Royal Alberta Museum

We were bored one weekend and on a whim decide to go to The Royal Alberta Museum. We are so glad we went. We all really enjoyed it! It is small, but really well done. It was pretty interactive for kids. It had tons of taxidermy animals and birds, all native to Alberta on display in dioramas. It also had a huge room of live insects! It was really cool. They also had the all important dinosaur area which was, of course, a HUGE hit!

Coyotes

Canadian Grizzly bears, which we learned are half the size of Alaskan Grizzly bears.

Climbing up Ankylosaur's tail

Olivia's Recent Happenings

Olivia is one busy little gal. She is always working on something! Right now she is consumed by her babies. She loves to put them "night-night" with kisses, change their diapers, feed them, sing them lullabies etc. She just loves it. Her babies have acquired some interesting names along the way. We have Bald Baby, Stinky Baby, Big baby, Little baby, Chaser baby, Stella and Strawberry Baby.

She still loves all of her puzzles and spends lots of time doing those, "all by myself" as with most things these days. Elmo still holds a special place in her heart and is even subjected to walks around the house on a leash. I decided to give poor Maya a break from "walks" Olivia takes her on around the house and gave her the idea to take her stuffed puppy for a walk. That turned into taking Elmo for walks!

Another strong interest...color coordinating "blankies" (dancing scarves from Gymboree). Red for Elmo, Blue for Cookie Monster, Green for Caterpillar, and Red for Minnie Mouse.

She loves to "rough house" with Daddy. Swinging "up-high" is a huge favorite. A large tote bag I just got makes for super duper fun "up high".


She is still not a big eater. I guess she has more important things to do. She will consistently eat most breakfast foods: oatmeal, eggs, french toast and pancakes. She and daddy get up most Saturday and Sunday mornings and make blueberry pancakes. I am still pretty particular about what she eats (although I have laxed about many things) and I don't let her have syrup. We told her it is hot sauce! When Mike and I are dousing our pancakes with syrup, she says, "That Mommy's hot sauce. It so spicy". Yep! Hopefully we can get away with that for a bit longer.



We are still rooting for our Longhorns, despite our dismal season! She figured out how to make the Longhorn bottle opener work with a metal fork. She loves, "The Eyes of Texas" and we got to hear it on repeat for quite a bit of this day.

She loves the playground at her school, Springhill, regardless of the freezing weather or the fact that the slides are covered in snow now! One day a dog named Peanut came up to play with all of the kids. She adored this dog and still talks about him and asks where he is.


We could not have asked for a sweeter, more child friendly dog. While she does not particularly like Olivia, Maya gracefully accepts all Olivia puts her though, which is a lot! Here Olivia is using her vet tool kit and putting Maya through an extensive check-up. Maya looks thrilled!

Hooray, Hooray...

Olivia is going to be a BIG SISTER IN MAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are thrilled and so excited to share that we are fortunate enough to be adding to our family!! I am 12 weeks along and so far everything looks great with the baby. I had an ultrasound today and loved getting a glimpse of all that amazing that is happening inside!


I have been plagued with "all-day-long-sickness". It is not nearly as bad as when I was pregnant with Olivia, but it is still pretty miserable. I have to eat all day in order to feel close to human and nothing sounds good. I am not nearly as tired now as I was in the beginning, but still not full of energy or motivation. Come on second trimester! I am ready to feel normal again.

The morning I found out, Olivia was the first to know. She was so excited and kept saying, "I'm going to be a BIG sister". We went and got pink and blue balloons and put them in a big box, along with the positive test and a note to Daddy from Baby #2 (I told him the first time with a note from Baby and the positive test). When he got home Olivia and I were waiting by the box. He asked her what was in the box and she said, "A BABY!!!!". We were all so excited!

Olivia with the balloons (that are incredibly still floating today after 8 weeks) and her new big sister book. We eventually had to hide this book because all she wanted to do was read it over and over and over again!

Huge cheese face with her other big sister book

Mike and Olivia doing the famous "Olivia Cheese Face"

Jasper With Nonna and Papa

Mike's parents flew in for a visit and the next day we headed to the mountains. We have only been to Jasper once and were excited that they wanted to go.

Getting ready for the a big hike the first day

Silly Girl

The Rays

Looking for dandelions with Papa

The "cheese" face continues

Really neat hike

Running silly around and around the tree...obviously needing a nap

Papa and O checking out the scenery at Pyramid Lake

We finally had to drag her away! We were all freezing!

Back at the Lodge, truly incredible views

At dinner in the main lodge after all the hikes and a LONG nap for Olivia and Mommy!

Love the reflection of the mountains in the lake

The lodge where we stayed is amazing in it's own right. You could never leave your entire stay!

Before heading back to Edmonton, we stopped at Athabasca Falls. Olivia truly loved it. She kept walking around saying, "I love the waterfall".

Halloween

Fittingly, Olivia was intended to be a dinosaur for Halloween. Only problem, she refused to wear her costume actually on Halloween. The only time she wore it was to her school a few days before Halloween. This was only after her sweet teachers talked to her about how all the other kids in her class were already wearing their costumes. When I picked her up from school, then she refused to take it off for the rest of the day. I only took a couple pictures (none turned out) thinking I would have another opportunity. She absolutely refused to wear it again. She even refused the next day at her other school, even with all the other kids wearing theirs. 2 year old logic!

At least she got lots of wear out of her pumpkin shirt!

Dinosaur Puzzle

She just can't get enough dinosaurs!!

For you dinosaur enthusiast, we shortened, "parasaurolophus" to just "parasaur"

Pumpkins and snow!

Olivia and Mike had lots of fun carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds this weekend. Okay, so maybe Mike had LOTS of fun and Olivia lost interest a couple minutes in!! She loves the finished products though!

Bevo pumpkin!!

We got our first snow of the season overnight! My first reaction when I saw it letting Maya out was, "OH NO! This is going to be a LONG winter". After driving Olivia to school and seeing all the evergreens covered in snow, I felt a little better about it. It really is pretty. It makes Edmonton almost appealing visually!

This morning, Olivia was very concerned about all of the snow on Daddy's pumpkin. She wanted to go out on our deck (it has no railing yet) to clean it off! I will have to get another picture of the scary pumpkin without snow on it. It is really scary :)

Our backyard once it got a little lighter out

Twinkle Twinkle

I love to hear my little ones' little voice sing :)