The Most Popular House

We have become The Most Popular House On The Street this week. And this is why:

Yes, we got the trampoline put together on Sunday. It only took C and I between two and three hours to get it put together. It probably would have taken less time if we had put some of the parts together the right way the first time. C did the hard part of pulling the springs into place. S was happy she got to help by retrieving springs from the box for us.

Once it was done the circus began. First one kid and then another and another showed up in our backyard. I had to start timing bounce sessions so that everyone was getting a turn. We started out with just one kid at a time but we bumped it up to two kids because it was taking a long time for everyone to get a turn even with the timer set to two minutes. Many children went home very tired yesterday evening.

Today as soon as the kids got home from school they wanted to go bounce. S's friends came over to bounce with her and then J's friend came over too. Things were going well until it was time for J's friend to go home. I was trying to get supper started and J's friend couldn't find his bike helmet. We spent a good 20 minutes running around trying to find his helmet. Finally he walked his bike home and discovered he had left his helmet there. Oops!

Things went back to being calm for a few minutes and then more kids showed up to use the trampoline while I was trying to make supper which made it tough for me to supervise them. But then C got home and he was able to keep an eye on the kids while I got the food ready.

I've already decided that the trampoline will be closed tomorrow. Both of my kids need a break from jumping and S has soccer. I want her to have energy for running around and jumping on the trampoline wears her out. I have a feeling the neighbourhood kids will be disappointed the trampoline is closed but the kids do need a break.

It was a busy day for me today. I went out and got us some camping supplies for our camping trip in a few weeks. Then I went to the fruit and veggie market and then to the grocery store. A new fruit and veggie market opened near us a few weeks ago and so far I've been impressed. Their prices are lower than the grocery store and the quality of their food is as good or even better than the grocery store. And I like supporting local small businesses.

After putting away all the groceries I had to take my car into the dealer to find out why it was making that awful rattling sound. It turned out to be loose heat shields. They ended up removing the back heat shield and adding clamps to the front one. Problem solved! The other day the tire pressure light had come on and I asked them to check that out for me. I'm glad I did because it turned out that I had a nail in my tire which they fixed after they took care of the heat shields.

Shellac update - I am incredibly impressed with the shellac. I figured my all my nails would be starting to show some wear or be chipping by now, especially after helping put the trampoline together yesterday. So far only one nail has had any problems:

The pointer finger on my right hand has a chip in the bottom. You can also see where the split in my nail has opened up. I expected it to start chipping around the split but it hasn't. My nails are starting to grow so you can see a small space at the bottom of each nail, which is expected. I am very happy with how well the shellac is holding up with all I do with my hands every day.

New Shoes!

New shoes were purchased today although not for me. The kids needed new shoes to get ready for the summer. Here in Canada kids have two pairs of shoes for school - an inside pair and an outside pair. In the winter the outside shoes are usually snow boots but at other times their outside shoes are just regular shoes. Having an inside pair of shoes prevents the kids from tracking all sorts of stuff into the classrooms.

J has just about worn out his outside school shoes. They have a hole in the side and he's just about worn through the heels to the soles. I took him to get a new pair of shoes to close out the school year.

The new shoes are lightweight and should hopefully last through the summer. We'll get him a couple new pairs of shoes in late August for school. His current inside shoes will become his "nice" shoes for over the summer since he amazingly kept them in good condition all year.

S also got a new pair of shoes. She requested shoes with laces instead of Velcro because she taught herself to tie shoes and has been practicing it at school. I expected her to pick the shoes with sparkles and glitter on them but instead she picked a rather simple pair (which were more expensive of course!)

She's very excited about wearing her new tie shoes to school tomorrow. I also had both kids try on their summer shoes. I was surprised to find that S's sandals, both her closed toe and open toe ones, still fit her. Of course J's sandals don't fit so I'll have to get him a new pair of those. I'll do that in another week or so.

In the knitting world, I finished a pair of gloves the other day because you know, winter is coming. I almost had to wear them yesterday since it was 8C/46F. On June 3rd. Yeah. Welcome to Canada. Anyway, here they are:

I'm not sure I like the buttons; they are pink the gloves are more a purple colour. I just placed them in the correct position for the picture. I'm thinking I may stop by the fabric store tomorrow when I'm out and pick up some different buttons. Who knows, I may still end up with the pink ones.

I've started two other projects in the mean time. One is a cool shawl made of a raw silk in a pink colour and the other is a long cowl. For the cowl I'm using my Sip-n-Stitch yarn, which is a bamboo wool blend. I'll take some in-progress pictures tomorrow since I just started the cowl and it doesn't look like much yet. I'll work on it tonight while we're watching Marco Polo unless we get our new fire pit going and sit out there for a while.

Today has been much nicer than yesterday. It was warmer and the sun was out which was a nice change from the cold, dampness of the past few days. J decided he wanted to ride his bike to school today so we let him. He met up with a couple of friends and they made their way safely to school and back home. He was tired when he got home but he had a good time riding his bike and plans to do it again tomorrow.

Tomorrow is suppose to be another nice day. I have some cookies to bake in the morning for the kids' Spring Carnival at school. After I deliver them I may have to go down to the RibFest they are having at the racetrack or else head out to the beach to our favourite seafood shack. If I don't make it out there tomorrow I will definitely get out there this weekend. I can't wait for one one their lobster rolls!

Lego Day

Today marks one month of my daily blog! I started on January 5 and now it is February 5. I'm hoping I can keep going to make it to March 5. Go me!

Today is a storm day, although I'm still trying to figure out why. It was snowing some this morning but the roads have been worse and it stopped snowing for quite a while. It rained for a bit which caused garage flooding (an on-going problem) and now it's snowing again but it's big wet flakes. The kids would be getting home from school about now normally and the roads are fine. Considering they've only been to school 4 days in the past two weeks I think they should have gone today.

But since I don't make that decision, I had the kids home with me. They were leaving each other alone for a change so I decided to work on the Lego set J got me for Christmas. I thought about writing but I knew as soon as I started they would start fighting and the Lego set has been sitting there awhile. It is The Hobbit Lake-town Chase set. This made J want to put together his MineCraft set from Christmas so I took one side of the dining room table and he took the other. S wanted to put something together too but she had already done all her sets from Christmas. J found a monster truck set in his room that had most of its parts so she put that together.

Here's my finished set:

It is a cool set. It was complicated enough to keep me interested but not so complicated that I couldn't finish it in a few hours (I had to take breaks to feed the kids, help S with her set, etc). I have a feeling we'll have more Lego days if I can make it it to Target tomorrow (the hubby took my car today because it's 4WD) since Target has started it's liquidation sale and Lego sets are on sale. Excuse me while I am sad for a bit about Target closing here in Canada. :-(

Anyway, Lego time was fun. J actually built is set all by himself. He likes the Lego sets better than the MegaBloks sets because of the way Lego sorts things out into numbered bags for you. This also worked out well for me because it gave me a natural stopping point to do other things. I have a few sets still in bags from the move up here that need to be put back together. Maybe tomorrow I'll let S work on one - she loves building things and has a good eye for detecting what's different from one picture to another. Or maybe, if the weather cooperates, we'll hit up Target and see what they have left. I did buy some sets on clearance a few weeks ago but I want to save those for birthday presents for the kids.

After my set was done, I did spy J eyeing the figures that came with my set. He loves playing with the mini-figs and is always joking about stealing some of mine. I'll have to keep an eye on my sets to make sure none of my mini-figs disappear. :-)

So far it's been a good day. And now I shall go make it better by getting myself a cup of tea and reading through what I wrote yesterday. S went outside and J is playing video games so I might actually get some writing/revising done. Or maybe I'll just curl up with my tea and knit for a bit. Either way, there will be tea involved!