Vancouver Aquarium

Here are just a few pictures of our trip to the Vancouver Aquarium.  It was totally great - the boys loved it!

In the Dora and Diego 4D adventure... Gavin and Craig ready for the show!

My favorite!  The jellies!

Graeme's ready too, though he did scoot closer to me during parts of the show.  

Gavin liked getting up close to the swimmers.  Below is Daisy the harbor porpoise, who was a ham for the camera and chatted for a while.  The arm you see is from a mildly annoying lady that was kind of hogging the space from any kids... it is a nice arm, but I'd rather not have it in all my pictures.  Hrumph!

Overall, a wonderful day!

Updated BMX Track

Someone requested that I post an updated picture of our backyard BMX track.  This looks a little better, but there's still been more shaping done since this picture.  Good to keep the boys busy.  All three. 

You'll maybe notice that the plastic monsters are gone out of the play pit.  Yeah!  I was happy to see these go.  (If you don't remember the beauties of which I speak, one was a plastic climbing structure now too small for the boys.  The other was a dump truck with pool-like truck bed.  The boys liked this, but the problem was we get so much rain, it was just standing gross water.  It was like a venus fly trap of toys that attracted kids, got them soaked, and then returned them too cold to want to play outside anymore.)

Graeme may have shed a tear when he saw them go, but no one misses them.  And it has made me a happier person to have it in someone else's yard.  (Not that I'm saying our yard is, um, beautiful by conventional standards...)  I've realized that trying to plant anything on the BMX side is futile, so all the planting will be on the garden side.  Actually, there was one lone hot pink hyacinth along the trail that bloomed a few days ago.  He survived the restructuring.  But, today, I very proud Gavin brought it to me in his hand as a gift.  So now it is in our kitchen in a vase.  Maybe next year his life will be longer... or maybe I'll move him to safety.

And, just so no one worries, the other half of the yard (not pictured) will hopefully - if the weather improves - turn into a garden again this summer.  I've got a few sprouts growing, but they are having to fight cold temps, moss, and slugs to survive.

Graeme's Room = School Room

Gavin and Graeme are fascinated with the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (by Bill Martin Jr.), so naturally we needed to build a tree - as that is the where the book takes place.  (Short version: the lower case alphabet climbs up the coconut tree, it falls over because there too heavy, and the "parent"/capital letters come to the rescue.)   Alas, our tree cannot fall over, or at least not without promptly going into the recycle bin, but it still makes the "school" room a little cuter.  We will soon be adding a magnet wall in this room too, hoping that the magnet letters (and all their other letter friends) might stay put here.  At least maybe for a little while.

Look it up on YouTube... there's a very catchy song with the lyrics that will stay in your head for DAYS.

Synopsis in Pictures

Our life in pictures... for the last little while: 

Graeme throwing rocks into the water at Crescent Beach, White Rock, BC.

My misguided attempt at making play dough... 1) forgot to add the food coloring, so now we have blood color. 2) trying to make purple resulted in poop color.  At least the boys don't care.

Gavin's nose after a trip on the sidewalk.  It healed well as he did a great job not touching it.

Sprouts on my laundry room windowsill.  They've grown more since this.

Hopefully they'll transplant well... when it stops raining and gets warmer. 

(It will stop raining and get warmer, right??)

Our backyard... er... BMX park.  

Plays structures in the background are gone now though (yeah!).

Super find.  New shoes, match both my coats.  VV boutique: $8

Had to post.  Now somewhere to wear them...

 Gavin in an old train in Vancouver, BC.  

Graeme is in there too, but he's too short to reach the window.

 For some reason, I love close pictures of my kids' faces.

Yummy Veggie Chili

I've been craving soups these days.  Maybe because of the rain (constant), maybe because soups can be an easy dinner.  In any case, I made this recipe found in Family Fun magazine.  It looked a little crazy, but I was curious about it.  And sweet potatoes were on sale.

Verdict?  Everyone really liked it!  (Craig's mum included, as she was here for a quick visit.)  Craig said his first thought was: "Where's the meat?"  But he survived.  And the boys even ate it.  The only modification I made was that I added corn.  If you're needing a chili or soup fix, give this one a try.  Pretty yummy!

Sweet-Potato and Black-Bean Chili
(Family Fun magazine April, 2011)

For chili:

2 Tbs. veg oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 Tbs. chili powder
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
2 cups chicken or veggie broth
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 (14.5 oz.) cans diced tomatoes in juice
1 (15.5 oz.) can black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tsp. orange zest
Salt and pepper to taste

(I added corn and it gave nice color too!  You could add green beens or zucchini too for more color.)

Toppings:
Green onions or chives
Cilantro
Sour cream or plain yogurt

1. Heat oil in pot, soften onion for about 5 min.  Stir in chili, cumin and then add broth  and sweet potatoes.

2.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes.  Add tomatoes and beans (and corn or other additions) and simmer uncovered, until thickens slightly.

3.  Stir in orange zest and season with salt and pepper.

4.  Top with yummies and enjoy!

(Note:  The sweet potatoes hold onto their heat, which can be a little hot for kids when eating, so give them a chance to cool down a little.)

A New Experience

The boys and I went to the theater today with some friends up in Everett.  It was a production of Swimmy, Frederick, and Inch by Inch from Leo Lionni.  Essentially, three short puppet shows with cool shadow graphics.

Much to my surprise, the boys did quite well.  It was the perfect venue really for their first experiment going to the theater (or anywhere you'd be required to sit and be quiet for long periods of time).  There were mostly school kids from field trips in the rest of the audience, so occasional squirming and overly loud comments were generally excused.  The young boy in front of us did, however, find us annoying whatever we did... but then he was annoying me by fidgeting around the whole time - even if he was quite.  (So there!)

Gavin was as quite as Frederick the mouse the whole time, but Graeme was a little more vocal.  During the first play, Swimmy the little fish meets all sorts of new sea creatures in his journey.  Graeme thought the first creature was an octopus, even though it was a jelly fish.  Easy mistake.  For the rest of the show, however, he kept saying: "Now here comes the octopus!"  The volume varied, but he was pretty loud at one point... so, of course, my first reaction was to say "shhhh!" and cover his mouth with my hand.  This made him laugh and do it more.  Luckily, this was toward the end of Swimmy's adventures and the play ended.  The little boy in front of us was not impressed.  It was quite cute really, as he was just enjoying the show and having fun.

After the three acts were over, the actors came out and took questions from the children.  At which point, Graeme says: "I have a question!"... (wait for it)... "Airplanes fly in the sky!"

Very cute, but not a question, and thankfully not loud enough for anyone to hear.

[Note: This is the 'question' he asks us every night before bed.  An upgrade from : "Cars drive on roads!"]

Compost Update

... just because that's what people want to know, I'm sure!  I think I understated the compost situation before when I wrote the last post.  The fact is, having been added to for nearly a year, the marvelous layers had become incredibly dense and (if you can believe it) not so yummy smelling.  Most everything was still degraded, but it was clear that  there wasn't enough A. air or B. dry material to really make it work completely.  Lesson learned.

What I did on Sunday was not glamorous, and I can't imagine why neither Craig nor the boys wanted to give me a hug after!  First, I dug out all the top stuff that wasn't degraded enough to use.  That made up a lovely pile of interesting aromas.  Then, I proceeded to hack away at the rest with a shovel to dislodge everything.  There were still worms and the like, so they were clearly doing the job correctly.  I was the one who'd been a bit lazy.  Or overly aggressive in the "turning".  For the compost bins I have (Green Johanna), this means poking everything with a little stick with a propeller of sorts at the end to stir things up.  What I did - most likely when I needed a break from children - was stir the top, but pack the rest like mad.  Not so effective it turns out.

In any case, the compost that was there is now in my garden, so we'll see how the veggies do this year.  (Regardless of the weather, I'll likely blame the success or failure of the garden on the quality of compost.)  It still looked good, though a little wet, once I got it all out.  I dumped the rest of the halfway heap back into the bin.  I'm hoping maybe it'll do the rest of the job before June or at least by Fall so I can use it for Winter protection.

I did start the other bin (yes, I bought two for some reason), so hopefully I'll apply my lessons and do better the second time around.  The art of doing things poorly, right?