I fell asleep with Kira and woke up a little while ago feeling sick. I had a funny tingling in my throat all day. I woke up to a raging sore throat, a bit of a fever and a runny nose. I am praying that this isn't strep throat since antibiotics are a major problem for me.

Matt has been really busy at work. They just got a bunch of contracts and on top of the usual, he has been wearing the hat of engineer. He has squeezed me out of this chair most nights this past week so that he can do drawings on visio. Matt doesn't have the patience for computers, so let's just say, things have been a bit tense...

Some good things:

Kira and I went on a shopping spree this morning. She bought herself some belated birthday gifts at Gymboree, Please Mum and the toy store. Her favourite things that she played with for the rest of the day are her red glitter shoes, and her push broom. We also ordered a new tray for our puppy's crate. Puppy is coming in 3 weeks, I'm so excited.

Patrick's hockey game on Sunday was cancelled, which means that we no longer have a conflict where both Matt and I need to go to 2 different arenas for games. So if I am so sick that I can't drag my ass to the rink, at least he can handle the hockey schedule on his own. *OKAY I take all of that back, I just got an email that Patrick's game is back on, but later in the day so Matt will be able to take Damon to his game and it is our turn to do "juice duty". I just need to take Campbell to hockey while Matt is away with Patrick. Damon will be at a friend's birthday party, so I will just have Kira to watch at the arena and THAT is a vacation to me. ;-)*

I think things with Damon may be getting better. (knocking on wood) He really wants his own gameboy advance, and he recently made huge strides in improving his reading(a pre-requisite here). But it is still a struggle for him to finish his homework, so we told him that we need him to stop struggling with us if he wants a gameboy. Tonight he came home really eager to do it and to read books to me. After a while he started up (he yells instead of speaking and throws himself around and hits his siblings) and I reminded him. I could actually see that he was thinking about it and TRYING to resist the urge to behave like that. He stopped for a while and when the behaviour started again, I sent him to his room and he agreed that he needed to go there to settle down. He came back and was good for the rest of the night.

Campbell took the picture of him with the snowman in to his class. They had been doing a unit on snow and snowmen. He was so proud and so cute.

Oh yeah, this is the dress that Kira wore for her birthday -
me in my dress 

My dad brought that dress and the doll back from the world championships in Germany when I was 15 months old. Funny thing, we planned to make a German meal for Kira's birthday party (weiner schnitzel, spaetzle, red cabbage, german potato salad, cucumbers in vinegar and sugar and of course Black Forest Cake), I planned for her to wear her Christmas dress again, but I saw that dress hanging in her room and decided that if she didn't wear it soon, it wouldn't fit any longer. My family thought that I meant for it to be a German themed party and thought I had lost my marbles. Well my husband was born in Germany.

Kira had her 12 month visit at the doctor's today. She was 31 1/2 inches and 23 lbs. 1 oz. So her weight gain is slowing down. She didn't even cry when the doctor gave her her needles in her arm. She's such a trooper. She was funny though. She kept escaping into the neighbouring pharmacy and rearranging their shelves. They lady there is really sweet and understanding and loves to make a big fuss over Kira. I hope she doesn't mind the fact that Kira thinks that the Kaopectate BELONGS in between the A535 and Deep Heat. ;-)

Thank you Cindy for sending me the pictures you took!

Finally opening presents. 


Cindy did better than I did, she got all of them at once! 


Funny girl 


she was so excited 

Birthday cake! 

I love this pictue! What a poser. She's a very social girl and she really loved her birthday party. She's growing up too fast!

How Kira spent her 1st birthday...at the arena. 

Is that lame or what! I have decided that just for fun, we are going to organize it so that Damon and Patrick spend their 16th birthdays watching dance recitals. Poor girl. We had 2 kids playing at 2 different arenas at the same time, so we didn't have much of a choice.

Damon's game. 

Damon had an awesome day today. He loves playing goalie and he waited for his turn to come up (at his age, they rotate amongst the kids who are interested). His team hadn't won a game and he was determined that they would win if he was the goalie. Matt was taking Patrick to his Rep game in a town an hour away. Damon was disappointed that Daddy wouldn't be there to watch. The first period, he was listening to Daddy's advice and came right off of the blue ice! He was going after the players. After 4 quick goals, he learned not to do that! Thankfully his team managed to score 4 goals too. He was awesome for the 2nd period. They were winning 7-4 by the end of the period. In the third period, he blocked a shot, and then lay across the net to stop the rebound, but somehow the little guy shooting got some lift on the puck and it sailed in over top of Damon. Then they scored again, it was 7-6. Then with seconds to go, the other team got a breakaway and scored. My heart was breaking for him, but then we found out that there had been an offside (one of the players crossed the blue line before the puck did), so the goal didn't count. His team won their first game, and so many of them had scored there first goals today. It was a really exciting game.

In the dressing room afterwards, everybody was praising Damon on his saves. If he hadn't done so well, I'm sure that the score would have been closer to 20-7. The coach awarded him the Super Sport of the Game award and told the kids that they all played a great game, but that he feels that Damon had an outstanding game and that he kept them in it. He was so overwhelmed that he looked like he was going to burst into tears. He was behaving so well today both before and after the game, it confirms my theory that he needs more things that really motivate him and then to find some success at those things. School is NOT one of those things. ;-)