time to catch up!

It's been busy busy busy here! Josh moved into a wonderful new home. He's renting out a room in a family friendly home with another mama and her two children; A 7 year old girl, and a 22mo old boy, Sienna and Tavian. Aloka loves Sienna and they seem to get along great. There is an amazing fenced yard with beautiful gardens, a tramp, and a hammock.

Josh's room is sunny and looks out onto the back gardens. There's a big playroom downstairs (it's a 3 level home), Josh's room is on the main floor, and the mama (Amy) and two kids are upstairs.
The house is also only 6 blocks from lakeside park! And Josh has a phone again. We're all happy!

I'm behind in posting about some of the events in Aloka's life. She lost her first tooth about a month ago. And we got a new van. We love it.

So below i'm posting some great photos of Aloka's 'birthday celebration' at school. Her class celebrated all the summer birthdays together. The Waldorf birthday celebration is a beautiful one. The teacher tells the story of the children being little angels that have played together since the beginning of time, then one day they are called down to Earth, where they travel across the rainbow bridge and into the waiting arms of their chosen parents. The parents place a crown of gold on their head and Debbie (Aloka's teacher) gives the child a wrapped gift. The child then lights a little candle next to some baby pictures of thenselves, and the parents each tell a little story from the childs first year in this life.
And gradually all the little angels come down from the heavens, and cross the rainbow bridge and the friends are all reunited to play together again!
It's so sweet and there were lots of weepy parents! After the ceremony, we had birthday cake and yummy potluck food and Aloka's teachers made delicious nachos for everyone as well, even some with non-dairy cheese for the children with allergies.

There are a million photos... the outside ones are after the ceremony when we all went outside to eat and play.

As we were leaving the school grounds we saw two deer on the road out!

By the way, Josh told me anyone who wants to, can subscribe to the RSS feed to this blog, and then you'll automatically be notified when there's a new post. Enjoy!

Crossing the rainbow bridge

Aloka is holding her gift, a felted gnome!

The baby photo table

The resemblance is uncanny

And of course, I made cupcakes!

The cake is upside-down in the photo, but it's sun made out of mango! It was beautiful, made by Jayden's mom!

Aloka, Kaliana, and Pax, holding up their gnomes

King Josh

Bouncing Junie Bug

Aloka's class photos

How cute is this??

and here are another of her class, and the whole school photo:

If you click on them, you'll enlarge them a bit.

Homemade Tea! A post from Josh...

Today Aloka and I (Josh) collected the new growth off of spruce trees to make our own tea.
The tea made from the new growth buds tastes delicious and has a delicate lemon flavor and is loaded with vitamin c.
I've been teaching aloka about gathering her own food from local sources and she is very keen to collect and learn about local plants and what is edible.
We used a large burdock leaf to hold our gatherings and we also collected burdock root for our stirfry.
You have to twist the buds off and then use your finger to pinch the sheath off.
We brewed the tea in japanese tea mugs my parents gave me.
As you can see aloka is is the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world and we had a wonderful time together!
Attached are photos of the process.

Aloka's hair cut from months ago...

Whoops, I had forgotten all about these pics! Aloka had sooo much fun getting her hair done. The stylist even gave her lipstick! I've decided to take her for each birthday to get done up. She just loved it!

Such a beauty!

Aloka's Easter day

After the egg hunt (which was on a friday), came Easter Sunday. Aloka had left out a note for the Easter bunny asking if it was a boy or girl, and some carrots.

Can you read what the bunny wrote back?

She then found eggs hidden everywhere, hard-boiled and chocolate ones. Then she noticed a little mini-basket on the dining table with some dark chocolate eggs and a clue!



I read the clues to her and she just loved going on the scavenger hunt for her basket.
She finally found it out in the addition (the new part of the house that's still being built)





She loved her basket! The bunny had brought her treats and a chocolate bunny, stickers, Hello Kitty tattoos, and a little squirrel stuffy. She is such a treat saver, she still has the chocolate bunny, and most of her jelly beans!
I got in trouble because I had eaten one of her chocolate eggs and a handful of her jelly beans one day when she wasn't home. She noticed exactly what was missing of course, and was sad.

I felt horrible, so the next day, the Easter Bunny apparently had come (presumably overnight) and replenished her stash! She was tickled!

After a long fun Easter day, she said "Mama, you didn't get me any Easter present!" HA! Someday she'll find out my secret...

A super fun Easter Party!

Aloka told me a couple weeks before Easter that she wanted to have a party with an egg hunt. It turned out to be a great success and the weather was terrific!
To eliminate the competitive nature of egg hunts, every child was allowed to find 10 eggs plus three chocolate eggs each.
Josh and Richard hid them discretely in a beautiful park in Nelson, called Gyro Park.

Chris holding Junie-bug

Egg hunting!

It was a potluck and my contribution was cupcakes with little jelly bean bird nests.

"Out of the mouths of babes"

This is what the total stranger said to me after Aloka leaned over to her in a waiting room that Aloka, Richard and I were in., and said "he has really stinky toots". Luckily the lady had a sense of humour as well as having her own kids and grand kids. So poor Richard was only slightly totally embarrassed.

Another incident happened as well, last month, where I received a business call but I wasn't home. Richard was in the bathroom (unlucky for him) and Aloka answered the phone because she loves to do that these days.
The lady on the phone asked for me, and Aloka politely told her I wasn't home right now, just Richard is. So the lady asked to speak with him to leave a message. Aloka said "he can't come to the phone right now. He's pooping."

Boy I bet she made that lady's day!

Strawberry Princess is no longer

Aloka's hampster died a few days ago. We're not sure how or why... we have many different speculations, old age not being one of them. It was very odd. Richard found her during the day when I had gone into town to pick up Aloka from Josh's house. The transition day is always a little hard for her so I decided to wait until the next day to tell her. Richard moved her cage out to the wood shed outside and she came home just before bedtime and didn't notice the cage being gone which i was glad about. It would have been bad timing as she was having some anxiety about going back to school after a long weekend. (She's still having some separation anxiety). That night, I came to bed late, around 11:30pm, and she heard me and woke up, half dazed, to go potty. The lights were almost all turned off, and out of the blue Aloka mumbles "where's Strawberry?" and then, "outside?" I couldn't believe it and had no idea how to answer her, so I didn't.

The next morning she had no recollection of it, and I decided to tell her after school. She was sad, but not as much as I expected, at least not right away. I think she's still processing it. Later that day she said "Oh well, I guess we can give her away now... although no one would probably want a dead hampster" I thought this was pretty funny and I told Josh. Aloka overheard me and shouted "Mom! It isn't funny, my hampster died!!" I felt pretty bad, but I think she's processing it well. We miss Strawberry...

Junie babble

Aloka's tea party

Aloka and I had a little tea party a couple weeks ago, and made little miniature plates of food. She loved it, and it was fun and easy. I put little currants on top of cheerios, slices of cheese, cookie cutter flower shaped sandwiches and little french toast triangles left over from breakfast. She loved it!