My sneaky kids.

Well, again the summer has left me not blogging much. Between getting the plans ready for the ark and trying to keep up with the chores that needed to be done between deluges as well as entertaining some fairly muddy, or on all out rain days cagey kids I left blogging to a day when I could get to it.
But every now and then I have a conversation with one of my kids that leaves me thinking...I really can't pass up putting that one online. Last night I had one such exchange.
Nadine can't help but tell on herself. It's like she's aching to tell me how tricky and sneaky she is but she's irritated when she then becomes busted. She doesn't see the correlation and for that I'm thankful.

Nadine (running in from outside): Hi mom
Me (working on dinner and not looking): Hi sweetie what are you guys up to? (in cheerful tone)
Nadine: Oh nothing. I'm just walking up the stairs sideways with my hands behind my back.
Me: What are you up to? (stern tone)
Nadine: oooooooh nothing. Not one thing.
Me: Bring whatever you have here.
Here I'm imagining her with frogs in one hand and mice in the other heading up to add them to her 'collection'. She likes to collect whatever she finds.
Nadine: Moooooom I just want to take it upstairs and I promise to throw it away.
Me (unable to leave my post that moment at the stove): WHAT! Bring whatever you have to me right now and show me.
Nadine: Can I just tell you what it is.
Me: Yes tell me while you're walking over here to show it to me.
Nadine (while making an audible huffing sigh): Ok fine, it's just a dead bug.

Ryan is also notorious for telling on himself.
Me: Ryan did you dump the dogs water?
Ryan: Yes mom I did
Me: Didn't I just ask you not to dump the dogs water
Ryan: Yes mom

Braeden has become BUSY. I've lost a lot of stuff to him in the last little while. Well not really lost it's more that I know where the stuff is but it's inaccessible to me. For example all of my container lids are now stored conveniently in the very small space under the dishwasher. I am totally aware of their location but am not able to access the services of those lids. Some things I'm fairly confident have headed down the toilet and a lot of stuff is inside the water jug that we water the dogs with. Those things are accessible it's just really really really hard to shake them out of the water jug. So he keeps me on my toes. I'm thinking of reorganizing the kitchen to leave nothing in the bottom cabinets at all...like nothing. His vocabulary is growing as is his charming and somewhat determined personality.

This summer all the rain has made the weeds and seemingly the kids grow. The kids have gained some height, and I've been successful at growing Canada thistle and hawksbeard that is as tall as I am. I'm hopeful that it will be dry enough to successfully weed the garden soon.
The kids have taken up eating more than Tim and I. I'm happy we're adding 12 more laying hens to our farm as the kids are each eating 2 eggs every morning, yes even sometimes Braeden...yeesh I don't know how I'm going to afford to feed them when they're teenagers.

Well we're now at the what I refer to as the relentless request portion of our morning so I should go try and seem maternal.

It's been really wet. A good year for mushrooms and frogs.

and mom's lilies

a happy lap full of peeps

this backhoe does a great 360' the rest of us are learning to stay out of the zone.

these two are evolving into very good buddies.

Braeden is often found sliding, and then climbing up and sliding again, sometimes head first sliding leading to a face full of grass or dirt. He's happy with any kind of dismount.

just fiddling

and more fiddling.

I seem to have no title for this.

Ya, so it's been a while. Between my lack of time and a vow of silence (sort of) I haven't been on here much. I realize though that there are a few things I really should update you on.

For example. In case any of you  have young boys who are obsessed with construction equipment and are having trouble potty training them, Ryan gave me a few things to think about with my extended (albeit long since successful) potty training extravaganza with him. Recently while he was working his magic he told me "Mom, I've dumped a big load into this pot and now my bum is empty."
Now there was an approach I'd never tried with him. Make it into a Bob the Builder "on site" episode. I'll be locking that away in the vault for the point that I have forgotten the scars of potty training and start in with Braeden. Unrelated to potty training. Ryans working on this move here.

Braeden continues to astound me with his leaps forward in development. He fancies himself quite a little big man. He is blissfully unaware of a size or ability difference between him and his siblings, playmates, parents, or any other person. His lack of size can sometimes frustrate him. He's at this point only able to clear the bottom cabinets and he'd really like to get at the higher ones. He can, and has, moved the chair to the counter to get on the chair, to get on the counter, to get in the upper cabinets. He's a problem solver that one.
We've lost a few toys to the toilet, and I'm sure some other things that I'm not aware of. We've also lost a lot of sleep. The mosquito's are very fond of Braeden's softy lily white chub. I have thereby spent many a night skritching his itchiness. He continues to work on a few new teeth, several new words, and his temper. He's pretty much got the temper one down pat but he likes to keep up the skill of expressing his frustration and discontent. You'd hate to get rusty at something.

Nadine came to me yesterday and declared "A very sad thing has happened!" Now as she carried her trough from her playmobile barn set she showed me Betty. I didn't know she had a pet fly named Betty but she did, and Betty had died, and it was very sad. A sad, sad day indeed. We've laid Betty to rest in with the hosta plant that is waiting to be moved outside.
Nadine: She was my very good friend and I loved her.
Me: Well aren't we glad we had the opportunity to have her as a friend.
Nadine:  *sniff* WAAAAHHHHH
Me: *tries not to smile* Awe honey I'm sorry about Betty.

Anywho, aside from all of that. I continue to take a idiotic amount of pictures. I'd like to say I was running regularly but between Tim's schedule, my schedule, and the kids schedule, I'm content to fit it in now and then and work toward that being a regular part of my life when all the other parts of my life become regular...we'll see.

I found this and it made me smile.
http://geniustypes.com/signs_of_insecurity/

now for a barrage of photos

Canada Day

One of my favorite Veterans :)

a bit of macro stuff

the kids sharing a 'comprello' (I wish I could figure out how to spell what he calls quinoa)

Ryan on his new digging delio

beginnings of a highway

pretty classic family picture, everyone has one. Boy on backhoe, girl with 4' high giraffe...

Nadine blissfully riding at a family bbq

Charming McCharmypants

Braeden likes to spray the water hose.

often at people

but when you take it away to go inside to get ready for bed...sadness

woeful despairing sadness.

Questions, answers, and who-ta-hoops.

I know I was just on here the other day but today's discussion on our walk was just too good not to share.
Since turning 5 and now finishing kindergarten my eldest child has become an absolute wealth of information. Wealth. This wealth of information has made my insights irrelevant, completely and utterly irrelevant. Interestingly enough though the questions haven't stopped. I find that curious but I'm happy for the questions and happy enough for the updated answers.
This evening on a walk our exchange about this phenomenon went like this.
Nadine: (insert a zillion questions here)
Me: (insert applicable answer, or so I thought)
Nadine: No it's not, it's (insert updated more accurate answer here)
After a few exchanges such as this.
Me: It's weird you know, last year when we would go for walks your dad and I would know the answers to these questions but this year we don't seem to be getting any of them right.
Nadine: That is weird. REALLY weird.
Tim and I smiled. :)

In other news...Braeden has taken up "who-ta-hooping", last year known as hula hooping but not this year (see above exchange with Nadine). Braeden's version of who-ta-hooping involves him standing inside the who-ta-hoop and spinning around clapping until he falls over. It's a great sport.

Thoughts, questions, and helpful hints from my peeps.

How is one to respond to the following?

Nadine (while watching the June blizzard through the window): See mom you never should have taken the snowsuits downstairs.
Me: Yes you make a very good point.

Nadine: Mom, I still want to be a vet
Me: That's really cool, when I was your size I really wanted to be a vet too.
Nadine: But instead you ended up being a mom.
Me: True
Nadine: Maybe someday we can be vet's together
Me: Maybe
Nadine: Where do you go to have vet lessons? Are there kids there?
Me: Why don't we just conquer grade one first

Nadine: Mom be careful standing on that chair?
Me: Why's that?
Nadine: Because you're SSSOOOOOO big you might break it.
Me: Thanks for being concerned about me sweet pea

Me (to Ryan): Good night buddy I love you
Ryan: Ya, you do but I don't
Me: huh?
Ryan: I just like Dad
Me: Well have a good sleep anyway.

Me: Ryan you can NOT dig up my garden
Ryan: Sure I can mom I'm a backhoe

Ryan (making a subtle protest about not wanting to watch Horten Hears a Who): Dad, Nadine likes puppy shows...THAT is an elephant.

Or what is one to do with a little boy (Braeden) who loves to stick his finger in his belly button and say "poke poke poke poke". Yes that part is cute but has unfortunately morphed into wanting to stick his finger in every one elses belly button to say "poke poke poke poke" WAY less cool.
He's also taken a header into the kids play pool and came up with a sputter, and a laugh. He can do a backwards, and quite graceful dismount off of the couch and really stick the somersault landing. At the moment he's standing on his wheeled ride on dinosaur thing.
Alas we are a charming work in progress on all fronts here.

Nadine's last day of school ensemble. The rubber boots left a very black line from the top of the boots to her toes on her tights.

Her graduation, or 'crasheration' as they're known to Ryan.

Looking ready for summer vacation and grade 1.

It's hard for me to find pictures of Ryan that don't have his face covered in either dirt, or ketchup...go figure.

Braeden would like to figure a few of these things out.

He really really really likes Tim's motorbike (who is blurrier than I'd hoped for this picture). Braeden is reliably disappointed to not be able to go along.

Stethoscope etiquite

Nadine has found my stethoscope and has been practicing with it. She often will come up and plop it on me, or one of her brothers to listen for...she's not sure, but is learning.
Nadine (with ears plugged thereby yelling): Mom I can hear your sniffing. Is that your sniffing? or breathing? It sounds like this *takes a few deep breaths herself*
Me: That's breathing honey.
Nadine (still yelling now with a confused look): Is your heart beating today?
Me: Yes I believe it is, it should be here *locates heart sounds for her*
Nadine: oooooh it's like a musical tune. You're cold.
Me: yes a little bit.
we listen for a bit to the "air puffers and heart thumpers"
Nadine (still yelling): Mom I want to be a vet for lovely animals, not a cold music hearted nurse.
Me (smiling): Good choice.

We now have a new rule that you can't pin down your brother to listen for his air puffers.

Stuff about May

Sitting here after returning home from an incredibly long day at work left me thinking..holy crap it's May 23rd. How in the heck did it become May 23rd, combined with why is it only May 23rd?

May has been a REALLY LONG month that went very fast. That makes no sense I realize but it's how it seems to me. I've been quite neglectful of my blog, but I'm not sure I could have changed that this month.

The spring yard work has kept me busy, work has kept me sporadically busy, running...busy, and photography...ditto, the children have kept me busier than any of the others combined.

Braeden has now mastered the art of climbing. He can get onto anything and everything. I very often find him on the kitchen table, not to be confused with AT the kitchen table, but on it....CRAP!! That was one of the "safe places" I had last week but no more. He likes to climb on chairs to look out the window, and if he hears an outside door opening there's a mad scramble followed by either pinched fingers, and escapee, or a very disappointed little boy. The art of climbing has led to the bruised and battered little boy look for Braeden. He falls off a lot of stuff and is often sporting a new bruise or in yesterdays case, a bit of road rash. He's a quick recoverer though.

Nadine is wrapping up her school year. She'll be officially finished on June 2nd. She told me she feels finished right now, but she will still go. Nadine has a lot of interests cropping up. She loves horses, would like to take riding lessons and maybe we'll work that out this summer. She's developed a big love of photography which I think is very cool. She's even pretty good at it.

The other day she told me "mom when I grow up I want to be just like you. I want to do things just like you do them. Except being lazy like you, I'm not going to do that." How uniquely flattering...

Ryan remains with his one track mind focused on mighty machines. I don't know if I've ever known a little boy so very intensely interested in machinery and equipment. He eats, sleeps, and breaths it. He was even showing his grandpa and I his 'matachments' also known as attachments while we renovated the chicken coop. Each 'matachment' is made out of his hand, and each one useful for a different task be it lifting, scraping, digging, pulling, bunching. You name it he's got a 'matachment' for it. Markers, crayons, or pens are imagined into rebar. Dried up play dough is the jackpot for building a road foundation. You get the picture. He'd really like to go back to Uncle Carmen's to find some more equipment. There is a daily request for that trip.
We exchanged our feelings the other day.
Me: I love you Ryan

Ryan: Ya mom, I love mighty machines.

ok then... :)

I continue to love my family, running, and lately photography is what consumes my thought processes. If someone would pay me to take pictures all day I'd be a happy camper, but instead I continue to work casual saving lives, taking orders, taking flak :) It's a good time :) I attended a photography workshop in the middle of the month. It was a very very cool weekend. I learned to run my camera in full manual mode and all the manipulating of the components to make that work.

My newly titled by Tim, most expensive uncle came to visit this weekend. Uncle Ole brought me a couple lenses to try out. I am now saving my pennies for a macro lens...how cool. I'm now being bombarded by questions and am about to become very incoherent so I'll leave it at that and upload some photos. Here is some of my tinkerings.

Braeden became quite interested in the sprinkler.

He was game to give it a go.

But was pretty cheesed off when it sprinkled him.

Nadine in front of a stormy sky. We had quite a storm blow in.

Ryan really likes the outdoorsiness of summer

Sunset behind our house.

Macro is some really cool stuff

this stuff is from the lens that Uncle Ole let me use.

So now I save my pennies for my own macro lens...great fun!

Martha Goes on Vacation.

We just got home from a really lovely vacation. First stop, Edmonton to visit a girl I've known and loved since nursing school but haven't seen for several years. How great to connect with people in person. I couldn't have been more thrilled to hang out, have supper, let the peeps play, all without having to write a paper (or shovel out one as we used to perceive it) together in APA format...for which I'd probably struggle to remember how to do and that likelyhood of a struggle is ok with me, I don't actually want to figure that out again.

I also got to meet a darling new (well 6 month old) baby of one of Tim's cousins, reconnect with some of his family. All in all I was left wondering why we don't scoot down to Edmonton more often but I suppose the answer lies with the the 3 kids we would be bringing along with us, the multiple stops we had to pee on the side of the road, the late nights and early mornings of being callosally off schedule. The thing I now realize is the trip, even after 10 days of traveling, was hugely hugely worth it and bless them the kids traveled phenominally well.

Then a night at a hotel. My kids often confuse the word hotel with hospital. It has struck me several times in my life, especially after my most recent return to work, that this confusion in terms is a really really common among a variety of age groupings. Interesting, but I digress. Hotels are fascinating places to my children. An elevator, which leads to a room with a bed and a TV all perfectly positioned, a window to a cool view of, in this case, a steam roller (true story Ryan was in heaven), we had driven past all kinds of road construction, AND we were right near the airport. Holy moly we had found our Utopia.

Then we headed south and I got the opportunity to deal with one of the issues that caused me the most pause when thinking of how we'd travel...Ryan and his aversion to commercial bathrooms. Now if you put yourself in the shoes of a 3-4 year old boy who has hypersensitive hearing you would probably not like commercial bathrooms either. Maybe even without those variables you find them undesirable. Ryan however doesn't enjoy listening to the loud flushing of the stalls beside him the loud hand dryers and heaven help us at one point one of the motion sensor toilets flushed while he was sitting on it...EPIC.
I didn't know if we'd ever be able to use a commercial bathroom again. Then like an oasis in the desert we came to Uncle Ole's. Stopping for coffee with Ole and Marg on our way to Calgary, Ryan was thrilled with the prospect of "I bet Uncle Ole has a really quiet pot". On our arrival Ryan made a bee line into their bathroom with his pants already around his ankles. When I went to check on him he informed me that this was the nicest bathroom he'd ever been to. It is a lovely bathroom, and profoundly impacted Ryan's day in a really positive way, he used it 4 times over the course of the 2 hour visit. "I'm unloading all my poop into this hole" he told me as he sat on Ole and Marg's toilet for, well, a long time. What is one to respond to that..."great idea" was all I could come up with.
Not only had Ole the greatest bathroom on earth, across the road from his house was parked an excavator. Really could this day get any better!?!?!
Nadine loved on their dogs. Lacey and Chester, Braeden loved the freedom from his car seat, Ryan loved the bathroom. "We'll have to go back there sometime soon" was the consensus from my two speaking children.

Next stop, Calgary. When we drove into Calgary we began revisiting everything Bob the Builder had ever taught us. Roads and bridges, skyscrapers. It was breathtaking :)
Nadine was patiently awaiting her trip to the zoo. Braeden was waiting for the day he wouldn't have to sit in his car seat. Visiting Carmen and Linda was another very bright spot on our tour. According to Nadine, they have the nicest, smoothest bears ever. I really wish I had taken some pictures of them. There was great visiting, great food, great hockey.
"oooo we should go back there again!" "Uncle Carmen cooks really good eggs." and "can you believe we found Chris (their cousin)?!" was the consensus and some of the highlights discussed in the suburban at the completion of our Calgarian tour.
I got to see another of my dearest friends in Calgary. They'd never know it by how often I am or more appropriately am not able to come and see them but I really love and really miss the people I worked with when I lived there. Lucky for me one of them was able to meet us at the zoo with her two charming boys who totally and completely stole my heart.
The zoo has now inspired Nadine on a new career path. Zookeeper. "Mom I'm going to be a zookeeper, I'm going to be in charge of giraffes and lions." She may be quite right.
Braeden surprised me with how interested he was in the animals at the zoo as he rode in the backpack.
Ryan surprised me at how he wasn't so interested in the animals but was THRILLED to see someone shoveling bat poop out of the bat cage...he's a boy who likes to load and shovel. We could have stood there until all the guano was taken care of.

Onward we drove to Kelowna. We had a totally fantastic time there. Kelowna is filled with a lot of great things. We found great family, great dirt to dig in, great creeks, great trails, great parties, great food, more great people. Not the least of the greatness included the energyplex, an indoor playground where the kids met some new friends, climbed, slid, dangled, etc, etc. Upon leaving I hear tell that Nadine was saying farewell to her new friend the young boy's dad said "Well it was really nice to meet you Martha"...

We did a lot, and I do mean a LOT of driving in the last couple weeks and I was completely astonished how well the kids (all 3) travelled. Maybe I've just developed the Loberg pattern hearing loss quite early in life which is also ultimately a male trait but boy...they were just so good. We had a few unplanned stops to pee on the plants in the ditch. But they were just so...pleasant. We didn't even really use media until we were on our way home. Media in the car is something I used to think was lame. Now to whip out an ipod full of kids movies feels like I hold in my hand a mute button. I recognize I shouldn't be astonished by the success of the kids in the car for days on end. They are after all, great kids.

The following is a butt-load of pictures from the Corbett gadabout tour of Alberta and BC of 2011

Great grey owls are really neat-o looking

see...neat-o

Black and white makes this picture look less like it wasn't focussed right...which it wasn't :)

I was figuring out using my exposure compensation when shooting into the sun

I'm planning to adopt this theory. It's from my Father-in-law's retirement party.

mmmmmm

Ryan got new cars and a whole arsenal of construction equipment

when we got home it seemed time to hit the field