This and That

Swimming

Hello again.  Hope you're surviving the heat!  We've had a couple of super hot days, but have discovered that now that our girls are old enough to go swimming with us, the pond on the mission property makes a wonderful swimming hole. 

  Both girls love to go to the pond, perferably with Otto and Lukas along, but Mommy and Daddy will do if the guys are not around. As you can see we all wear life jackets as the pond is really muddy on the edges and we actually have to use the canoe to get to deep enough water. Maya still wants to be in physical contact when we swim, but Katie is quite happy to do her own thing. We have both girls signed up for swimming lessons this summer so I'm sure their skills, and Maya's comfort level will improve dramatically.

Canning

Summer time means processing time. Over the last couple of weeks we've dealt with Strawberries (freezer Jam), Red currants and Black currants (Jelly)

 Yesterday our new neighbour from downstairs and Michi our newest addition to the family (Michi is one of the german volunteers who will finish off her stay in Canada with us) helped us make black currant Jelly.  We started by picking the berries, boiling it down to make juice and then make the jelly from the juice.  Thanks to Nikki's thinking we also discovered that the otherwise yucky blackcurrant juice is quite nice when mixed with Sprite or Gingerale.  We ended up with 20 jars of jelly and 3 little bottles of juice left over. 

The week earlier Michi helped me make red currant jelly.  It's been really neat to work with these two young ladies and being able to teach/share a bit about canning. 
Our zucchini are growing like crazy so before Michi leaves (end of the month) we'll probably make some zucchini relish, and maybe some pickle beets.  We'll see how things grow.

Too much fun

To make things easier for Uncle Marc to go swimming in the pond (it might be too hard to try to climb into the canoe from deep water) we bought a rubber dingie (sp??) to float him past the weeds and into deep enough water.  Of course we had to blow it up first and the girls just loved playing with it.  As you can see they got along very nicely and they played for a long time quite happily with "the boat".  Unfortunately we have a very curious girl (Katie this time) and she wanted to find out what would happen if you poke it with a knitting needle.  Well... let's just say that what was left of it would not float Uncle Marc.  I think Katie learned an important lesson and Walmart gets to sell a second $10 boat.

Sounds of Switzerland

So every 3 years the swiss choirs all over north america gather together for a competition and a grand concert during a 4 day weekend.  This year the local choir was the host and planned the grand concert at the Center in the Square (one of the largest stages in North America - seats just over 2000).  Mom, Dad and I were asked if we would play the alphorns during the concert.  We've been practicing for months and I think we did a pretty good job.

 After the concert we were happy and relieved.  The tickets were sold out and from the comments I received from the audience they all really enjoyed it.  On Sunday morning I was the guest speaker for the ecumenical church service for the participants of the Sängerfest 2012.  I was nervous, but again, based on the comments I think I did ok.

Potty training?

 Yes, that is Maya sitting on the table trying on Katie's underware.  She has been much more intersted in going potty like a big girl, and wearing UNDERWARE- not diapers.  She did pretty good for the first couple of days, but doesn't seem overly concerned if she wets (or solids) herself.  I think we'll do pull-ups for a while until she learned herself when to go potty and doesn't just wait until I tell her to go, or until she's wet.  We'll try that and see how it goes.  With Katie we rewarded her with Smarties, but Maya doesn't really care so we still have to think up a reward system that means something to her.  Ideas are welcome.

Cooling Off???

 Yup, I've got crazy girls.  Both of them on different occasion have dug up winter hats, mitts, and scarfs to play in.  Mind you it was 30+ degrees outside.  Go figure.

I must say though they both look pretty cute.

Playing Nicely

Don't ask me why, but it seems that there is a direct co-relation between the length of time Katie and Maya play together nicely and the mess they make.  Rarely do they play together without making a big mess somewhere.  I guess I shouldn't be complaining, but I sure hope they'll learn to play without the chaos.  If not, I think I'll still prefer the chaos over the fighting and whining.

So that's us in a nutshell.  July will be busy (as normal) but I hope that I'll update at least once a month or so. 
Blessings to all of you.

Been too long

So it has been over a month since I last blogged, and just in the last day I had two people tell me that they read my blog, so I figured I better give them something to read:)  I also want to mention that I do not like this new format of blogger so I might just give up on making it look somewhat organized and just type wherever blogger decides I need to type.

So the above picture was taken May 2-4 weekend.  Jeff and I had just returned from a week in Ottawa's National House of Prayer.  It was a very informative and refreshing time.  We learned a lot about our federal government and how we can more effectively pray and also be involved in what is going on.  I have been encouraged to do more than just vote and hope that the people in office will then do the right thing.  I want to be more informed and let my representatives know if there is something that I don't agree with.  But our week away really would deserve it's own post and I don't think that will happen anytime soon.  If you are interested in hearing more just let me know. (Or give me a call)

After we got back home it was time to put in our garden.  Jeff was doing most of the work with Katie and Maya helping.  We also had a friend from the group that was staying at the Liebenzell Center come and help.  Jeff was in his element teaching the kids about plants.  I was tired and grumpy and was happy to let Jeff deal with the kids.  I did help plant the tomatoes and peppers and dealt with the kids when they came in muddy and happy from working in the garden.

We planted: Potatoes, Sunflowers, swiss chard, cabbage, beans, carrots, onion (don't think they took), squash, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, basil and beets.  I'll have to take a picture again now that things are growing quite nicely.  Oh yes and we also have some lettuce that we already started eating.

The girls both love the water and have a blast playing in our little pool.  We're happy to have friends that have a good sized above ground pool close by and I'm signing the girls up for semi-private swimming lessons this summer.

Katie and Maya had this bad habit of climbing onto our table in the office to draw on our white board.  And to erase anything that we might have written on it so I decided that since I like their creativity I'm gonna move the board to their room so they can draw without getting into trouble.  They're having great fun and so far the marker only went on the board and not on the walls. 

We were so thrilled to have Katrin come and visit for a week in June.  She was our family helper from Germany when Maya was just 2 months old.  She was like a sister to me and we were so blessed to have her help us out two years ago.  We had a very busy week with her and enjoyed every minute!

This picture was taken at the Killman Zoo near Hamilton.  It was an awesome place to take the kids.  We were able to be as close as 2 feet to Tigers and Lions and other wild cats.  Katie got to hug a turkey and we had fun feeding emus, goats and sheep.  We will definitely go back!

Last week I took the girls to a little park with a friend and her 3 little ones. It was a beautiful morning and we had a lot of fun.  There's a lot that I could still write about, but I'm getting fed up with blogger and will just quite for now. 
I hope you all had a great month and a wonderful summer.  Hopefully I'll write sooner rather than later again, but with Katie almost done school having computer time without a kid either pulling on my arm, or fighting in the next room might be a little harder to come by.
Blessings, UrsiSo I'm having issues with blogger telling me where to write.  Anyway the girls love to play dress up.  They have a whole box of clothes, but 99% of the time Maya wants to be a firefighter (and a cute one at that) and Katie is a beautiful Fairy Princess.

A little bit of lots of things

It's hard to believe that over a month has gone by since I last posted.  Sorry to all those who like to keep up to date.  I guess I should just stop waiting for a moment for things to slow down and just blog even when it it busy.  Not necessarily realistic, but I'll try better.  Either that or give up on blogging for the summer, but I really don't want to do that either as I do feel a connection to especially my sisters-in-law as I write.  Mel, Sarah, Brenda I'm usually thinking of you as I blog.  I miss you all and wish we lived close enough to have real visits.  I guess these little glimpses into our lives will have to do.

As far as this post, it will jump all over the place, the pictures are random and not in order, but I didn't want to fiddle with pics for hours and then not being able to upload them like the last couple of times I tries.  Anyway...

 My cute little Easter girls.  We had a great weekend at the farm with Mueti and Vati and love our tradition of having Jeff's parents come out on Sunday for lunch and Easter fun after.

 Katie and Maya playing nicely together.  You'd think they'd find a place that gives them more room to work, but both of them in the crib (x-mas present from Grandpa - we love them) is how they wanted to play.  And it lasted a lot longer than I would have guessed.  I know I've posted it before, but it is SOOOO nice to have the girls actually playing with each other.  Makes my life a lot easier, and I think theirs more fun.

 Courtesy of Jeff's cousin we now have a dress up chest full of pretty clothes.  Katie always wants to wear her fairy princess dress, wings and hat.  Maya tends to gravitate toward the fire fighter outfit or the helmets.  Yup!!  They certainly are different in a lot of ways!  And it's good that way.

 Today the girls played a good 1/2 hour rolling around with (and in) this tube that normally sits in our yart to protect/mark our well.  They were laughing and having so much fun.  Also notice the hair - it was awesome literally staning out straight out.  Awesome!!

 Taking turns rolling and crawling inside.

 Older picture.  The girls got a bean bag from a cousin and it has been a huge hit with the girls.  They actually can share it and both read a book, or even better read a book together.  I have a video of Katie singing her "Jesus loves me this I know" book to Maya.  So cute, but a bit long for here.

 Fairy princesses. 

Last week we had our friends over for a short notice visit.  The kids had a lot of fun together, inside and outside.  It was so nice to connect again and we hope that over the summer we will have more time to have friends over again.

Anyway, Jeff just came in from doing chores (we had new baby bunnies again a couple of days ago) and we'll just take it easy for a bit before he has to go out to do a campfire with our current Liebenzell guests.

We hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Was gonna blog

Hello there
I really was going to write a post today, but I seem to have trouble uploading my pics, and I know in reality you just want to see pics of the girls anyway. So today you're missing out on the first "mud monsters" of the season. The girls were outside playing, found Gordie's (our dog) water and promply found enough dirt to make some beautiful mud pies. Those ended up in their hair, face, front and back of their clothes. You get the picture. We let them play until they were too cold and then they went straight to the tub, the clothes straight to the laundry.
Today was another busy day in the kitchen for me. I was cooking for our Liebenzell Board of Directors. They have their meeting about 5 times a year and I get to set up and cook. I really do enjoy doing it, but I think after cooking for 25 kids last week my amount was just a litle bit off. Granted, we did have 4 ppl that were unable to come, but I think I had enough food to feed an addition 10-15. I made 3 types of soup (Beef/Lentil/Barley, Broccoli Cheese, and Cream of Potato) Each would have fed 6-10 ppl easy. Plus I made 4 loafs of bread and enough dessert to last us until the end of the month. (They were individual little Strawberry Cheesecake- I placed them in a muffin cup and froze them). I think I still have about 20 left.
Anyway, that was my day today. I'll try the pictures again some other time. Right now my feet are hurting from standing in the kitchen and day and so I'm off to bed.
Blessings to you all.

Another week

We are coming up on a very busy week - I'm cooking for our volunteer retreat (Mon-Thur). Planning, baking, shopping, cooking and just a little bit of spoiling for 20 young Germans between 19-21. This will be the last time we'll see most of them so I'm looking forward to having them at the mission next week. So I'm not sure if I'd get a post in then so here's at least something.

80's Day at school for Katie. Memories anyone??? I didn't want to tackle the fan bangs, but figured the side pony was something both Katie and I could handle.

SISTERLY LOVE
I am still so happy that Katie and Maya seem to have figured out how to play together!!! The only downside is that it seems they must make a huge mess doing so. I guess they usually are pretty good at cleaning it up so I'll just have to learn to not look and just listen to them playing happily together.

Taking tackle hug to a whole new level. Yes, they were both having fun!

Giggles all the way around!

Hope you enjoyed the short spell of hot summer and that it didn't spoil the pleasure of warm spring.

Blessings to all, Ursi

Sunday Afternoon Walk

A post two days in a row!!! At least this one will be shorter:)

After church and a nice afternoon nap we all headed to a nearby Conservation are for a little walk.

Jeff enjoyed having Gordie along too and the girls did great. We did one very small loop as Maya was still dragging from getting worken up from her nap (after 2 hours), but when we had circled back to the van both girls wanted to walk some more so we ended up doing another little loop.

They aren't much for posing for me so this was the best I got of the two of them. The weather was just gorgeous and very hard to believe it was 23 degrees in the middle of March - but I'll take it!!

The girls. Maya got to ride on my shoulders for some of it. Gave me a better work out so maybe I can eat a little extra treat tonight:)

Checking out the "water under the bridge". We were at the park for about an hour and enjoyed it so much! We were talking about doing a Bruce Trail holiday some time when the girls are older. I think it would be a lot of fun. (Reminicent of our Thur Wanderung - growing up our family hiked along the 150 km long river that flowed through our town. It took us about 5 years to completely do it but it is one of my best childhood memories - even though my brothers would testify that I did happen to be grumpy my fair share of time. I guess the hiking took part when I was between 10 and 15 so I blame it on teenage hormones.)

Anyway we had a wonderful end of our march break and tomorrow we're back to school life. No more sleeping in (if you consider 7:15 sleeping in anyway)

Blessings to all, Ursi

March Break

For some reason I had trouble uploading pictures to the blog, (that's the excuse I'm going to use for not posting more often anyway) But now I'm finally getting around to it again.
katie and Maya have been wonderful (most of the time anyway) playing together. They sometimes just sit together and read, play hide and seek, of some form of imaginary play. These are the moments I just love watching them and listening to them. I love that Maya can express herself so much more! It sure makes life a lot easier and less frustrating for all of us.

March Break
We started of our March break by going to Plattsville for the weekend and spending some time with Jeff's folks. It was nice to go away for a couple of nights and get a change of scenery.

Of course you can't go and visit Grandma's house without reading stories together. Katie also brought her books from school and was able to read her story to Grandma. She's really enjoying the challenge and I'm sure she'll pick up reading real fast.

Saturday after Maya's nap the grandparens, the girls and I headed to NewHamburg to their new community center to go swimming. We all had so much fun. The water was nice and warm and Katie and Maya just loved to splash and swim and jump and play. It was nice having 3 adults for 2 children so each of us got to have some kid free moments in the water as well. We'll definitely have to do this again!!

Saturday evening we left the girls in Grandma and Grandpa's capable hands and headed to Kitchener's DelDante for a nice birthday dinner (celebrating Jeff's 35&36th, and Mom and Dad's b-days and anniversary). Thank you again for a wonderful evening, Mueti and Vati (and Uncle Marc)

Since Maya was on holidays at Grosi and Grosvati's house from Sun-Wed Katie had some special playdates lined up too. On Monday we met with a couple of families at our friends' house. The day was not overly cold, but raining on and off but that didn't stop the kids at all. There were 7 kids (2 JKs, and one child for each grade 1-5) They played outside, by themselves, with hardly any issues for almost 3 hours. Us moms got to sit and chat, play a game, drink tea, chat some more... it was awesome! Then when Rhoda and her 3 kids left Katie and I got to stay for a yummy supper and didn't get home until 7 p.m. (Oh yeah Jeff was home sick but he enjoyed the quiet house, just him and the dog.) He's feeling better again, just in case you're wondering.

On Tuesday Katie and I went to Elmira to visit our friends. While I was able to have a very nice visit with Glenna, Katie and Dylan played together very well. Among other imaginative play they found some dress up clothes and played Trick or Treating. They both filled up their paper bags with all kinds of pretend treats from around the house. We stayed there for lunch and early afternoon and then headed out to get some groceries and then to pick up Uncle Marc. It was a great Tuesday!!

On Thursday we were planning to go to a park, but on they way stopped at our neighbour's farm to check out the chicken, geese, cats, horses, cattle and all the other critters Mr. Charlie has. The girls had fun exploring and finding new animals around every corner and I enjoyed a chat with our friends.

Today I was helping a friend getting her house ready to sell while the girls were at home with Daddy. They had a lot of fun going shopping (Canadian Tire, HomeDepot - you know the Daddy stores) and in the afternoon they were working hard cleaning up our back yard! And when I got home Jeff was already busy getting supper ready (BBQ Venison Tenderloin - sooo good). And tomorrow we have nothing planned other than church. It's supposed to be a wet day so maybe we'll go to an indoor play center or something. Or just stay home and not much else.

I hope you had a wonderful march break and I wish you a great new week!