A couple of weeks ago we had a fun filled girls day on Granville Island with Rachel and Emma (cousins). We watched a funny play called Muncha Mia, and then hung out at the children's market.

  Yesterday we had a hilarious April Fools day. My kids had no idea what April Fools day was, so I prepped them the night before so they would know why tricks were being played on them, and not cry about it. They are a sensitive lot. The day started out with the kids waking up to discover their faces all had pictures drawn on them. I heard Miete say from her bedroom " I think a bad guy snuck into our house at night and drew on Leif's face." They then had red milk on their cereal. I suggested the sneak up to Christopher in bed and draw on his face while he slept. They were delighted at this idea, but could barely stop giggling. Good thing I warned Chris ahead of time not to wake up while the girls drew on his face. We used washable pens and they didn't show up very well, but he acted very surprised anyways. The girls then put canned fruit in the bottom of his cereal bowl and added the red milk. After that it was non stop ridiculousness. The girls set their dolls up in their room with their clothes on, put catsup on a toy knife and yelled down to us that we had to come quick because there were dead bodies all over their room. Morbid humor. Miete put more catsup on her hand while playing outside and tried to fake cry that she had fallen and was bleeding everywhere. Now I know she can fake cry a lot better then she did as she does it on a daily basis. I went out for a while and when I came home the girls and christopher actually had me temporarily convinced that my sister Beki had called and was pregnant. It could be true, and I expect it will be in a few more months. The best trick though, was shortly after Violet had filled her diaper I put a small pile of macaroon chocolates on the floor in the living room. Chris and I made such a big deal about the stinky mess that the kids were all horrified. I tried to convince Miete to clean it up but she wouldn't go near it. I got a baby wipe and went over and poked the fake poop pile. The girls screamed and made such faces of disgust. I then picked up one of the pieces of chocolate and proceeded to take a bite out of it. The look on Miete's face was priceless. She looked as if she might throw up, and they both squealed. i really wish we got the whole episode on video, because it was a definite Funniest Videos moment.

   These are some fantastic shots taken today of Violets first experience playing in the rain.

                                                Reflection of the Rainbow in the puddles.

I'm thinking of renaming my blog something like "Fun and Frugal". Not really, that would take to much effort. I would like to write a little bit about frugal living right now though. I have a lot of great ideas when it comes to living on a tight budget. Budget aside it's good for anyone to try to consume less, although so challenging. Several months ago I had the idea that we would only shop second hand. That lasted little over a month. It turned out it was often cheaper to buy items new and on sale. Besides as a woman it is only natural to like and want STUFF. I got weak. So when I talk about frugal living it is a similar situation. I can do really well on a tight budget when I have to, but when I don't have to is when it becomes really difficult. 
 Recently we had an incident. I don't want to share the details, but through little fault of our own and involving student loans, we ended up in a really tight spot. Tight is an understatement, but I can't think of a better explanation. I don't get to upset when these situations arise because I know it won't last and I like the adventure. So I dug my cloth diapers out from the back of our storage room. I am so grateful that I kept them, and that they fit Violet. I started baking bread and treats everyday. I love to bake anyways and in the process found the most amazing recipe for rolls. If you are someone that sees me on a regular basis and have noticed that I'm looking a little bigger around the middle it is not because I am pregnant. It is the baking. I'm just kidding. I'm still running all the time to balance out the sweets. I also found a bunch of candy canes in my food cupboard and made yummy chocolate peppermint crinkles. What a treat. When I bake I put half of everything in my freezer for another time, or if someone else needs some cookie cheer. My freezer is full. 
 Another thing I started doing is walk/running my kids to school. I have a double stroller which I am very grateful for and the weather hasn't been that bad this past week. Miete and Lilli cheerfully rode bikes the first few days, while I ran behind with the stroller. It was only when it started to rain one day and we had to beat it from Lilli's school to Leif's pre school that Miete really started to complain. The worst part about that morning was I arrived at Leif's school only to realize I had forgotten his snack at home. Thankfully his teacher had extra snacks that day so he didn't have to eat the soda crackers I had in back of the stroller. Also my dear friend who's daughter goes to preschool with Leif offered to drive him home after, even though it was out of her way.
 So these are not major things but I do want to continue using cloth diapers, at least while at home. I want to continue walk/running to school with the children when the weather permits. Gas prices are ridiculous right now. I may not bake quite as much or my waist line really will start to grow. We buy a lot of produce and I want to buy less snacky garbage for the kids out of convenience.
 I do want to mention how grateful I am for the help and thoughtfulness of my good friend and some of my family members. I really feel blessed and loved. I hope none of this sounds like I am complaining because I really am not. I am happy and life is good to my family. We are healthy and we live in a safe and protected country. Not to mention beautiful.

Here are some photos

                                           Violet changing her bears diaper

                                             
                                      Lilli and Miete received some pretty new pens from
                                     Rae-anne and this is what they did with them.

                                           A rare loving moment between little rascals

I am having trouble uploading photos today, so this may be a photo free entry. How boring
Just a simple update today:
 Violet is fierce, and can throw a tantrum unlike any of my other children. She is strong willed and stubborn like Lilli, but loves to cuddle. Lately she is really into babies, and carries dolls around, feeding them bottles, rocking them and kissing them. It is very sweet. I think she might also be the best dancer of any of my children at this age. She loves her blankies more than her parents. She is starting to say more words but mostly still speaks in her own language. For the most part she has a very happy disposition.
 Leif used to be a really sweet little boy. Up until the age of 3 I thought he was a perfect child. He rarely cried, he loved to take naps and went to bed easily. He always said please and thank you, and he adored his sisters and parents. he played quietly by himself and rarely got into mischief,  and he loved to cuddle. Well, although he still loves to cuddle, most of those other things no longer pertain to him. He whines and cries constantly, he demands everything and rarely uses manners. He tries to come into my bed on most nights, fights taking naps, although he really still needs them. He also seems to think that he can do whatever Violet does and get away with it. He throws everything, hits Violet a lot, although she probably hit him first and whines, whines, whines. When he's really having a fit he actually makes a "waaa" cry. Of coarse we tell him that is unacceptable. I guess children can't be sweet forever. At least
I have the memories.
 Lilli is having a tough time lately. She really hates school. She struggles with the work and it really effects her self esteem. When I go to pick her up after school she always looks so sad and dejected.  She frequently asks me how many days are left in the week, and is it a half day soon. For some reason beyond my knowledge she doesn't often have kids to play with. She tells me that she asks the other girls to play with her at lunch, but they are all playing with someone else, and she can't play with them. She's even tried to bribe them to play with her by giving away parts of her lunch. She's also taken to spending a fair amount of time in the school sick room. Sometimes at recess or during class she says she has a stomach ache so she can go lay down in the sick room. It's kind of odd to me, but she is very comfortable there. It's like her own personal bed at school. She is begging me to let her come back to home school, and I am considering it. I miss my Lilli being happy.
 Miete enjoys homeschool for the most part. she has normal complaints about doing the work, but does it anyways. She has such great opportunities to show her creative side working at home, and I really enjoy working with her and seeing her imagination in action. She continues to have anxiety issues at church and achievement day activities, or any really social situation. I think she really just wants a good, close friend but doesn't have anyone she really clicks with yet. She is young for her age, and that makes it hard for her to relate to the other girls, so she often plays by herself or around the other girls. It makes me sad, but I'm glad I am there to be her friend so she isn't completely alone. I hope that she soon meets another girl in her homeschool group that she clicks with. girls really do need that social interaction. I'm so glad her and Lilli have each other.
 I don't want to talk about myself and Christopher. We are stressed, exhausted, busy parents, but we love each other and we get along fantastically so that makes even hard situations easier to bear. And we share the responsibilities of raising our children equally. I am a lucky woman.
Pictures to come in next entry.

Isn't Miete cute in her Karate get up. The evening that I took this picture was quite an unpleasant and stressful one for my little Miete, but she got through it and it didn't seem to have a damaging effect on her delicate self esteem. So Miete has been doing karate classes for the past 4 weeks as part of her home school's art smarts classes. The class will last 6 weeks in total. The woman who's arm is around her is the person who has been teaching karate to Miete and the small group of other Summit students. The Summit students were invited to attend a karate graduation ceremony at the karate school where she works. I took Miete to it, but she was the only child from her Home school group there. In total there was around 30 or so kids aged 8 to 10 in various levels of karate there to be tested for their next belt level.
      Miete sat with the kids and was called up with 3 other kids almost immediately to demonstrate her karate knowledge. The kids sat in a circle around the room with the judges at the front of the room and the heard of parents off to the side. I felt a bit nervous for Miete knowing how shy she can be. I went off to sit on the floor and started taking pictures and recording, while the teacher called out commands. Miete did the first few moves and then grew very stiff and still. I could see through my camera lens that her face was turning very red. The teacher then told the kids to turn and face their Parents. Miete saw me  and burst into tears, running across the room to me. I tried to comfort and console her, but it was all I could do to keep my own tears from spilling over. I felt her pain. I had experienced similar situations as a child, and we van Gogh's don't do well in stressful situations. Actually it's from my mom's side, the Homes.  Anyways one of the karate instructors came and sat down by Miete and told her how brave she was to get up there and try when she didn't know anyone there and didn't know all the positions. Miete had only had 4 classes at this point. She managed to help Miete to feel better.
       At the end of the evening, after sitting for nearly 2 hours watching all the other kids demonstrate their skills Miete received a medal. The woman in the picture with Miete called her up to the front and congratulated her for bravery, and went on to say how proud of her she was for attending and participating when no one else from her home school group had attended. Miete was beaming. She has always wanted a medal, and I think she quickly forgot about the little ordeal she went through to receive it. In hindsight I blame my emotions on PMS. Nonetheless, it is sad to see our own children suffer through unpleasant situations.

And here are some cuties:

This is a dragon Miete spent hours creating as part of her study of China.

  

     Violet wearing Leif's underwear on her head.                    My beautiful Valentines cookies.

 

I am going to do better. I'll write shorter entries and write more frequently.  I always think of things I want to write about in the day, but by the time I have the kids all in bed and the house tidied I am much to tired to sit and write. Today I am writing instead of taking a nap. Napping generally wins out over everything else, so I am making a real sacrifice today.

So something I've been wanting to write about for a long time is running. Maybe not an exciting subject to some, but I have so much to say about it. There is a local magazine called " I Run". I haven't read it in a while but I like it because it features a lot of regular people and not just turbo athletes. People like myself, that aren't necessary fast runners, but just love running, and whose lives have benefited in some positive way from running. Now the interviews with these regular people always start with I run... and they go on to list why they run.  This has got me thinking of the many reasons why I run. So here goes, in no particular order. I  first ran the Sun Run, a 10km run when I turned 30. It was a goal I had. I didn't really train though, and it was a slow run with a a lot of walking and bathroom breaks. At the end I had such a hight though. I felt so great for completing such an event. The following year I trained a bit more and did it again without any bathroom breaks and fewer walking breaks. I finished 20 minutes sooner then the previous year. After that I decided that  I wanted to learn to love running, because I still didn't. I decided to sign up for a running clinic at the Running Room.  That did it for me. The first time  I ran 4km strait felt like such an accomplishment to me, and every week we added to it. Eventually we were running 8km and doing hill repeats, and I was running longer distances by myself. I was slow but I didn't care because it made me feel so good. that summer I ran another 10km race and did it in 1hr 7min, no bathroom or walking breaks. It was a huge accomplishment for me and I was very proud of myself. After I finished the Running room clinic I continued to run by myself and cut out the walking minutes that is part of their program. I have continued to run regularly since, only missing a few months when I was pregnant with Violet. I really love it. It doesn't take any athletic ability. Any one with one working leg can do it. There are some really fast runners with prosthetic legs. I come from a family of extreme un-athleticism.( I don't know if that's a word but you know what I mean .) Running doesn't take any athletic talent. I am a slow runner and I know that I will never be really fast, but who cares. I Love it as much as those fast people do.  I've learned that it is the fastest way to burn the most amount of calories in the least time. I can get my heart rate up to 160 in about 3min, something I can't do, doing any other exercise, even cycling. Who doesn't love that. It is the quickest way to lose weight. I run to stay young. I'm going to be 35 this year and I am not getting any younger, so running helps with that. I run to alleviate  stress, or get away from my problems. living in a crazy house with four kids can be mentally trying a lot of the time. There are days when Christopher comes in the door from work and I run out it. I need to run to calm myself and clear my head. I come home feeling happier and refreshed. I often feel like I want to preach the joys of running to my family and friends, so they can share in my joy. That could be like a religious testimony. Anyways running is something I highly recommend to everyone. It's cheap, all you need is good shoes. If you only have 20 minutes a day it's perfect and you don't need a gym membership, although  I personally don't love running in a down pour which we have a lot of here. Anyways that is all I have to say about that. I hope I have motivated someone to get outside, go for a run and enjoy this beautiful place we live in, and if you don't live in rainy B.C you should get out and enjoy the beauty of where ever you are.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

  Well it's a new year, and I'm sure most of my goals are pretty much the same as everyone else's. To get in shape. I'm not to far off with that. I ran all the time up until December, then all areas of fitness almost ceased completely. I gained close to 7lbs due to my love of christmas baking. Well now Christmas is over and most of the junk has been consumed, so I've renewed my gym membership and started running again. I plan to utilize our stationary bike at least one evening a week as well. So I'm going to register for the Rock and Roll half marathon that's in Seattle at the end of June. I hope some of you will join me. I would like to  aim to complete it in under 2:10. I hope that is a realistic goal. I am also contemplating running a full marathon in October. I don't know if I could do that, and if I did I would just attempt to complete it and not give myself a time goal. So those are my fitness goals.

  Other goals include live a more peaceful life, meaning yell at my children a lot less. Exercise more patience, be more spiritual, stop gossiping, be a better example to my children, be less worldly, show more gratitude. I need for my children, especially Miete and Lillias to feel more love and acceptance from me. I want to boost their sensitive self esteems. I want them to be happy and feel good about themselves, and not easily be offended by others. This is mine and Christophers responsibility, and I know we can do better.

  I want to be a better friend. I have a dear friend Beth who lives in Texas. I haven't seen her in five years and I miss her terribly. I know that affording a plane ticket to go see her might be unrealistic at this time, but I hadn't spoken on the phone with her until last Sunday in at least four months and before that a year.  That is unacceptable. I have a good phone plan, so I really have no excuses. I want to be a better friend to her, and to others.  I need to be more supportive and serve others more.

  Okay, I think that about sums it up. No it doesn't. I keep thinking of more things about my life that I would like to change. Save more, spend less, write in my journal more, blog more, work harder, keep my house cleaner. I do keep my house pretty clean, but all my little drawers and cupboards are hiding secret messes. That is an almost overwhelming task. One drawer at a time.

 I love my children and Christiopher so much and I had such a wonderful Christmas break spending time with them. I am sad that school starts tomorrow and the sleeping in is over, and we are back to our routines. We've all gotten along so well these past few weeks, and there has been a lot less contention in our home. I really hope that with school and school work we can try to keep stress to a minimum and that peace and harmony will prevail in our home.

Christmas Letter 2010

It's Christmas Time

Greetings, family and friends. We've had a lot of fun this year and would like to share some of the highlights with you:

Violet has taken it upon herself to be the household handy person. And by handy person we mean that she does more "taking apart" than "fixing." Violet's idea of a good time involves sharing toys with the toilet, assisting everyone with eating snacks (taking their food from them), removing excess paint from the walls, singing, dancing an providing general entertainment for her siblings. Violet tends to take after Lillias in her forthright personality but follows Miete with her love for singing and dancing. 

Leif is a boy with one thing on his mind: trains. If Leif watches a movie, plays outside, joins his sisters in their play, it always involves trains. When Leif prays he gives thanks for trains; when he gets in the car he asks if we're going to ride over train tracks; even when told he was going to fly on an airplane he asked if there was a train on it. We love Leif and Leif loves trains.

Lillias is ball of perpetual energy. She rarely slows down and is always ready for the next activity. Lillias is the social committee chairperson and takes fun and activities seriously. Lilli is also a huge help in the kitchen. She is the world's best egg-cracker and is known for her finely honed skills of measuring, stirring, mixing, rolling, cutting, and cleaning. 

Miete is our resident artist. She takes most ideas or activities and colours them with her imagination. Most notably, Miete is able to find a Harry Potter reference for anything that is spoken of in her presence. Miete is certain that the world turns on music, dancing, singing and art work; her creativity knows no bounds.

Christopher spent much of 2010 on his bicycle, commuting to work or going for long rides into the BC mountain roads. He also spent a lot of time dancing, singing, wrestling, laughing and playing with the kids. Christopher is preparing to go to graduate school to further his studies in psychological counseling.

Natasha is a master of all things family. She manages the home by teaching Miete homeschool, taking Lilli to school and helping her with work, keeping Leif busy with train-related activities, keeping Violet out of the toilet and away from electric sockets. Natasha does all this while cooking (often for other families as well), cleaning, and finding time to train for 10k or half-marathon runs. 

Life is busy, as it is for everyone, but we're doing our best to enjoy our time together and have as much fun as we can. 

Merry Christmas

&

Happy New Year

The Barbers