total. I still remember when we arrived at our condo and all I wanted to do was go swimming. Unfortunately, at 2pm it was completely dark outside due to a tornado watch and I had to wait until the next day to check out the pool! I learned to swim during this trip and went to Disney World twice, if I remember correctly. It was definitely a fun trip and I still have the journal, pictures included, that I wrote while I was there...with some help from my mom of course.

Trip #3 to Saint Petersburg, FL was when I was 8 years old. Dad couldn't go on this trip so Mom and I drove to Florida along with a couple of family friends. I was in Florida for 2 weeks for this trip. I spent hours in the pool and got to go to Disney World again. I actually went with family friends to Disney this time and we stayed at a Disney Resort (I can't remember which one). I remember loving The Magic Kingdom but being bored out of my mind at Epcot.

Trip #4 to Saint Petersburg, FL was when I was 13 years old. Once again, we drove to Florida and this trip my cousin Joey also came with us. We stayed in Florida for a month and we were joined for a couple of weeks by my aunt Marian and cousin Krista, as well. There were hours spent by the pool, a lot of shopping, and one rainy day spent at The Magic Kingdom...I still remember the sea of yellow Mickey Mouse ponchos everywhere you looked.

Trip #5 to Saint Petersburg, FL was when I was 14 years old. This trip was for a month as well and we drove. I was also allowed to take a friend with me for this trip, Natasha. We had a few visitors stay with us throughout the month as well, including Marian and Krista. It was a really fun trip, even if we had lots of school work to do while we were there. My dad was the brave one who took 4 kids to Disney for one day this trip!

Trip #6 to Punta Gorda, FL was when I was 16 years old. My parents decided we would go to Florida for Christmas this year. We stayed at my grandfather's house for this trip, although he wasn't in Florida while we were there. It was definitely different to be away at Christmas but we had a fun trip. We drove up to Daytona Beach and stayed for one night before driving up to Atlantic City, which is where we stayed for 2 nights including New Year's Eve. Of course, because I was only 16, I really didn't find Atlantic City too exciting!

Trip #7 to Orlando, FL was when I was 27 years old. Cory and I decided it would be fun to go to FL for our honeymoon, which is exactly what we did. We were there for one week and went to the 4 Disney parks, including The Magic Kingdom, Epcot, MGM, and Animal Kingdom. We also spent 1 day at Sea World. We went shopping for 1 day and just relaxed by the pool our last day there. We had a great trip.

Trip #8 to Orlando, FL will begin in just 5 days! This will be Cameron's first trip to Florida. We are so excited to be going with 2 other great couples as well, Stephanie & Matt and Chantel & Pernell. We have rented a house which I think will be much more comfortable for our 2 week vacation. We have already purchased our tickets to many things including 7 day Park Hopper passes to Disney, 2 day passes to Sea World and Aquatica, 2 day passes to Universal, and tickets to see Cirque du Soliel's La Nouba. It is going to be a fun-filled vacation and we've been keeping an eye on the Orlando weather and it has been beautiful and HOT.

It's pretty crazy that I've had so many trips to Florida but I guess it's safe to say that it is my favorite vacation spot. I'm sure there will be more trips to Florida over the coming years but there are many other places that we hope to travel to as well. This trip will be our last vacation for a while which is also why we're going all out for it. I can't wait to blog and share pictures about our family vacation upon our return.

Optimum Pooper

I had to share this...I love this commercial. I suppose this means I may have a strange sense of humour, but I'm quite okay with that!

Slacker

Wow! It seems I have once again been neglecting this blog. I'm really not sure why I occasionally forget about blogging because I thoroughly enjoy it. I would like to say that I've simply just been too busy to blog but that is just not the case. I often think about blogging and then get distracted. So, once again I am going to really try to do a better job of updating on a more regular basis.

There's been lots going on with our family lately but of course I can't remember everything (which is why I should update more regularly). Cameron has been pretty entertaining lately...we just never know what he's going to say next. An example of such would be last week when we had a family tickling/wrestling match on the living room floor. Mommy always ends up taking the brunt of it and in this true fashion I ended up laying on the floor with Cameron laying on top of me and Cory on top of Cameron. When they finally got up I laughed and said we made a Cameron sandwich. Cameron thought this was excellent and declared, "Let's do it again!" He then looks at me and says, "You be the meat and I'll be the salad...Daddy can be the bread!" It was very funny.

Cameron started school (pre-K) last week. I added a pic from his first day of school. As of now, he just goes on Wednesday afternoons but it will hopefully be changed to 2 times per week sometime soon. He absolutely loves going to school and I think it would benefit all of the kids if they could go twice a week. Right now they have to cram a lot of stuff into a couple of hours per week. Cameron is actually at school right now. I find it very strange when I have this time alone in the house...it's just so quiet. I generally don't know what to do with myself for these couple of hours. I usually take advantage and just relax and watch some TV. Cameron is typically in control of the TV in the living room during the day.



In other news, our old laptop died. It was slowly dying and then one morning a couple of weeks ago it had the blue screen of death. It's sad to say but I cannot live without a computer. The computer died in the morning so we then had to take a trip into Yorkton to purchase a new one. I love our new laptop and it works so much better than the old one did. We did decide to take the old laptop in to determine if it could be fixed. We ended up putting a new hard drive in it and they were able to retrieve all of our photos and music files off the old hard drive. I've definitely learned my lesson about not backing up my files. We'll be purchasing an external hard drive in the very near future! I had 2 years worth of pictures that I though I had lost forever.

Bye for now!