HOME

This weekend I took a trip to New Jersey for my first American Thanksgiving in 8 years! This trip had me thinking about the concept of home. I've had a few homes in my life, 5 by the time I was 14, but out of all the places that I've lived in no other place has held me as much as this place does. No matter how long I've been away, I am welcomed back by the comfort that it brings. I feel the comfort every time I crawl back into my old bed. Every time I see the little niknaks I've collected during my childhood. Every time my dad cooks me my favorite meal. This place made me.

 *The star was a Christmas gift my bff gave me in high school. The cow was a gift my mother gave me when I graduated middle school*

My family and I have created our own home that holds us now. I am comforted by every hug and kiss I am given, especially when I need them the most. It holds me when I know that my kids feel the same about this place as I do about that place. We are secure, happy, and comforted all because we are here.

what's a girl gotta do to make some friends?

Seriously, what do I have to do in order to make some friends around here!? I ask myself this all the time without any resolution. I would be lying if I said that I had never heard that making new friends as an adult can be tricky but never have I realized that more than I do now. Growing up I was always making new friends, it was so simple for me. I would walk up to a girl that seemed nice enough and I would say something along the lines of "do you want to play?" and boom! a friendship was born. Life is not so simple anymore.

Here's the story, I am not like most girls my age. I'm married and I have two kids and those things take up a huge chunk of my time. Sure, there are always mommy groups but now that I'm working attending those has become impossible. Everything is planned for the afternoon during the weekdays. I then decided to join Meetup groups for regular women of all ages and marital/motherhood statues unfortunately Aaron has a tendency to work odd hours I am barely able to attend those. I have discovered problem #1, I am not very flexible.

 You'd be friends with this girl, wouldn't you?!

As a child where did I make most of my friends? At school of course! That is where I spent most of my time with the same group of people. Now that I work, I have to realize that the best place for me to make friends is here. Fine, I can attempt to make friends at work, this should be simple enough! Well, upon further thought and self reflection I notice that I don't go out of my way to talk to people whom I don't already know. I have met a few people along the way and I stick to them, but they are not people who I would call "friends". Problem #2: I m reserved and possibly appear to be unapproachable.

I could go on about all the detrimental things I do but really, who wants to continue that read? I have however decided to set a challenge for myself and hopefully I will be able to break out of my comfort zone and make some new friends.

I have to attend at least one meetup before the end of the year. I have been to two meetups this past year and both of them have been pleasant experiences so before the year ends I would like to attend at least one more in order to put myself out there again.

At work, I have to make conversation with at least one new person each week. Lets start off small, I don't want to shock the system! This way I can ease into opening myself up without feeling too much pressure. It can be as simple as "So how was your weekend?" or "How long have you been with the company."

Talk with the parents of at least one child from Joshua's class. Joshua and Lucas will have two events coming up in December; their Christmas Concert and a Sunday Brunch. These will be opportune times to meet with fellow parent, at least we already have two things in common, our kids go to the same school and well, we have kids!

Make a friends in the blog community! This blogging world is a tough one and you can't do this alone, you need help and guidance from others. I hope that in making a friends through all of this I can not only grow my blog but meet someone who shares my interests and passions. 

I will of course post updates to let you all know how everything works out. Keep your finger crossed for me!

Learning How to Read: Bedtime Stories

Learning how to read is probably the most important skill a person will every learn. Well the time has come, my 5 year old has started his journey in developing his reading skills. Reading has become more critical since he will be entered 1st grade next year and I want to prepare him as best as I can starting now.  

So what do I do to promote good reading habits? and what improves their reading skills?

I constantly read to my boys. From the moment I gave birth to their precious little bodies I have been reading to t hem. Babies they love to hear the sound of their Mama and Papa's voices. They love to look at pictures and grab at the cardboard pages and explore all the things in their world. Reading was something I did with them to encourage bonding and closeness since I didn't breastfeed them for very long. I held their bare skins again mine and read softly to them and let them feel my warmth. Those were great bonding moments. I can not imagine breaking that just yet. I know the day will come where they will not need me or want me to read them to sleep so I enjoy every minute that I can get now.

Now that my boys are older reading to them helps to build their imagination as they picture the story unfolding in their head as well as thinking about what will happen next. I generally read them one or two stories a night at the same time, so when it's time for Lucas to go to bed, the three of us will gather in his room and have story time. I might ask them to point to things in the story, "Where is the big apple?" The objective of this is for books to become a regular part of their life. I want them to have a passion for it, to get excited about story time.

I save all the baby books! Joshua and Lucas no longer hold interest in books with rhymes or incredibly simple sentences. Lucas grew out of the cardboard book stage quicker than Joshua did and I chalk that up to him wanting to be like his big brother. I have continued to keep them in Joshua's room because they are great when it comes to developing reading skills. The repetativeness and the rhynmning together are fantastic for emerging readers. Hop on Pop is one of my favorites for just that reason. This was one of the first books that Joshua learned how to read.

I have Joshua host story time! So now that he has some reading skills, we do two books a night. I read one and Joshua reads the other. During this time we pretend that he's the teacher. He takes command of the room, making sure everyone is quiet and ready for the story. He feels so grown up!  I always stay close to him just in case he needs help sounding out the words...lets face it, the English language is messed! examples: Rough, Through, Bough...make up your mind!

Identify your kids problem areas. In order to overcome a problem you have to know what the problem is right? The only way you can do this is by reading with your child regularly. Joshua's problem is guessing and not taking the time to point to each word and to focus on the letters in front of him. What I mean by guessing is that he looks at the picture and based on what is going on he guesses what the words are. In order to combat this I make sure that he uses his finger as a guide and consistently points to every single word before he says them. 

There are other ways techniques that you can your to assist your child through this processes but I will save those for another post because this one is already way too long!

Weekend of Birthdays

Well look at me, having an event-filled weekend! This usually doesn't happen folks. Most of the time I am sitting on the couch watching cartoons, playing school with Joshua...rather Mr. Smith, running around the house tickling the boys and making a nicer dinner (a dinner that takes longer than 30 minutes to cook).  Not this weekend. This weekend I was out and about!

Friday night my cousin celebrated her birthday at Marche, a restaurants where there are no servers, only people to clean your table. They give you a "credit card" so that you can walk around to all the stations to order food and instead of paying for it up front got getting a bill at the end of the meal they simply charge it to your card and when you check out at the end of the night you pay for your dinner at a cash register. This can be dangerous,  in my normal state I would be going from station to station swiping my card like there was no tomorrow. Thankfully I hate a huge lunch prior to that night so I wasn't really hungry. I order a crepe with strawberries, chocolate sauce, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream on top...sooo not huge at all.

The party was held in a private room. The atmosphere so calming and the look of it screamed charm. It resembled a little log cabin and I was seriously starting to consider designing my house to look just like it. I am still contemplating this!

 Here is one of the birthday girl with her boyfriend. He planned the party for her. Aren't they cute?

This was what was left of my crepe before I realized that I should have taken a picture of it. oopsies!

As the weekend continued so did my parting ways! Last night my cousin's wife (I have about 24 first cousins, give or take) had an 80's themed birthday party! How fun right? In my last post I discussed the fact that my business unit at work dressed up in an 80's theme so I got to wear my costume again!





Sunday I spent the whole day just unwinding with the boys. There were super sweet and I enjoyed every minute with them. As I am about to head back to work this week I feel so happy that I got to spend all day doing "nothing" with them. Next weekend I am actually looking forward to doing absolutely nothing!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

 Yeah yeah I know it was yesterday but this Mama was super busy. Check me out!

Totally 80's of course! The boys were excited to put on their costumes. Joshua was The Hulk and Lucas was a Ninja Turtle. It took some convincing on our part to even get him in a costume but once he saw how cute he was in it, and that his brother was dressed up too, he stopped pouting and put on an adorable smile!

I am so happy that it's over though because now I can concentrate and decorate for my favourite holiday...CHRISTMAS! Don't worry, I wont bust out the tree or the lights or the lawn decorations until December 1st but the planning has begun!

 

YOUNG COUPLE

 

This weekend the kids went to grandma and grandpa's house!

Usually when the boys back up their little suitcases with looks of excitement and joy washing over their tiny faces, I tend to feel an itch of what I call the I-miss-my-babies blues, however, I was so ready to have a solid weekend of alone time with my husband that I was so frigging excited. Oddly I feel guilty for admitting that, as if as a mother we are never suppose to feel excitement when you kids leave you, but I know I can't be the only one out there that feels this way from time to time, especially since the last date you had been on with your husband was when you went to see The Dark Knight Rises.

 Aaron and I got to act like a young couple again, we were carefree (for the most part) and spontanious, no checking in with babysitters or any of that nonsense, we were young. Sometimes we forget how young we really are. When I am juggling two kids, homework, parent teacher meetings, work, bills and all that grown up stuff our age get's lost in all of that. We are probably the youngest parents out of all of the parents in Joshua's class, but that is a whole other blog post!

On Saturday the boys went with the grandparents. Aaron and I got some "oh my dayum" good Five Guys burgers. We watched Paranormal Activity 4, against the advice of critics and indecisive public reviews, I say it was aight! After that we enjoyed dinner at an all you can eat Sushi restaurant. What I didnt realize is that for ever leftover piece of sushi on your plate you get charges $2!! Aaron and I shoveled down salmon and white fish down our throats! We were stuffed.

Sunday the husband and I left the city!

 

We ventured off to Niagara Falls which we have dubbed as "Our Place".

 

This is definitely our "go to" destination because there is just so much to do here. I must also mention that the fall colours were absolutely amazing here!

 

Apart from viewing the falls, we stoppin off at the Hersey store where I got some peanut butter chocolate fudge! the aroma coming from that place was abolutely heavenly. We also picked up a gift for the boys so that they would know that we were thinking about them on our time away.

Clifton Hill is amazing. It reminds me of The Shore, yes the Jersey Shore that I use to frequent when I was living at home. There are games, rides, haunted houses, gift shops..and yes a t-shirt shop!

Not to mention that every where you look, there is a spectacular view of something.

 

After that we drove back to the Toronto area and went to the movies again but this time we watch something that was adored by both critics and fans, we watched Argo (I highly recommend it). We grabbed a drink and some wings at a local restaurant and sat in the bar section, you know the section where Aaron and I would never bring the little ones? Yea! we sat there!

The great thing about having a whole weekend to ourselves was that we got to focus on only "us" again and remind each other why we got married in the first place, cause lets face it...marriage isn't always rainbows and unicorns.

Today  Aaron and I were both give the day off from work so we slept in, then grabbed some lunch at the new PF Changs that opened in our area. Yes I know, this place has been around in the States for a while but this is the first one in Ontario and probably all of Canada for that matter.

After that we did a little grocery shopping sans kids. It's funny how it feels going up and down the isles, searching, looking, comparing things without feeling the urge to rush through it all because someone is poking someone else.

However I found that not having them there meant that we took twice as long to get out, plus we ended up forgetting things. I guess the kids kept us organized! On the car ride home, I broke into a box of cupcakes and endulged. It was a great way to end out time alone! 

TRADITION

a little background: Thanksgiving for us Canadians takes place this Monday October 8th. 

Last year I started a tradition with my family that I call Mini Thanksgiving (MT)! Normally we would have held MT a week before Thanksgiving weekend, however since Aaron has been working weekends for the last month or so, yesterday was the only day we were able to have our dinner. I have a large extended family and whenever we get together it's great, we have a blast laughing and reminiscing about "the good ole days" but sometimes I long for a holiday celebration with the boys, Aaron and I. For me "stillness" are moments that I thrive on; moments when the house is quiet but everyone is awake and we are all enjoy each others company over a wonderfully prepared dinner. Sometimes I just want to enjoy the 4 of us.


I spend a good week or so planning what I would prepare. I thought that I wanted to do something fancy; less traditional but I ended go with the same meal as last time, a roasted chicken, candied yams, mac and cheese, mashed potatoes, and a salad. For a roasted chicken I always use Ina Gartens recipe because comes out perfect every single time. Usually I leave out the fennel because but this time I tried it and it was lovely!

A head of garlic, a wedge or two of lemon and a bunch of thyme goes up the bird...this step must not be skipped!

I wish I had the chance to take more pictures, but I started on this right as I got home from work and I was so busy that really I would forget to take more during the process. I admit that not all my meals are blog worthy, but MT was pretty good and the boys thought so too!

HAPPY CANADIAN THANKSGIVING!