Aloka draws still life

Josh has this little metal bird statue that Aloka drew:

Blogging? What's blogging again?

Wow, I keep going too long without posting. The past week has been hard. Aloka and Josh came down with a horrible flu. Aloka was with Josh when they came down with it, and Aloka had a fever for 7 days off and on. It looked like she was getting better on Day 5, with her fever finally gone, but then the next day she had 102.4 and I took her to the doctor (which because it was Sunday, ended up being the Emergency Room.
She has a lung infection, as it turns out. Just the very beginnings of Pneumonia. So now, she's on anti-biotics, and feeling a million times better! I'm giving her insane amounts of probiotic, and will continue after her 10 day dose is finished.
We had a funny conversation today in the car about good and bad bacteria. Anti-biotics vs. Pro-biotics. She totally gets it.
And on a little side note, last night we were hanging out in her room, and she found a piece of dental floss on the ground. She picked it up and said "ewwwww! Already-teethed dental floss"! I had a good laugh!

Aloka the snowflake

Aloka's Waldorf school had put on a really cute little play and Aloka was a little snowflake! she was so cute!
The other little girl in the pictures is Sky. She lives about 2 blocks from us and Aloka has a lot of fun with her! Starseed (Aloka's school) is just across the street from our house, and Sky's house is on the other side of Starseed, so it's a great setup.

This is Sheilagh, Aloka's teacher, lighting the Christmas tree candles which were so nostalgic for me from the days of living in Germany! I love real candles on the tree!
Here's Aloka and Sky dancing as little snowflakes:


And Aloka et al singing Rudolph!


I gave Josh and Aloka matching long underwear. They were so cute!

The Christmas Train!

I have a million zillion things to post about with all the festivities going on around here, but i'll just do it all a bit at a time. Things are busy with work, but thankfully slowing down finally. Ah, the joys of the retail toy industry during Xmas! I must have been overheard a hundred times in these last few weeks saying "I feel like one of Santa's elves", since my job is to manage the website and do the orders and shipping.

Just before Christmas, the train came into town. It was quite an exciting and HUGE event; I couldn't believe how many people were there at Lakeside Park just to see the xmas train. It had to be in the thousands. There was live music. roasted chestnuts, hot cocoa. popcorn... and best of all, it's a fundraiser for the food banks. They travel all across Canada earning money and food donations for the needy.

And of course, Aloka also got some fun playtime at the park in the pitch black amongst about 30 other children, all sliding down icy slides in their snowsuits, shooting out and off at 100mph!



Goodbye Christmas Train!

Cookies

A more exciting post is on it's way in a couple days about the Christmas Train that came through town, but for now, here are some cookies I made tonight! They are a brown sugar cookie with toasted pecans and a caramel glaze, aka Praline Cookies! Wish I could eat one, but I'm off sugar and gluten. I'm making about 4 other kinds too, for tins for Xmas gifts. Aloka helped me so much with these. She loves baking!

Lots and lots and lots of snow!

Well, it finally came, at long last. Everyone was waiting for it; the day's were getting progressively colder and colder. The mornings would sometimes have a few flurry's. We all knew it was coming, but boy when it finally did, it REALLY did! In this below video, you can hear me say it's the 2nd time i shoveled the driveway that day! this was only a couple hours after i had just shoveled it. Richard got a foot in one day up at his house.
The snow here is the best champagne powder as far as skiing goes. It's light, and fluffy.

BUT, then only a couple days later it warmed up a bit and rained!! Ugh! Can you imagine what that did to the roads? The day it was raining I heard two people describe it as "gross". My boss, Judy, said "Rain in the winter is just disgusting!" and I agree. It was slushy, messy and icy. Now it's chilled up again and my driveway is clear but very icy!
Here is a video of the first big snowfall!

Gingerbread and fun

My dad and Jeanne were here a few weeks ago, and i'm lamenting that i didn't get more photos. Dad got a gingerbread house kit for Aloka, and the two of them built it together. Well, actually Richard did the construction of it (he's good at building houses, real or gingerbread apparently!), and then Dad and Aloka decorated it after it set.
The Martha Stewart in me screamed inwardly that I should be making it from scratch, but i quickly subdued her and enjoyed the absence of tasks needed to be done for this fun project!

I will be posting some pictures and a movie tomorrow or the next day of the massive huge amount of snow we got the other day. Winter came with a giant explosion of snow, starting on Josh's birthday, the 26th. Aloka has already tobogganed and I think we're going snowshoeing this weekend! fun fun fun!

More Halloween stuff!

Jeez, it's taken me a while to get these posted. Once again, my excuse is that I'm so darn busy I can't see straight, but it's a good thing too. Josh is working on my website now, and I'm SO excited to be running my own gig. I'm going to need to be working like I am now for a while because of course, I couldn't live off my business for a least a year or two, until it starts generating a good revenue stream .
I'm excited to be carrying my cousin Julia's awesome dolls that she makes *hi Julia!* and I think they will do really well. I have some waiting to be put up on the website, and I have to hide them all from Aloka because she cannot keep her hands off them! Josh is also just finishing up her website so once it's done, there will be a link to it on this blog.

My dad and stepmom, Jeanne just visited this weekend, and we all had a great time. It was a whirlwind, but wonderful nonetheless, and Aloka loved waking them up in the mornings (they slept at my house). Jim and Lynn, we hope you come soon too! Aloka misses you terribly and wants to crawl into your bed at 7am to wake you up too!

And now for some fun pics from Halloween. I dressed up as I-don't-know-what, Retro future Austin Powers chic or something. I threw my old Ant hat and costume that we made a few years back onto Richard, who by the way is so not into dressing up for Halloween. So it was pretty cute that he put it on for me. We took Aloka trick or treating just a little bit, and Richard's daughter Emily also took her out for a half an hour or so. She got to pick out a small pile of candy that she wanted, and I told her the rest was going over to Josh's house. It did go over to his house, but she forgot all about it, and Josh got some yummy sugary treats all to himself! So it worked out well, she wasn't uncontrollable and only had a strong sweet tooth for a few days afterwards, and it's now under control again. She has such a tendency to get so hooked on sweets if they are around.
I was hoping Josh would take her out for some trick or treating too, but he had a crazy deadline, and was busy working.

And speaking of sweets, I am totally off of sugar and gluten! I stopped eating gluten at the suggestion of my cousin Cara, and I can't believe how much better my belly feels. It did make me loose 5 pounds which I didn't really want to loose, but oh well to that i guess! I'm trying to compensate by eating tons and tons of ghee, my new addiction! ;) It's so good! It tastes like popcorn butter.
Ok, enough typing, here are some pics. The first batch (and a couple movies) are from Aloka's Waldorf school. Sheilagh, Aloka's teacher, put on a Halloween Market Place, which was like a little village with all sorts of different market booths (parent's dressed up). The children got "money" from the bank (chestnuts) and could go around and buy things at the different booths. There was a baker, and hat lady, a miller, a candle maker, a wizard who tended a fire and you could buy a wish rock and throw it in to the fire and it would spark. it was very magical and fun. Aloka didn't want to leave!

Her purchases, and some chestnut money still jingling around in her basket

The Baker

Aloka and Claire (the unicorn)

She wished she could be a real fairy she later told Josh in secret!

Here's another great video. The world through Aloka's eyes, notice how long she lingers on things that interest here, ie. treats!


And then later that night Aloka and Andrea (our roomate) both dressed up as Cinderella!

This is Andrea and her friend, in the second costume of the evening, Wayne and Garth!



And Richard, borrowing my Ant costume!

Kinda young to start working, but hey, it was her decision!

I just found this old photo when I was sifting through some past online photos! She was just over one!

Pumpkin carving with Aloka!

Ok, this post will be a little more upbeat than the last dreary one. Fall is still completely beautiful here, with lots of sunshine and yesterday was even a warm one. Leaves are still beautiful colours and crunchy everywhere I go.
Winter is starting to tease us with the occasional morning snow flurry, and up at Richards house, it's already starting to stick to the ground (he lives right next to the ski hill).
So Halloween has come and gone. It was quite the festive and exciting holiday for us, and it seemed to creep up on me without me realizing it, and then all of a sudden it was in one day and I had a hundred things to do!


Aloka and I went over to Richard's house and we carved some pumpkins with Beth and Emily.
Richard didn't do one. He was busy puttering around getting his land ready for winter. He gets a TON of snow, and everything is completely covered by about 5 feet of snow and unable to be uncovered until spring.

Aloka had SO much fun. She did some carving and lots of drawing and playing. While we were all busy working on our designs, Aloka decided to make everyone pumpkin soup! She found a pot full of hot water on Richard's wood stove (to humidify the air) and added a whole bunch of pumpkin innards (mostly fleshy chunks of pumpkin, she avoided the stringy stuff!), then she found the salt and added some of that, and stirred it up.
We're so busy with our carving and she's humming to herself as she's cooking, no one realizing what she's doing! Then she got 5 little bowls, spoons, and a ladle and served everyone up a bowl. Soon we noticed we each had a bowl of steaming hot pumpkin soup sitting on the table, one for everyone!
We all actually did eat some of it, first dressing it with a little tamari. She's such a cook!












Our pumpkins turned out great, and I got a video of Beth and Aloka.

Next post will be a fun one of Halloween, costumes and all!

This is the one Aloka and I did

Beth did this one

Emily's is on the far left.