playing dress-up

My fairy princess was a fairy princess only long enough to take a picture.

I don't know if I should consider myself fortunate or not (I'm really not the type that was ever into princesses, barbies and pink things either...) but her mind is set! My daughter wants to be SPIDERMAN for Halloween! Of course it all begins with Kaspar and his power of persuasion. He needs a little buddy to play with and "fairy princess" just does not fit in his game of "Batman saves the world". (And if you were thinking what I was thinking.... yes, I tried the "Batman saves fairy princess". Batman might have gone along with it, but my fairy princess does not want to be saved, oh no! No way! She wants to be along side Batman! She wants to do the SAVING!!! She wants to save mommy form the "kakadeal"!) Besides, Batman needs a buddy and Spiderman is Batman's best friend. So, Stella is Spiderman and that is that! And I have been eating dinner with Batman and Spiderman for the last few days already. And it does not look like they are getting sick of it, either. The Halloween mania has begun and it's only the beginning of October! Yikes.

anniversary

Wow! Two months have passed since the last post? Where does the time go? We have been on breeze of a holiday to Latvia / Amsterdam, Steve has toured the entire Europe, East coast of Canada and now is taking on Australia and we're at home keeping busy with work / new FRENCH immersion school / daycare / raking leaves / trying to find gloves and winter jackets etc. etc. etc.

Here is a little slide show of what the kids have been up to in the last couple of months: Stella loves to ride the "kaka-deal" and has been talking about this "kaka-deal" ever since we got back from Latvia. It must have been a real high-light of the trip for her. These days she uses Kaspar as the "kaka-deal" to ride on. Kaspar has had a lot of "firsts" this trip and even the last month has been busy with a lot of new experiences. One of his absolute favourites was licking "ant pee". You can see how that would be a very appealing story for a five year old, can't you? Yes, here is a pic of him and his little cousin licking their grass straws after having dipped them in the huge ant hill. They must have spent the better part of an hour doing just that, while we managed to pick a whole bucket of mushrooms in the near vicinity of the famous ant hill. Yes - there were unbelievable quantities of mushrooms in the forests of Latvia this summer. That in itself was probably my high-light. I love going out in the forest hunting for mushrooms! I had not had a chance to do that in about 8 or 9 years, because I simply have not been back "home" in the right season for mushrooms. It was worth the wait. This year mushrooms could be raked with a rake. Hardly needed to look for them. It was impossible to walk in a forest for more then 5 minutes without spotting a mushroom. In fact there were mushrooms growing on people's lawns and in back yards. Totally strange and lovely! There is nothing more amazing then wild mushroom soup or good old sauce and potatoes!!! I could go on and on...

In fact I could go on and on about our trip, because every single day was literally an adventure. I cannot even begin to tell you how hard it was to come back to Toronto and get back to the grind of every day life. Well, I'm sure I will post more on our trip soon, but for now I NEED to catch some sleep. I've been doing these weird studio hours in the middle of the night and it's hard to get back to sleep after being awake and working at midnight.

Good night!