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What a fun New Year. Everyone had a cold from November until the beginning of February. Between Sarah and Samantha there have been four ear infections. Samantha woke up Wednesday night with the stomach flu (and the mess on her and the bed to prove it) which escalated to diahrrea, fever, cramping and loss of appetite. Things just got better from there. Joe was diagnosed with strep throat and as he got back to normal, fell to the stomach flu Friday evening. Sarah woke up throwing up later that same night. Even Jen caught it (sorry Jen).  I was supposed to play in a volleyball tournament with work on Saturday...well stand on the court and watch other people play around me but obviously I was chasing kids around with a bucket, clean PJs and Javex :)

As I say too often, it could be worse. I'm still recovering from surgery and so far I have not shown signs of this tummy issue and neither has Alex. Joe bounded back to normal after a day and a half, Samantha has finally come around and Sarah might be. We made it through with only two visits to the hospital with Samantha, and one with Sarah but neither had to stay there. The team had enough players to play volleyball without me (I think) and Joe and I didn't get sick at the same time. Joe and Alex got to go skating - twice!

I understand that this stuff gets easier as they get older and since we made it through this week, then I think rest will work just fine :)

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Weeks ago I showed Alex how to blow on a dandilion and make a wish. So today, while waiting in the yard with me for Joe, he picked one... blew on it and as the seeds flew around said "I wish I could fly a kite".... it was adorable.

After everyone's naps (about 11:00), we coated the kids in sunscreen, packed the family into bike trailers and left Dan's house. We stopped at the top of the street to figure out a destination.

First Dominion: no kite.

Next Zellers :  Finding Nemo Kite - $5

We scooted down to Bowring Park and camped out on the hill behind the swimming pool to eat lunch and fly Alex's kite. He learned real quick and soon needed no help from us unless it hit the ground. Samantha chased him (or us) and Sarah ate. You should have seen the size of a chicken breast she decided she to eat!

We played until everyone started to look sleepy then packed them all back into the trailers and followed the old railway bed to downtown. After a drive by the waterfront and a quick jump into the bike stores, we follow the railway bed back to bowring park and up to McDonalds! By the time we finally got back to Dan's, it was 7:00pm. I wish I had some photos of this perfect day, but I forgot the camera :( You'll have to settle for this one that Natasha took of Alex with paint on his fingers. 

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I thought Alex would really enjoy a trip to Salmonier Nature Park so we piled ourselves into the van and drove there for the day.

He wasn't nearly as interested as we thought he'd be and in fact spent most of the walk in the stroller! Sarah and Samantha however, got very frustrated at being confined to the stroller and we eventually let them out leaving Alex with the whole thing to himself.

 Sarah spend most of the walk in my arms with a look of total amazment on her face. Samantha held my forefinger and walked - literally- 1/3 of the park.

We were supposed to have dinner with Jen and Don, but were a little late getting there. After supper, we all spend some time in the garden. Jen and Don have a lawn tractor that Alex got to drive. Sarah and Samantha got pulled along in a trailer Jen just got and they got a real charge out of that. There are some cute shots here of the kids and Alex and Don on the tractor.

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We are getting some major work on the house done and had to spend our weekend packing up the three biggest rooms in our home - the living room, dining room and (ugh) kitchen). We also had to get ourselves packed and out of the house with the 3 kids, dogs and cat. It was a crazy weekend that started Friday and finished midnight last night. My folks were not easily available, Joe's dad was on the West Coast, his mom out due to injury so we were kinda on our own. Luckily Stewart helped both mornings and when I talked to Jay and Megan on Saturday I was pityful enough to warrant help all day yesterday (they are also house sitting for us). Dan dropped by on the way home from the cabin and took Alex to "the park" which turned into several hours out with Ryan and Leanne (HUGE help). I don't know what we would have done without these guys this weekend. This was very hard.

Dan has loaned us his home while the work is being done. It was clean, he made all sorts of storage space... I just can't thank him enough for this.

Night number one was rough. No one got in bed until 9:10 and Alex didn't fall asleep until 10:30. I had walked him through were "mommy and daddy" were sleeping so he'd know how to find us when he woke up. Several minutes after going to bed he was at the top of the stairs pretty annoyed that we were not in there when he looked. I forgot to explain that we were not going to bed there and then. An hour later, Alex fell out of bed. Then Sarah woke up but took her pacifier and went right back to sleep. Then Samantha woke at 3:30 and got everyone up. It was after 4:30 before we had them all settled. 6:50, we were all up again.

Hopefully night number two goes better. If not we'll re-think the sleeping arrangements.

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Samantha was asleep when we came home Thursday. I took off for the gym and when I came back, Joe said "I don't know what Natasha was thinking, but when Samantha woke up and I went to get her she was wet. So I changed her thinking her diaper leaked but when I took her pants off... she didn't have a diaper on?" Well we thought this was hilarious so I HAD to call Natasha and tell her. Especially since I'm nearly done that myself so many times.

I had told Joe he had to behave and not tease Natasha mercilessly about it. I was pretty surprised when he announced the next morning: "Natasha's here. I never mentioned a thing about the diaper to her."

"Wow," I replied, "that was some show of restraint from you!"
Joe said "I did put a diaper on the outside of Samantha's PJ's though...."

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We had a ton of snow dumped on us today. Even Government and MUN closed. Joe managed to clear away this HUGE drift in our driveway before the snow turned to rain and it got too difficult to manage. Luckily the pow filled in the bottom of our driveway with wet snow twice more so he didn't miss out on shoveling it! I was in the kitchen and Alex ran in crying because he couldn't see Joe. "mommy mommy I can't see daddy with the snowblower out the window". Upon investigation, sure enough there was snow low on the window and he couldn't see over it. So I dressed up, went to the truck for the scraper and cleaned it off which made him much happier. Funny stuff :) Later he did his first real "bad" thing to Samantha when he shoved her back by the face. She has a little mark to prove it! We don't think it was a true "aggressive" move but he got in trouble none the less!

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Poor Alex didn't quite grasp the tradition of "daddy" going downstairs first and him having to wait until Daddy was ready for the kids to come down (aka turn on the tree and get the video camera). The poor child almost started Christmas morning crying! When he reached the livingroom and saw the train set Santa left for him, he was so excited he couldn't get past it to any of the other presents. We have it on video which I will post but for now I'm just going to get some pictures up.

A surprise treat was Sarah's reaction to the train. She'd stand by the train station watching as the train did the track and everytime it stopped at the station and made the associtated noises, she's go into fits of laughter. It never got old for her or us :) After we opened our presents, Kathy, Mike and Dan came over so we could open those we had for each other. You'll see a walking toy that both the girls are playing with from Kathy and Mike and a VERY LOUD tractor and dump truck they gave Alex that dad is playing with.

Unfortunatly Joe seems to have done something to his back and he thinks he might have a muscle in spasm (yuck).

PS: Sarah has a tooth!

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