A Week in the Life... June 7-13

Rowan shows off his climbing skills at Thames Park on a beautiful sunny Tuesday

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Sophie goes for a slide with Rowan close on her heals

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Getting ready to assemble some of the components of the new student Welcome Package for Tecumseh Public School

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Giving new meaning to the phrase "who let the cat out of the bag?"... when our cat George crawled into Sophie's MegaBlocks bag, she zipped it up and started carrying him around, quite pleased with herself!

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Progress is being made on the wedding invitations... slowly but surely!

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And the scheduling sh*t has officially hit the fan. I worked most of last week on the wedding invitations for Heather & Shawn's wedding, and was dismayed at the fact that I didn't see as large a dent in the "to do" list of their creation as I had hoped... now this week my focus on the invitations came back to bite me in the butt as the other things I had ignored last week suddenly reared their heads. In the space of this week I needed to host a planning meeting for the school newsletter, write a grant application, meet with the school Principal twice, create and send out a set of meeting minutes, attend an Internet Safety workshop, put together (with help, thank goodness) 100 Welcome Packages for new students arriving at the school for orientation next week, run a wine tasting, take Sophie to gymnastics, look after Rowan twice, and donate blood. If you're tired just reading this, imagine being the one doing it! My panic over my lack of progress on the invitations means that most nights after Sophie's asleep I've been pulling my supplies out and cutting, gluing, embossing, measuring, layering and creating deep into the night. What a week... and I know that next week will be just as busy, if not more so. I'm thankful it's June, because I am now counting down to the magical time when school is out for the year and vacation begins... I really need it!

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A Week in the Life... May 31 - June 6

Gearing up for World Cup, Sophie and I play soccer in the park

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Fiskars: my new papercrafting heros!

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Volunteer Fabienne helps Sophie plant sunflowers at Tecumseh

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Sophie keeps the beat as part of a drumming circle at the Gathering on the Green

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This week began a real buckling-down for me, after being away for a couple days last week. My biggest project (aside from wrapping up a whole lot of volunteer commitments before the school year ends) is working on my cousin Heather's wedding invitations and reply cards. Once my mom left on Monday and Rowan went home for the day, I started measuring and planning... and discovered that I was one supply short to do a proper job cutting the card stock. I've been using the same 12" Fiskars paper cutter for probably 10 years, and its cutting matte is definitely showing its age. If I wanted clean, straight edges I knew I needed a new one, but the problem with owning a product for that long before it wears out is that it can be very difficult to get replacement parts. The company still makes a 12" cutter, but it's been redesigned and takes a different size matte now - after either going to or calling every craft, paper, scrapbooking and office supply store in London I started to panic. I'll give a huge shout out to Fiskars at this point, because I called them and explained what I was looking for and why... rather than directing me to someone who could sell me one they actually sent it to me themselves, free of charge. Excellent customer service - it's just a cutting matte but it's something that I'll tell people about and that gesture ensured them a customer-for-life from me. Other, non-wedding-invitation-related events this week included the JK and SK students planting sunflowers at Tecumseh (such a great experience, as they get to watch them grow over the summer and help harvest the plants in the fall), and our yearly trip to the Gathering on the Green, a wonderful neighbourhood festival held on the grounds of the Monsignor Feeney Centre. A busy week yet again, with every moment filled with either work or fun!

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A Week in the Life... May 24-30

Getting cooled down on a hot spring day... Rhys, Rowan and Sophie enjoy the sprinkler!

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Taking a dip in the pool at the Royal York - the grande dame of Toronto hotels

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Mom, taking a break and getting some well-earned nourishment at Fresh

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On my way up the curving outside staircases at the AGO (one of the only places we were allowed to take pictures)

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Two very happy concert-goers, waiting for James and Carole to come out and "wow" us!

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What a wonderful, crazy week! My volunteer events included a South Alumni Association meeting, hosting a Coffee Drop-in session at Tecumseh and attending their yearly Volunteer Appreciation luncheon, and at home our house was a revolving door of kids, family members, and fun. On Thursday morning my mother (who arrived into town on Wednesday) and I boarded a VIA train and took off for a couple of special days in Toronto - just the two of us. We packed those days with so much walking, sightseeing and action that I'm sure we did at least a week's worth... aside from enjoying the general ambiance of the Royal York hotel (where we stayed), we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Bata Shoe Museum, the Eaton's Centre, and a couple of amazing little restaurants (if you haven't eaten at Fresh, we strongly recommend you try it out!) The highlight of the trip was Friday night, when we had tickets to see James Taylor and Carole King live in concert at the Air Canada Centre. If you know me well, you know I am a huge fan of James Taylor... his music represents the soundtrack of much of my life, from when I was a young child through today. This was my fourth James Taylor concert, and it was incredibly special to be able to share it with my mother, who despite being of the "right age" to have grown up alongside the singer/songwriters and hippie-types of his generation, has never seen him in concert. She is also more familiar with Carole King than I am - I knew who she was and of course knew a few of her songs, but that was about it. The concert was so very cool... as part of the James Taylor fan club (told you I was a long-term fan!) I had an early crack at tickets before they went on sale to the general public, so we ended up with floor seats in the 20th row. Excellent seats, but what made them so special was that we just happened to be sitting on the outside aisle, right beside the entrance to the stadium from the backstage dressing rooms. Unless we had stage-side seats, we couldn't have gotten any closer to James Taylor and Carole King - each time they entered or exited the stage they walked right past us... it's a good thing that I have self control because being within touching distance of my musical icon really tested it. It wouldn't have been that bad to try and breach the security detail, would it? The whole thing was just great, and watching my mom get so caught up in the wonder of seeing these two artists she's loved for so many years, singing songs she knows and loves... it just made it that much more special. Needless to say, when we returned home on Saturday evening we were exhausted and extremely satisfied.

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A Week in the Life... May 17-23

Enjoying a sunny day at the park with Uncle Alan

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A picture of Great-Grandma and Uncle Alan, taken by Sophie

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Chris, showing off his "tickle fingers" (picture care of Sophie, yet again!)

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Sophie and Courtney play "soccer" in Springbank park at Courtney's birthday party

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Sophie enjoys a more sedentary roll-the-ball game with Brandon at the park

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I think we'll call this "Family week", although I don't believe the government would recognize it as an officialy holiday. On Wednesday Uncle Alan flew into town from the East coast and we enjoyed a very full day of activities together before he drove off to spend the week visiting with my Grandmother in Wallaceburg. We spent part of Thursday at Chris's sister Mary's house where we had a nice quiet family lunch before Summer headed off for an afternoon of school-related meetings. After a fun day playing with Rowan on Thursday, on Friday we drove up to Wallaceburg to visit with Uncle Alan and Grandma, then spent Saturday at Springbank park surrounded by family celebrating Courtney's birthday. We can't remember the last time we saw this many family members so close together - it was great!

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A Week in the Life... May 10-16

Summer with some of her Book Club friends - the few, the proud, the "Gertrudes!"

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Our walk along the Thames River

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The Old Courthouse near the Forks of the Thames - a beautiful shot by Chris

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Starting the weekend with a cup of coffee at the London Farmers Market (thanks to Sophie for this shot!)

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This week was much less "meeting-y", which was nice... but a busy one none the less. We welcomed Rowan three times and Rhys once (which always keeps the house jumping), Summer spent time with her Book Club friends at their monthly meeting, and we carried on with the rest of the week bouncing from meetings to family dinners to Chris's busy work schedule to play dates. We took some time out on Tuesday to take a long family walk around the forks of the Thames, travelling from Harris park up through Blackfriar's bridge and down to Ivey Park before heading home, and enjoyed a quiet Saturday morning at one of our favourite haunts, the London Farmers Market. Nice week...

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A Week in the Life... May 3-9

Sophie and Rhys share Popsicles and giggles on the back porch

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Can I offer you a sample of a lovely and affordable French red?

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Tea time!

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Me and my girl on Mother's Day

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Well they say "home is where the heart is", which must mean I spent most of the week being "heartless"! One of the busier weeks in recent memory, I hosted a meeting at Tecumseh to plan next month's newsletter, attended a meeting at the School Board offices to learn about upcoming changes to their Food & Beverage Policies, attended the AGM for the South Collegiate Alumni Association (where I sit on the Board), attended a two-day Healthy Schools conference, and ran a wine tasting for the LCBO. Thank goodness for Sunday, when I had the chance to relax a bit and celebrate Mother's Day with a special tea party at Once Upon a Teacup. We had originally planned to hold Sophie's birthday party there this year, but once we got a good look at her list of invitees (which were more than 50% male) we rethought the tea party idea and decided on a gymnastics party at The Little Gym instead. But we really wanted to enjoy a fancy tea there anyway, and Mother's Day seemed like the perfect opportunity - so Shirley, Mary, Courtney, Laura, Sophie and I made a "date" to have lunch. It was very cute - dress-up clothes and little pots of tea, nice sandwiches and a special two-tiered tray of goodies for Sophie... a great way to wind down a very busy week!

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A "Welcome" Overhaul

As many of you will have noticed, it's been quite some time since our photo-of-the-day blog "Welcome Home" has been updated. First: the apologies... We're sorry we've been bad bloggers, not following through with our mandate of a daily posting. Second: the excuses... life over the past couple of months has been busy, to say the least. The end of the school year meant deadline after deadline hurling at us, and we had to put personal business on the back burner so Summer could fulfill the commitments she had made both personal and to the school. As she joked to someone recently, "I was too busy living life to have time to write about it!" Now that summer break has arrived (picture our whole family doing the happy dance here) we find ourselves with a bit more time on our hands - so back to blogging we go. That said, there will be changes here at "Welcome Home"... rather than keeping up with the photo-of-the-day theme only to face the reality of falling off the tracks once school starts again in the fall, we're switching formats. Photo-of-the-day will now arrive weekly and feature a selection of noteworthy events throughout the previous week... less pressure on us to produce a daily blog, but with all the fun, photo-worthy moments from before. Hope you like our new "week-in-the-life" format... please let us know what you think!

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