Caiters is 8 Months!

Snot Sauce

Here is my sweet boy trying out his new "inline skates". Cool stuff!

In the car the other day Caleb shared this little nugget of information...

(in a sharply louder-than-normal-people-talk voice): "MOM! If I snuff my nose really hard I get a bunch of snot sauce in my mouth!"

How does a mommy of 4 girls and one boy respond to such a comment? My white flag went up, I had nothing. Nothing. I pronounced this concept "gross" and he smiled at me contently.

What a guy.

Merry Christmas!

This Week In Banmanland

I am having too much fun with my Mom to sit at the computer for too long but here is a little run-down of the happenings around here:)


At the chior performance with Mikayla

Maddie and all her friends from her kindergarten class just before their performance at the Christmas concert at school. (can you find my girl?)

Caleb enjoying the show!

Grandma Bev enjoying the girls at Maddie's Christmas party in kindy. (do you like Cait's baby legs as much as I do??)

My little precious dolly exploring Christmas!

My big girl :)

Mailee's curls for her Christmas show at school.

Smootie Sucker

Cait loves smoothies. The other day I made a smoothie for the family and we were all drinking away when we noticed that Cait was agitated. She was grunting and crying and she was giving us all the "mad face". We tried all the obvious things: checked her bum, showed her some toys, changed her surroundings, offered her a chance to nurse, all with no satisfaction. I carried her back into the kitchen and took a sip of my smoothie and Cait came unglued. Her little birdie mouth opened up wide and she kicked her feet. It was instantly clear what she wanted! Here she is enjoying *my* smoothie!

Win Free Bows!!

Look how cute my friend's little girl Tanner is!

She is sporting some cute lavendar bows from Fig & Ruby kids (otherwise knows as...ME!) I am feeling generous and selfish all at once right now; selfishly I reeeally want to see photos of everyone wearing their bows and to make this happen, I am generously giving away not one but TWO $10.00 gift certificates to Fig & Ruby Kids! Go to the bow blog to check out the details!!!

The drawing is happening december 10th at 10pm so hurry up and get as many entries into the draw as possible!!!

Double Digits!

My little Mikayla turned 10 today! I am not sure how this is possible, seems like it wasn't long ago that she was my first little baby and I doted on her every move! Look at her now, so grown up!

We made these treats together for her to take to school. So easy, we just stuck 2 jumbo marshmallows in a stick, dipped them in melted chocolate and sprinkled them with non perils. She said they were a big hit and they tasted so good. (The rest of us didn't try them... We TRY not to feed our kids this kind of sweetness at home, I made exactly the right amount for school and no extras :)

Double bonus, today was report card day and grade 4 is the first year that the kids get letter grades. Mikayla was thrilled to have all A's and she made the principals list too! She reported to me that this was the best birthday ever. I was pleased to hear it!

We ate Mikayla's favorite dinner; mashed potatoes and home made chicken fingers. Maddie made the name cards. I let her use the paper slicer to cut the cards and my silver paint pen to write on the cards...all with no supervision. She did a great job!

There's my lovely girl :)

Happy birthday Mikayla, I love you so much. We've been together 10 years already(I always tell my kids "you and me, we've been together __ years, I know all about you!")! These have been the most purposeful, busy, exciting and fulfilling 10 years of my life!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We won't be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, we did that in October up here. We will, however, be taking advantage of the big sale at Michael's craft store this weekend and be thinking about all the special people in the States. And just for good measure, I dressed the kids up in fancy clothes for a Thanksgiving photo :)

Happy Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for YOU!

Noah's Arc Day

The school my kids go to skips Halloween. They wait a week and then celebrate "Noah's Arc Day". I helped out in Maddie's class.

She is in the same classroom with the same teacher that both her sisters had (same crafts, same schedule, dame treats...) which makes me a 3 time Noah's Arc Day parent helper veteran! (Oh ya people, I AM proud of that fact, let me have my moment!!)

Here are some photos!

Maddie and Madi in their leopard outfits...they went into the arc "two by two"!

All the animals...and Noah.

Oh MY! Who is that cute little teensy bear?

Rainbow jello.

Yes I made it.

No it wasn't my idea, the teacher gave me the supplies and instructions.

Yes the yellow is missing, it annoyed me too but again, I didn't supply the ingredients.

Yes I have made this before for a few other girls.

Yes, I will likely make it two more times.

No I did not try it, Bleck!

Here's my little leopard! She sat so still at 7 AM to get her face painted. Minutes after I finished Maddie's face, she rubbed her face and smeared it all up. GRRR! She started crying...and crying.(if you know Maddie, you know she is a bit dramatic) The floods of tears made a huge mess of my pretty leopard girl's face! It took a while to get her to stop weeping and realise that her face could only be fixed once the tears stopped flowing. I fixed her up and we were on our way.

side note: Mikayla graciously agreed to forfeit her flamingo face painting fabulousness so that her sister could have her touch ups. What a nice girl, I love it when she is on my team!

Eating Big Girl Food Is Messy!

Mommy's Instructions: "Dear family, please nake-i-fy the baby before feeding her, I have enough laundry as it is"

Long Distance Friends

Last night Cait did not want to sleep. (Perhaps she will be a night owl like me...?) I checked my best friend Gretchen's blog around 12:30AM while little miss wide awake was sitting on my lap. I always click on photos to see them as big as possible, photos are better that way! When I clicked on the photo of Gretchen's little girl, Cait went crazy! She was so excited. She was cooing and waving and bouncing up and down on my lap. We looked at lots of her friend's photos but her favorite one was the one with Sophie in her matching tutu outfit.


Can you feel the love???

"Hi friend!" (touching the computer and leaning in for kisses...)

"that's my friend!" (looking back at me to see if I am paying attention...)

"hi baby" (trying out one of her new tricks on Sophie- waving!)

So sweet!

I can not tell you how much I want to get these two girls (and us mommies) together!

They were born 1 day apart and their mommies have been friends since we were babies...I do believe they are destined to have a special bond!

Snow Days Are Here!

It snowed today in Kelowna! We have our snow tires on, everyone has jackets, boots and mits that fit and we are excited! The kids had fun introducing Caitlyn to her very first snow.

Pretty snowflakes!

Giving the baby a sister squeeze!

First taste of snow....brrr, it's cold!!

Our little crew!

Maddie was wearing the "wrong shoes" and did not want to get in the picture.

busy busy

I have not posted in over a week! I've been busy with the regular kids /family stuff as well as a few side projects; making curly hairbows, making hairflowers, organizing and sorting through Mikayla, Mailee, Maddie and Cait's rooms, making props for the chior christmas performance, planning mikayla's birthday party, working on a few Christmas projects, and making rainbow jello for noah's Arc Day in Kindy tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have some cute photos of that soon :)



Oh and Miss Cait is movin' and shakin! She has gotten really active and is mastering the art of crawling really quickly. (i have a video..perhaps I'll post it on of these days!!)

Caleb is starting to have a little more fun with his baby sister...he plays with her a bit better which is really great!

Have a great weekend!

Before They Rake...

...We had to get a photo with the amazing beautiful colors of fall!!!

Toothy

Lil Cait has a tooth popping through!

Look how proud she is of her new toothy!

Halloween Recap

So the kids had a great time last night. They all loved their costumes. I thought they were pretty cute too! They were all really well behaved and in great moods the whole day so that was an extra bonus!

I told the kids they could find a costume out of the dress up bin this year...they each picked their own. (Except Cait of course)

Mikayla in my old cheer uniform

Mailee in Mikayla's tap performance penguin costume.

She was really proud to add the yellow socks and shoes.

Maddie in Mailee's ballet performance Minnie Mouse.

We borrowed this cute tiger from Ethan. He's growling in this picture.

Oh! There she is again. She didn't mind the scratchy tutu. What a dolly!

Caleb wanted his face painted too.

I snapped a picture just before a major meltdown "I want this OFFFFFF!"

The whole crew on their way to Grandma Cricks. First stop of the evening.

At the mall with Shelley and Terri.

At KCC's family fun night. That's Grandpa Don in camo there.

"Trick or Treat" all 8 cousins at Grandma Sandi's door (the Stang's Grandparents)

It was a fun night. Mike was away at a chiropractic conference in Florida so I was so thankful for all the help from the aunties.