Category Archives: Family


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cool shades, man

I kept Henri home from swimming this morning…even though he’s on the antibiotics, he’s still got a bit of a cough and more than not wanting to make anyone else sick, I don’t want him to catch anything else.  (Does that make me a bad person?  Maybe…but a good mom).

When Yannick and Jakob got back they picked us up and we went into town for brunch with my family.  My brother just moved in with a friend and some of us weren’t able to make it to his housewarming party, so we all went for brunch at a place near their condo and then got to go take a tour.

I managed to snap these pics of the boys during the car-ride home.  They were getting sleepy and silly, but were cute as always.

Henri, just chillin’.

Jakob, my little ham.


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self-portrait and sparkles

Was home with the kids today and luckily they were super-well behaved.  They were pretending to be superheroes today, and I caught this cute pic:

Later in the afternoon my sister came by and needed me to draw for her for a school assignment (she’s become an art teacher).  First I had to draw a self portrait:

I copied my current favorite photo, though looking back on it now I made the hair too poofy on the right, and my cheek isn’t big enough on the left (of the picture).  My left eye really isn’t that wonky in person, but I’d erased it too many times and wore out the paper a bit.

Then I had to draw anything I wanted.

I drew a fairy and colored it in with some glitter nail polish 🙂

Once she left and the kids were in bed I go to work binding off part of my project using a bind off I think I created.  But I messed up and realized once I’d done the whole thing that I had to rip it back.  I have no patience to do that now, so I’m going to bed instead.


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getting all dressed up

Tonight I’m going to a party.  This NEVER happens.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I go to my fair share of kids’ birthday parties…but tonight is all about the grown ups.

One of my friends, my grad date, actually, is getting remarried, and we’ve been invited to his engagement party.  We weren’t in touch around the time of his first wedding, so it’s nice to get to share this event with him.  It’s his fiancé’s first marriage, so he gets to do all the celebrations all over again.

Before all the excitement, though, let me share a quick pic of the kids.  I’m home with them on Saturdays and I left them in the den to come and get a coffee.  When I came back they’d tucked themselves in like this to watch Art Pirates and Artzooka!.

Aren’t they adorable?  🙂

So back to tonight.  I had no idea what to wear.  My neighbor lent me some clothes to try on and a navy blue bubble dress that she’d made looked amazing, especially with a funky pair of suede bootie heels, but when Yannick got home and saw me all decked out we both quickly agreed that I looked more like I was going to a wedding, not an engagement party at a synagogue.

But…we were due to leave in 10 minutes.  Aaaa…

I threw this together.  What do you think?  White flowy shirt from H&M, black miniskirt from my sister, black tights and black high-heeled boots.  The silvery clutch was from a set of 3 (with a larger black one and a smaller copper one) from Jean Coutu.  A $12 purchase for breast cancer (they have a pink ribbon charm) that I get a ton of use out of.

Ok now we really do have to go, and I’ve just realized I’m only going to know about 4 people there, and haven’t even met the bride-to-be yet.  Let’s see how this goes…


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another knitless day

What weather we had today!  Freezing rain and snow…luckily after bringing Henri to his 3 year checkup I was able to get him to school and then come home, and not need to drive into town for work.  That was a relief!  (Plus my belly’s been sore and it gets worse after driving from the push/pull of my leg on the pedals, so any chance to not have to drive was welcome).

Henri’s appointment went great, and he’s still 90th percentile for height and weight, meaning he hasn’t slowed down his growth since…birth?  3 months old?  I don’t remember, but he’s been almost off the charts since the beginning.  I assume he’ll slow down and meet up with the average standards at some point, but it’s not happening yet!  He’s only about 1/2 a pound and 1/2 an inch apart from Jakob, and everyone usually assumes they’re twins, especially since they beg to dress alike.

I spent the day working on fondant decorations for his cake for Sunday, so they’d have a chance to dry out a bit and be more stable by the party.  I also made a batch of buttercream icing (so easy and tastes so much better than store-bought!!) and dirty-iced the cake to catch any crumbs before the final decorating tomorrow.  Unfortunately I accidentally made the fondant pieces too big for my original plan, but it’s too late to change the cake so I’ll have to come up with a way to make it work.

No pics today ‘cus I have no knitting or weaving progress, I didn’t take any new photos of the kids today, and I’m keeping the cake a surprise until after the party.  I’d show you my nails but I’m redoing those tomorrow too.

Hope you had a great Friday the 13th!  Ooh- remember the movie Freaky Friday?  I just got a flashback of the original one, with Jodie Foster.  I must have seen it in the 80’s sometime.  I don’t know why it’s reminding me of this, but does anyone but me remember the TV show…what was it called….Rags to Riches?  About a guy who adopts like 7 girls, and they’re always singing, like when the blonde one likes a guy she’s mooning at him through a chain-link fence at a park and singing “I Will Follow Him”?  I used to love that show!


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happy birthday Henri!!

I won’t have time until tomorrow to do the annual chair pics, cus we’ve got our exam in an hour and the boys slept at my parents’. But in the meantime:

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Happy 3rd Birthday to one of the cutest, funniest, smartest and most delicious kids around. He’s an amazing son and the best, most caring brother, and every day does something to bring a smile to my face and make me happy to be his mom. I love you Kookooboo.


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how to start the year off right

All of my boys and I stayed home New Year’s Eve ‘cus both kids had fevers and Yannick’s been on NeoCitran for a week. We all had a nice dinner together then the boys (Yannick included) invented a game with a blanket spread over the floor as “water”, and pillows to be “islands” to jump across. If kids missed a pillow and fell in the water, the Tickle Monster (that would be Yannick) GOT them.

And this ensued:

I think they’re all feeling better, what about you? 🙂


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this new year is broken, i want a new one

I didn’t mean to let so much time go by between posts, but the (Jewish) new year has been rather unkind around here.  Starting the week between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, health and other issues around here went haywire.

There were some good moments, though, and some bust-a-gut, laughing-out-loud moments, like the night I went to check on the boys and walked in to find Henri asleep like this:

He stayed that way while I took the requisite pictures (a mommy’s right) and even slept through me cracking up.

This weekend brought these smiles, when we had a rare day all together as a family and spent some time at the park.

I’ve finished the back and both fronts of my Linden, and that bit up at the top is my first sleeve-in-progress.  That was also all the yarn I had left, so I took a break while Maaike used her spinning wheel to spin up the single cakes into double-stranded skeins, and then hung them to dry.  They’re currently in my basement, nice and dry, and I plan to spin them up tonight.

The break in Linden came at an opportune time, though, as my aunt had a hernia operation last Monday and I wanted to make something for her, so I’ve spent the last week knitting her a pair of cushy slippers.  I’ve just got about 7 more rows on the cuff and weaving in a few ends to go, and I hope to finish that tonight.

I also hope to knit a swatch from one of these babies tonight too.  Next month’s Montreal Knitting Guild meeting is going to be a swatching challenge, and Veronik Avery graciously donated these two cones of Nordique (in Carrot) for our use.  I need to knit up a swatch to know how much yardage one would take, then wind off about 40 mini-cakes- one for each member at the meeting.

Luckily I’ve finished my studying for the night so I can devote the next few hours to knitting.


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henri’s 2nd birthday

Ok!  I’m here with time to post, and post I shall!  🙂

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When for most people things start to slow down after the holiday rush, for me things were only getting started.  As I mentioned last post, I spent the first week of the year making the food for the party.  Over 100 gingerbread man-shaped cookies were baked on Tues, iced on Wed and had faces hand-drawn on Thurs.

On Friday the 7th I rented a 3D Cruiser cake pan from our local cake supply store and baked the car-shaped cake out of chocolate cake mix, and a 9 x 13 sheet cake out of vanilla cake mix.  I was afraid the car cake pan itself wouldn’t be enough to feed everyone.  It took 1.75 boxes of cake mix, but it’s an odd shape, so I couldn’t guarantee it would be cut in a way that would give enough slices.

Saturday the 8th was the actual big day- Henri’s 2nd birthday!

I can’t believe he’s 2 already!  He’s such a big boy, and I mean that quite literally.  Not only has the word explosion hit full force (over 100 words, 15+ songs and 8-word-+ sentances), but he is also a BIG boy- 3 feet tall and 32 lbs 12 oz…the same weight and maybe an inch shorter than his almost 4-year-old brother!  He’s been 95th percentile for height and 75-90th for weight since he was 3 months old.

Henri is my happy, stubborn, silly little monkey.  He’s his brother’s best friend, and the perfect last piece to complete our family.  Every day he makes me so happy to be his mom, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s turned into a Mommy’s Boy.  🙂  Yannick’s not used to having one of our kids turn to me before him, but hey- at least this way we’ve each “got one” LOL.

Once the kids went to bed Saturday night I got down to business.  It took me about 3-4 hours to make my own buttercream icing, tint the colors I needed, crumb-coat and then decorate the cake.  I’m never happy with the cakes I make while they’re in progress, but so far I’ve been pretty pleased with the final outcome, and while Henri’s still a little young, Jakob has been wowed.  (In fact, 2 days after his last birthday party he told me that his cake was a blue dinosaur, which it was, and then requested a red Lightning McQueen cake for his next birthday…a request he has made approximately 856,355,674,301 times since then).

Sunday morning was Henri’s birthday party with all his friends.  The party was Wiggles-themed, from the invites that had a photo of all the Wiggles characters with Henri’s head superimposed on Henry the Octopus, to the 4 yellow, red, blue and purple-shirted cookie men in the lootbags, all the way down to the cake which you’ll see in a minute.  My favorite touch was a special appearance by the “Wiggles” themselves!  I had to promise no YouTube appearance, but as a little treat for Henri my dad, one of my brothers, my cousin and Yannick dressed up in yellow, blue, red and purple tshirts and did a lip-synch to one of Henri’s favorite Wiggles songs- Fruit Salad.  My brother, who wore the red shirt like Murray, even brought his guitar for some “authenticity”.  🙂  My other brother was supposed to do it, but he went to France and missed the party, so my dad was a very gracious Zaida and stepped in to wear the purple shirt.

I was too busy to pull out my camera, but my friend Avi took some gorgeous photos for us:
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Here’s Jakob!
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The birthday boy and Daddy.
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The cake!

The cake was completed around midnight Saturday night, but just before serving (Sunday, 11:15am) I tucked in the 4 Wiggles cookies that I’d reserved.
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The birthday boy and Mommy!
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I’ll leave you with my favorite shot from all of Avi’s pictures.  I love everything about it- and every time I see it, it makes me smile.