OMG! Fast forward THREE years!!!

Gorgeous day today!  Great for exploring a SICK wicked awesome park in Langford's Westhills!!!

                

 This is what we got up to last night! It was a nice, fun, thought-provoking evening with an icon!

 

(My crummy photo from the front row)

(John Cleese lied about this last year)

Date night!

Definitely TNRT to do.  Tuesday had been a particularly grumpy mommy day.  So much so that Wednesday morning I was roused by my 5 year old who implored me to, "make sure I didn't get up on the wrong side of the bed".  Okay, buddy.  I'll do my best.  Pass the coffee, please.

Today was much better.  In part due to the fact that I knew I had a babysitter secured (THANKS, T)and was going to get a changed of scenery for a little while!

Chris' co-worker held a dinner party tonight to which we were invited.  Jon lives in a fabulous ancient townhouse in the heart of the city.  AND is a fabulous cook to boot.

Jon at work, so skillful, making it look so easy!

Appetizer: seared beef on a crisp slice of lotus fruit, served with homemade avocado ice cream.      

(unfortunately I didn't think to snap a picture of it)

Entree: Duck confit with a-mazing potatoes, mushroom, and veg (and I *don't* do mushrooms. At least I didn't, but how could I not? It was delicious!)

                Dessert: Bread pudding topped with pears and caramel, caramel, and more caramel.  

Delicious coffee to finish off the scrumptious meal.

Lots of witty reparte with the other dinner guests.  The other guests were also Chris' co-workers.  A fabulous group who didn't mind if the outsiders at the table occasionally drifted to a beach on a deserted island when they slipped into shop-talk for too long

The topic of the kids inevitably came up here and there.  MY shop-talk, I suppose! But it was *wonderful* having a night out with GROWN UPS, a gourmet meal, and no kidlets milling about, vocalizing about the latest development in Wild Kratts, or screaming because SOMEone ran out of frozen blueberries.  Excuse-moi.

I feel energized for tomorrow!  PD day! We will have to find some excellent thing to do to take advantage of the anticipated beautiful fall day!  Perhaps a hike, or picking apples, maybe both!

Dylan's Wild Kratt's 5th Birthday Party!

I'd like to extend my gratitude to CrazyWonderful Ashley for having posted pictures from her son's Wild Kratt's 5th birthday party, from which I adopted a number of ideas for Dylan's! As in, the above sign looks freakishly similar to Ashley's!  Thanks, lady!

It was a simple affair. It floors me how taxing it is to pull together a simple kiddy party! Just kept telling myself, "he's only five" (I'm really happy with how it turned out, especially after having watched TLC's "Outrageous Kid Parties".... don't get me started there!).  Anyhoo...

• I'd set up a colouring station to occupy the kiddies while everyone arrived and received their Wild Kratt's shirt (which they got to keep).  Then,
• Off into the backyard for my fairly lame attempt to get them all into an organized game of Martin Says.  It was akin to herding cats.  Clearly that wasn't going to take, so they were set free to play as they liked.  Dylan caroused most of the kids into Creature Rescues for the next forty-five minutes!  I'd printed photos of the prime animals featured on the Wild Kratt's DVD and stuck them all over the house.
• Food. BBQ hot dogs, veggies, fruit tray.  That's it.  *Tried* to buy chips, but Dylan vehemently did not want them.  His party, his rules!
• CAKE!  Got smart this year and didn't muck around with ice cream.  Wise move.
• PRESENTS!  Dylan has ***awesome*** friends! Everyone crafted something for him, from pictures, to a pirate kit, to his very own pokemon binder!  This kid truly appreciated his friends' efforts!
• Run around to work off some energy.  I came up with a spontaneous game that had most of the kids running from the living room through the kitchen to the backyard, carrying out a task, running back in reporting that they were done and eager for the next assignment (ei run around 5 times, do 10 jumping jacks,find the Draco hidden in the tree, find the cheetah). Worked like a charm!
• Wind down with everyone watching an episode of Wild Kratts!
• Home time - Loot bags included goldfish crackers, bear paws, penguin gummies, and a freezie.

Reports back from parents were that the kids had an absolute blast!  The parents also seemed to like it because it was fairly laid back without too many objective thereby allowing the kids to simply have fun!!!

This was the group best shot we could muster!

Cake I for kids' party!

Cake II for family dinner two days later on his actual birthday! Any excuse to make a cake is a good one!  Ha... really, who needs an excuse!

GONNA GO WILD WILD KRATTS!!!

Thanks to Dylan's birthday being timed with berry picking season, a berry basket made for a perfect creature power disk crate!

The disks attached to every shirt by way of Velcro.  There were enough sets of disks for all, and then some!

Obligatory annual family photo! Dunno why Dylan is frowning!

There are a lot of neat ideas out there for Creature Power Suits!  Initially I'd wanted to sew them, but then got real with myself.  I could have done it, but I would've needed a month, not a week!  I made a template for the shirts, then applied T-shirt spray paint. Of note, I didn't exactly read the instructions on the paint bottles.  They clearly suggest that the paints be used on light-coloured fabric.  Oops. So the yellow shirts were easy; spray some paint, let 'em dry.  The dark shirts, well, the paint is on there good and thick, and took three days to dry instead of the suggested 24 hours.  Good thing I'd started things early in the week or I'd have been hooped!