Time flies...

It's hard to believe that it is almost the end of 2011, where does the time go?  I can't believe that I have already been married for just over 5 years, I have school age child, another who is almost out of diapers and a third on the way!  Yikes!

November flew by, mostly because I was in Guadalajara, Mexico for the 2011 Parapan American Games for work for just over two weeks.  It was an amazing experience as it was my first major multi-sport games and I was part of the Team Canada Mission Staff.  It was great getting to know the athletes, their coaches and the support staff.  I worked on the operations team which meant that I lived right in the Athlete's Village and helped Team Canada with anything they needed.  Although the days were long, I was very lucky to be able to be able to watch some of the competition.  I didn't get to all of the events that I would have liked, but I did manage to watch Wheelchair Basketball, Sitting Volleyball and Goalball.  Here are my pictures from Guadalajara.  I decided to just post them on facebook as the seaborn flickr stream is more about family stuff and my personal flickr isn't a pro account, so I'm not sure if I could get all of the pictures on it...:p

Connor has been really enjoying school.  He has been introduced to a Math Program online that we play a few times a week (when we have time) that he really enjoys.  His teacher has also started a blog to help keep the parents informed on the activities that they do all day.

Wyatt had an exciting end of the month.  He ended up in CHEO for a three day (two night visit).  He was diagnosed with Asthma Exacerbation, which means that that he had an asthma attack, but he is too young to diagnose asthma, so it could have been a result of a virus or his environment.  Since his environment hasn't really changed, we think that it is a result of a virus, but after talking to some other parents with children with asthma, this is how it begins.  He has been ok since the episode, but we have been given some Ventolin to use as needed and we will definitely monitor his breathing.

Geofford has briefly un-retired from ultimate and is playing on Sunday nights in the 4 on 4 league.  It isn't his favorite type of ultimate, but he is out with friends playing with a disc, so it's better than nothing :)

We are gearing up to be parents of three.  The boys are sleeping in the same room and the nursery (aka Wyatt's old room) is now full of boxes of kids' clothes.  I hope to have some time between now and the end of the calendar year to sort through all of the clothes.  It was originally on my list of things to complete before summer started, but things always come up.  I am definitely looking forward to my full year off with the new baby.  It will be my first full year off with any of the kids, so I can't wait!  My list of things to do is lengthening, but my priority will be to enjoy the time off with the kids because they are only young once, and there is always tomorrow :)

Here is a link to our family picture from Damian and Michelle's wedding: http://www.francescomaragoni.ca/Albums/Kwok_01_10_2011/03.html#65   (The photographers for their wedding was pretty amazing to be able to get all of us looking at the camera at once).  Please feel free to look at the other pictures from the wedding as well...they are stunning.

Here are the Santa Claus Pictures from this year (I love the set at Place D'Orleans and also the new format where you get digital rights of the pictures so you can print them anywhere):

The boys with Santa

The family with Santa

The cousins with their wranglers (as Jaclyn said it best)

October Art

Here is some of the Fall inspired art from the kids :)

My turkey, Wyatt

Connor's Turkey Hat

The Kissing Hand Poem

Which accompanies Connor's kissing hands

And a thanksgiving wreath to show what Connor is thankful for.

What to do with Art from School?

So as usual, I have been a slacker on the blog.  So much has happened since last Christmas (the last time that I updated this blog).  As usual, I am going to try and be better and keeping this up to date (especially since I keep giving people the link to this blog on our Christmas card).

So here is a quick update of the past 10 months...

Wyatt turned 2 - he is no longer our quiet Wyatt and loves to ask "What are you doing?"  He is also a super picky eater and we have managed to introduce rice krispies to his diet which is now one of his preferred food.  Unfortunately he is quite the messy eater, so we now have a fairly clean floor (or it is covered in rice krispies).  He is now one of the big men at daycare since...

Connor turned 4 and he started JK in September.  This is actually the inspiration of the post.  Since Connor started school, he has come home with tons of art work.  Now that we have a new scanner, I have been inspired to scan the ones that we can and I'll take pictures of the ones that I can't scan.  Here is the first of many pieces of art that have been digitally archived...Now I just have to figure out how to display them around the house.  Any suggestions?

Geofford has officially retired from ultimate (for the first time...there is already talk of him potentially playing next summer).  We couldn't disclose the reason for about a month why he has to take a little time off, but it is because we were expecting Baby #3 and well I'm not sure if I can be an ultimate widow with three kids.  We'll see though, so for now he is retired and we can confirm/deny him coming out of retirement when the time comes.

I am as usual quite busy with work.  I have had a pretty eventful year thus far with work being a lot of fun and then getting pregnant.  I will be experiencing my first major games this November when I head to Guadalajara for the Parapan American Games.  I will be part of the Canadian Paralympic Committee's mission team which should be quite the experience.  I am very excited and hope that the second trimester energy will kick in by that time.

As for the house, we managed to replace the floor in the kitchen.  It looks quite fabulous and thanks to my dad and Damian for helping Geofford out.  Connor helped a little as well lay the chalk lines down, so it may be helpful to delay some of the projects for the house so that both boys can help.  We are waiting to find out the sex of Baby #3 until he/she is born but hopefully he/she will be as helpful as his/her brothers.

With respect to the family, Francis and Jaclyn had their third child, our niece Elena who is super cute.  Damian and Michelle also got married on October 1st which was quite the celebration.  Here are our pictures from the day.  Our family (and extended one) is slowly expanding and soon we will definitely have to have a kids table at family gatherings as they are soon going to out number the adults.

We are a little bit better at keeping our flickr site up to date, so you can follow some of our adventures there.  I will try and post up some more art as I get around to scanning/photographing it.

Our Christmas Celebrations.

As with all families, we choose to celebrate Christmas multiple times so that we can maximize on family time and eating time.

Now that we have our own family, we celebrate with the boys Christmas morning before church by opening our stockings.

After church, we have brunch and then gather around the tree and start opening presents.

But before the boys can open presents, they must pose for the obligatory photos with the grandparents.

After our family celebrated (with grandparents), we then have a relaxing afternoon so that we can prepare for the first of the Christmas dinners.  This year, we continued the tradition of heading to the Seaborns at the Sycamore House to enjoy the annual Seaborn feast.  The feast starts out with appetizers and the obligatory whiskey sour.

And no Seaborn family dinner is complete with not 1 but 2 plum puddings.  This is a photo of the 2nd plum pudding.  Needless to say after this fabulous feast prepared by Geofford's Aunt Carol, we were not hungry for a few days.

Unfortunately for our waistlines, we hosted some of my high school friends at our annual post-Christmas potluck at our new house.  As usual, there was a lot of wonderful food prepared.  After the dinner, we had a Chinese gift exchange (I think that I prefer the terms Gift Grab or Yankee Swap, but that's just me).  You can see in the foreground some of the gifts from the gift exchange (Keating actually stole the gift that he brought, I think that we may have to change the rules for next year).

We had one more big dinner party, with the Chinese Church friends, but Geofford wasn't able to make it so I didn't get to take any photos, but it was a fabulous dinner with a lot of wonderful food at the Chan's new house just next to the canal.

Our last big Christmas celebration was with the Kwoks.  Historically we have spent some Christmases apart (as our in-laws don't live in town) and well we see each other quite frequently, so we decided to celebrate a couple weeks after Christmas Day to be able to spread out our holidays and to take advantage of Boxing Day sales :D, but really is was so that we can celebrate Christmas together without having to rush around to do so.  This was the first year that the celebration was not celebrated in Manotick (this was also only the 3rd year that we celebrated late).  As you can see below, the boys are thrilled to have to dress up for a second family Christmas celebration.

We started off the festivities in Russell where we had brunch.  We also tried to take pictures of the family, but decided that the kids really are the most interesting ones to photograph.  As it was almost nap time, it was difficult to get a serious picture of all of them, but it was very easy to get a picture of them making funny faces.

After the kids naps (I don't think that any of the adults were able to adults napped, and I know for certain that Jaclyn gave up her nap to make Connor's Toy Story 3 cake), we returned to my parents' house for another fabulous Christmas dinner (although I still have yet to roast a chicken properly - I can do turkey, but not chicken...go figure), we were able to enjoy Connor's Toy Story 3 cake, which was the culmination of months of hard work on his part.  We promised him that he could get a Toy Story 3 (emphasis on the 3 because that is what all of the commercials are for right now, and he is 3) cake when he no longer needed diapers.  Unfortunately (but fortunately), this coincided with Christmas (so it was a wonderful Christmas present for Geofford and I) so we decided to delay giving him the cake so that we could have a proper celebration for this momentous occasion.  Congratulations to my little man for achieving this important milestone!

We hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas (or holiday if you aren't Christian) season!

Love, the Seaborns

Back from a year and a bit Hiatus

So my New Year's Resolution last year was to keep this blog better up to date, obviously I failed because there was not a single post from 2010.  Maybe 2011 will be better. :D

Here are some highlights from 2010:

• Wyatt turned 1 in February.  He learned how to walk this year and uttered his first words as well (Dada - same as Connor).
• Connor turned 3 in August.  He also became potty trained which probably more exciting for us than him.
• Geofford made the decision to play Master's Ultimate with GLUM after playing with them Fall 2009.  With GLUM he attended the World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague in July, the Canadian Ultimate Championships in Sherbrooke in August where GLUM repeated as Champions for the 3rd year in a row, the North-east Regionals tournament for the UPA Club Series in Boston in October where they placed 1st to win a spot to go the UPA Championships and finally the UPA Club Championships in Florida at the end of October where GLUM won bronze after losing the semi-final on Universe point.
• Julie got a promotion at work so now is half-way through the development program.
• And the biggest news for 2010 is that Geofford and I bought our first home and moved from Manotick (his childhood home and the home where our kids were born into) to Orleans.

Here are some photo highlights of the year:

This slideshow design personalized with Smilebox

As always, we try and keep our flickr site up to date:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/seaborns/

November!

So I am going to try and take a new approach to our blog.  I have taken this inspiration from my friend Laura's blog.  She is a lot wittier than me, but I have cute kids to distract you from my prose.

When Geofford was away at UPA Nationals in Sarasota at the end of October, the boys and I stayed home.  Connor helped me rake the leaves.  I think next year it may be more useful to get him a rake that is more proportional to his size.

Wyatt tried to help as well, but unfortunately he cannot stand up by himself yet.

It wasn't all work though, Connor also got to play on the new play structure donated to us by Geoff's wonderful ex-neighbours at Georgian Bay (thanks to Ken, Mags, Matt and Jason!).  I think he will be very disappointed next summer when he has to share it with Wyatt.  Right now, he is the only one that is allowed to play on the structure, but that will change when Wyatt can start running around.

Wyatt does not enjoy being outside as much as he is a lot more limited to what he can do right now.  I guess sitting still is not as fun as jumping him his jolly jumper.  I think that once he is more mobile, he will also enjoy being outside like the rest of the family.

The boys got into the Remembrance Day spirit by each wearing poppies.  I can't wait until they are old enough to understand a little more so that we will be able to take them downtown to the Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial.

 Wyatt has also developed a funny new skill.  He can blink.  I think it may be a signal to us that he is tired of getting his picture taken, but we think it is pretty cute.  He demonstrated this skill on his 9-month-aversary.  Whenever my father tried to take a picture of him and the pre-flash would go off, Wyatt would blink.  At his 9-month check-up Wyatt weighed 20lbs 2oz and measured 73.5cm long.  It's hard to believe that my baby boy is already 9-months!

As the Christmas season is almost here (although the stores will have you believe that the Christmas season begins immediately following Halloween), I have been trying out different cookie recipes in preparation for my cookie exchanges.

The first recipe I tried was for Chocolate Sugar Cookies, which didn't turn out as well as I would have hoped.  They had an interesting texture, but I wasn't sure if these were the ones that I wanted to share.

So then I tried a different recipe for just regular Chocolate Cookies and they were a hit.  So pictured below are the cookies that I will be bringing to my neighbourhood cookie exchange.  I'm still trying to decide what to bring to the 2nd cookie exchange.  The 3rd one, we pre-decided what each participant would bring, so that's an easy decision.

As always, we have tons of pictures up at our flickr site, so please keep checking that site and we'll try and update this one a little more often.

We are in the terrible twos....

I think that we have officially entered the terrible twos (or as our daycare provider calls it the testing threes).  Geofford says that Connor has been developing opinions that we haven't given him.  I think part of the change in temperament has been due to the change in our routine.  Since I have been back to work at CCG, the whole family had to get up a lot earlier than the old usual.  Now after about a month, we are finally settling into our routine and the morning routine is a little easier to get through.  There are times though that the cereal that Connor wanted five minutes ago, isn't the cereal that he wants now.

Wyatt is being a great little guy though which really helps.  He is spitting up a lot less now that I am no longer eating/drinking any dairy (who knew that would be so hard) and he is also drinking the lactose free formula at daycare.  We have also started him on solids (so far rice, oatmeal, apples, pears, butternut squash, prunes, peas and carrots), which he really enjoys.  Like his brother he likes the sweeter foods.  I am hoping to be able to go to Millers' this weekend so that I can buy some apples and squash to make some more food for him.

Geofford will be heading to Devens (just outside Boston) this up-coming weekend to compete at the UPA NE Master's Regional Tournament.  (Damian and the rest of the BFC team will be competing at the same time at the NE Mixed Regional tournament.)  If they qualify top-2, then the team (and him) will be heading to Sarasota, FL for the UPA National Championships at the end of October.

Today is my last day of work here at CCG and I am quite excited about my new adventure at Sport Canada.  I have started a new personal blog, but will still be rambling about the family here.   Also, we haven't updated flickr, but here are some of the pictures that I have uploaded to facebook for Alexa and CK's wedding and the 2nd annual Kwok family photoshoot.