It’s with a heavy heart that…

…I have to report the sudden illness (read: death, but tell no one) of Luka’s favourite bunny, Lizzie. Just Sunday night Luka was carrying her around the living room, saying things like “Isn’t she the perfect size?” “Don’t you think she is so beautiful?” “She is the softest thing I ever felt.” “Doesn’t she look [...]

Hallowe’en: a few new tricks!

Hallowe’en was fabulous! We did several things differently this year, and all of them worked out, surprise, surprise. 1) I waited until THE NIGHT BEFORE to buy the chocolate candy. Gummy things and white-and-orange-and-black lollies I picked up weeks ago, but since we usually always eat the mini chocolate bars way before Hallowe’en night and [...]

Things I Love Thursday: party invitations

This blog carnival is called Things I Love Thursday. The rules are simple: “pick an actual thing that you love. Feel free to do a product review, but make sure to let your readers know that you have been supplied with the product to review so we are keepin’ it honest.” This isn’t a true [...]

Newsflash: puppy has a name(s)

Our little puppy has a name, and it’s Clover. A couple of days before we got him, Luka had asked me a constant stream of questions about four-leafed clovers: “why are they lucky?” “who says so?” “where can you find them?” “what if you eat one—will you be really lucky?” “can you buy four-leaf clover [...]

Friday catch-up

Who made these fabulous thank-you notes? These are the thank-you notes I used in yesterday’s post, Things I Love. They are handmade by Nat, a Canadian mum living in Indonesia. She sells her cards and paper crafts on the Etsy website, a community where artists and artisans and crafters and thousands of creative types sell [...]

The 2008 Summer Olympics at my house

In China’s culture and art, fish and water designs are symbols of prosperity and harvest, so Beibei carries the blessing of prosperity. A fish means surplus in Chinese culture, another measure of a good year and a good life. The lines of the water-wave designs are taken from well-known Chinese paintings. Beibei is known to [...]

Happy Canada Day!

The kids had a great day, and I’m almost ready to file my GST! Score! Happy 141st birthday to the best country in the world! and, yes, he does need a haircut, but he is totally into his “surfer” style right now, and for a kid learning to swim on his own, if “surfer” hair [...]

Best insurance in the world: dance lessons OR Tessa’s final showcase 2008

Tessa and her favourite jump, in her studio, Etobicoke School of Dance. The Big Showcase was Wednesday night, at Leah Posluns Theatre, and she shone. Her dad’s parents came, along with dad, us and two of Tessa’s best friends. Laura and Kara acted as programme girls, I showed in a couple of latecomers, and then [...]

Four years of survivorship and counting!

Today, June 24 2008, marks four years of EFS for my 15-year-old son, Graydon. EFS, for the non-cancer-speakers, is “event-free survival.” While I surely wouldn’t say the last four years have been event-free, there hasn’t been any more leukemia in Graydon, and that’s what we’re celebrating. Survival rates for childhood cancers have increased steadily for [...]

WFMW: You know it was a good party when…

You know it was a good party when you open the front door the next day and see an elephant on the lawn. In this case, it was a mid-sized grey elephant sitting in the middle of the yard of the genus Webkinz, and I didn’t drink him into existence, he was a birthday gift [...]