Valentine's day

Valentine's is BIG business in canada. it's a little bit confusing, because my soccer coach is called valentinos, and so i thought he was having a birthday party with a soccer ball cake, but apparently that's not the case.

I had a special envelope at school as a mailbox for all the valentines my classmates gave me. we had to give a card to everyone in the class or no one. mom didn't want to help me make 18 cards (plus 2 for the teachers) so we settled for none. i did get some interesting ones though: a spiderman one wishing me a 'webful of excitement', a barbie one and a cars one, as well as hearts and flowers and mushy stuff. we even had to colour a heart at school as a valentine's for our moms.

mom and i went to the library in the afternoon and i had my backpack with me containing mom's card. someone's granny stopped to talk to me while i was doing some computing, so i took the card out of my bag and gave it to her. she asked if she was meant to keep it and of course i said yes. my card is now proudly displayed on a granny's fridge. it's the first valentine's card she's had for years, and it made her very happy. i told mom the old lady looked as if she needed something to make her happy because she looked a bit sad, and i can always make mom another one if she wanted.

Going to Safeway

ollie and mom and i go to safeway's on a regular basis. they've got a great fire truck that doubles as a trolley. ollie and i drive around the store going brrrrm, brrrrm while mom tries to grab a few things we need. it's not long before ollie gets fed up, and wants to walk. that works for a few minutes until he starts pulling things off the shelves at which point we go and visit the cookie lady. if i ask nicely she gives ollie and i both a chocolate chip cookie ! this serves as mom's three minute warning - just long enough to dump a couple more things in the trolley and it's time to go.
however.....today we went to safeway on a field trip with school. we went inside the freezers where they store the icecream. we spoke to the butcher and the flower lady. we even went to the bakery counter but..... ...the cookie lady pretended she didn't even know me!!!

if i had my way, any time is dora time

i'm getting really good at telling the time on my thomas clock. i know when it's 7 o'clock (time for breakfast) and 4 o'clock (time for Dora). i'm a little more vague about when bedtime is though!

it was too early today

dad said at 7am that he was going to church to play music with the youth band today. i told him it was too dark. "why is it too dark to go to church?" asked dad. "because you can't see the blue colour". honestly dad, what a silly question. he went when it was a bit lighter.

it snowed.....

there was so much snow overnight that mom was a bit worried about driving up the steep hill to school, and we weren't sure the teachers would be able to get there either. we decided that we'd all go together.

only one other person was there when we arrived, and no teachers, so we decided to go into the park and build a snowman as big as ollie. we didn't have a hockey stick for him though - unlike the one we built in our garden.


when jasmina and caroline arrived they had great idea. jasmina emptied out the water table, and dad filled it with snow. jasmina filled some pipettes with food colouring and we were already ready to paint snow - it was great. later on we used snowballs to do painting, too.

School photograph day

My very first school photo was kind of a success. Unlike some of the kids i did at least have it taken. In the class photo i'm almost looking in the right direction, even if i didn't manage a smile.

I'm sure dad would have done a better job on my hair if he hadn't been away in Calgary (at the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada Roundtable for Leaders in Youth and Young Adult Ministries (or something like that with the addition of the words: emerging and forum 2008)), and mom didn't even think to use make up to cover the scar on my forehead. Ah well.......i guess it's a true representation of the real me

Robot

Painting a robot is a somewhat messy experience - and no the paint doesn't really wash out

Soccer classes

Finally, after weeks of waiting the big day eventually came. i've been looking forward to starting soocer classes for SO long. first of all i had to wait until school finished, then it was time to go on an aeroplane to england to visit granny, then it was christmas, then it was back on the aeroplane again, then i had three days of school , then i had just one more day to wait until FINALLY it was soccer time.
Mom and dad and ollie all came with me to the big gym at the community centre. The coach got out a big net of soccer balls and lots of goals. But........there were so many kids and they all seemed so big and so good at soccer it was all a bit overwhelming. i cried.
mom came and stayed with me for a bit, and then dad had a go too. i did try and kick the ball from time to time, but there was always someone else trying to kick it too. coach did lots of skills and tricks but it all happened a bit too quick for me. the best bit was at the end when dad was the goalie and i got to score some goals. i don't think ollie will be coming next week, because he kept trying to join in and cried every time mom stopped him from playing with the big boys.


we went out to lunch afterwards too - that was pretty good, although i could do with a bit more practise at using chopsticks