One more sleep…

Saturday is gymnastics day for all the kids. Because Braden had been sick the night before we skipping gym for him, but there is only one of me so I still had to take him with. Braden wanted to go to gym with Finn and I had to explain why he couldn’t, I even had Finn telling me I should let since “he very, very wants to jump in the ball pit.” 

After gymnastics we headed home to eat lunch and nap. Then I got all the kids ready to go to Eli’s (Braden and Finn’s school friend) birthday party. It was interesting since I could see all the parents looking at me and wondering if I was the mama. Finn has the habit of calling me mama, in the most inappropriate times and then laughing while I try and explain that’s not my name.

Saturday we spent watching Wall-E. Kids into bed and ready to go to sleep after Tyler came to visit me. Finally in a peaceful sleep when I hear “rara, wake up.” I literally woke up, jumped and said, “whoooooaaaa!” I was freaked out. Then he told me his cheeks were sore, I cautiously asked, like you feel like you want to puke. Then prayed please say no…

I think he just wanted to sleep on the couch – he likes that. Once I got him down he slept happily. I didn’t. I had the monitor in my room and about two hours later Finn woke up crying, but settled down just after I woke up. Then at 7.30 am he bounced into my room all awake and happy. At that moment I really wished he knew how to make coffee! However when I asked if he wanted to just snuggle for awile he agreed, then after 10 minutes decided he wanted to get himself ready. That brought me 20 minutes of extra sleep. But I realized I would have to wake up and face the day, and the best way to do that is definitely with pancakes! Yummy!

We waited around the house until their parents arrived home around 12pm or so. And then I took a nap J

Another one?!

Friday night brought on movie night (Toy Story 3) for boys and I, and a luau for Annabel. It also brings Tamryn and our planned rusk making session. After putting all the kids to bed Tamryn and I started our rusk venture.

Firstly the recipe called for self-rising flour, since I hadn’t checked this fact out correctly, I only had all-purpose flour. Of course I have no idea if it’s the same thing so I asked my dear friend – Google. Google gave me a recipe for converting it. The rest of the recipe was in metric measurement (seriously America can you just catch up already?) Since we were using a measuring cup set, and a measuring spoon set, yup – Google was called upon again. We opened up all the app and pages we could to find conversions for ml to cups and mg to tablespoons and teaspoons.

The recipe seemed to turn out well, but still not OUMA rusk yummy. But no fears we have about three more recipes to try!

It’s finally bed time, after a long fun night. But not so soon, of course Braden decided he wanted to get sick. So I had to wash the second set of little boy sheets in two days, set up a make shift couch bed and then finally got to crawl into bed. 

Playing mommy…

I offered to babysit all three kids for three days…sounds crazy huh? Well maybe it was a little but I survived, and it was fun. Dave and Amanda wanted to go to New York for the weekend, and I figured it would be an interesting experience…so why not. I’ll tell you why not –

The plan was for Dave and Amanda to leave early on Thursday morning; I would take all the kids to school and then go to school myself. Finn woke up that night puking. Amanda cancelled her flight so she could stay with him during the day while I went to school and would leave later. Since either way I would miss part of my school day I offered to just stay the whole time with him. Plus if she stayed she would have missed the game they were planning to go see. And as I put it, I’ve been puked on before. (I have a new found respect for mothers, by the way.)

My morning was spent with one sick boy who wanted to go to school and one healthy boy who didn’t want to. We settled for both at home playing in the basement, and sleeping on the couch. Thursday night was a chilled night.

Friday morning everyone seemed much better. I took AJ to school and the boys to the public museum. I had brought lunch for the boys, but they asked if they could have a treat if they ate well. I agreed (I still had two days and wanted to ensure cooperation.) After choosing an ice cream each, and after we paid for them, the boys remarked, “mommy and daddy never let us have the ice creams.” Great, now I’m an accessory.

As I was waiting for Finn to finish his treat, suddenly Finn informed me of his desperate need for the potty. Ugh. So, we made our way to the loo. I put Finn in one corner as far away from the toilets as possible, put Braden on the toilet and stand in between where I can see them both. One kid needs help wiping (gross I know) and one needs help with the dripping ice cream all over himself.

After managing to get everything and everyone together we headed home. Nap time…for the boys.

Taking Timey along…

As you may or may not know I write for my college paper. I was recently asked to attend a conference in Minneapolis, MN for the mid-west college newspapers. The driver, the editor, the assistant director, the advisor and another reporter and I all piled into the MATC van early on Friday morning. We all got to pick a mascot to take with us. I picked a little robot called Timey.

Timey and me :)

 Timey accompanied me on our many bathroom breaks, Mc Donalds stops and lastly the trip up to the room. That night we planned on a dinner on Eat Street. We found a lovely restaurant called the Ice House. Great food and wonderful atmosphere. On the way home we had one of the scariest and confusing things I’ve ever experienced happen to us.

All at the Icehouse

As we were driving along we heard a very loud pop, then seconds later our back window shattered. We drove a little since we were extremely confused, then pulled over and called the police. They came really quickly. They also mentioned we were in a dangerous area where people had been car jacked. The police couldn’t tell us what had caused the window to just break but their theories were either the cold/hot effect shattered it or someone shot at us (with a bb gun or something) which shattered it. Either way is not cool and it meant we had to drive home with no back window…in Winter. Once we got back to the hotel I realized that Timey had jumped ship and I had in fact lost him.

Our window :(

The rest of the trip was less eventful. We managed to fix the window and get home safely…YAH :)

Oh and I forgot to mention we went rock climbing at Vertical Endeavors - which was amazing! http://verticalendeavors.com/minneapolis/ This is the explanation of the facility ...

"Vertical Endeavors-Minneapolis, located on 26th and Nicollet (Eat Street), in Minneapolis, MN, is built in one of the last remaining historic Ice House buildings. This state-of-the-art facility opened it’s doors in November, 2011. It is contained within a 10,500 square foot  space. With approximately 28,000 square feet of climbing walls built by Nicros, Inc. and 50-60 foot tall climbing walls, VE-Minneapolis is one of the largest and tallest climbing facilities in the country."

New friends :)

Going up

The actual day…

Tamryn and I invited all our girl-friends to a fun dinner at a restaurant called Casablanca. Our celebration also happened to coincide with our annual jewel of the bay’s (my belly dance troupe) night out. There is a belly dancer that dances at the Middle Eastern restaurant so we love gathering there!

Birthday Treats

Two big tables of wonderful people, lovely food and Tamryn and I were feeling happy as could be. We had sent the guys to their own beer and wings dinner and planned to meet them later that night.

Belly Dance friends

All together

Our cake was presented to our guests, they loved it but many were confused. I suppose I should backtrack for those of you that have been counting since last year was my golden birthday (on the 25^th). This year would/should have been my 26^th, right? But since Tamryn 24 and I didn’t want 2426 or 2624 on our birthday cake I used my handy math (haha) brain and decided she was gaining a year and I was losing one…so we ‘turned’ 25.

One of our friends ended up with a black iced cupcake and after she took a huge bite, and laughed my fears were confirmed…the colour does show up on your teeth. So she spent the better half of the night trying to get rid of some of the dark stain that was covering her mouth. Oops!

Celebration!!!

After dinner we met up with the guys to attend a comedy show. During the show I agreed to be an audience volunteer. My task was to add sound effects to an improve scene. Apparently I am not very good at this as I began giggling through most of it. When I did try to attempt making sound effects I would think of the word as opposed to the sound. So the door went “creak” literally. After a while I got the hang of it and between giggling I managed to complete the scene.

I love these people!

My wonderful friends

I had a great time that night. It was so great to see all my friends and to have them all interact together.

Tamryn and I

I don’t know how the tradition began that on her birthday I get encouraged to have a guys night before we meet up with the girls, however I am certainly not complaining. I actually think it leads to a very fun evening for all involved and also makes it so that there isn't a huge group at the restaurant. 

And of course I love my boyfriend!

My favourite holiday…aka my birthday!

It’s no secret I love, love, love my birthday. This has little to do with the presents and more to do with the gathering of friends that meet to celebrate. I have one night when all my friends from different areas of my life all come together to meet, mingle and have a great night.

Tamryn (a fellow South African, who is au pairing here in Wisconsin) and I found out we have more in common than just sharing a home country. We live in the same province, our sisters shares the same school and we share a birthday! [cue] double birthday bash planning!

I had seen a picture of a South Africa flag birthday cake and convinced Tamryn that we would be able to pull it off. Well…

Planning the cake

Tamryn came over and we started baking lots and lots of little cupcakes. We even got inventive and made vanilla ones, chocolate ones and swirly mixed ones. After baking enough cupcakes and letting them cool off we had to find a way to create a normal looking rectangle. Considering that some of our cupcakes looked more like the humpback of Notre Dame than little molehills, this was a difficult task.

Working out if we had enough cupcakes

Finally we decided on the layout of the cupcakes, including candle space. We then laid out the icing plan of attack. Half way through icing cupcakes I looked up at Tamryn, she had blue icing on her lips. I was trying to tell her this but I was laughing so hysterically that I was not able to tell her, so she kept asking and I kept laughing. I had images of her with blue at our party (the next day) in my head. Eventually I managed to get it out, she washed it off and the day was saved.

Icing the cupcakes

It took a while but we managed to complete our masterpiece and clean up the kitchen all before 11 pm.

All done :)

New Year’s Eve

This year Tyler and I decided to hang out with friends and have a chilled New Year’s Eve. It turned out to be a great decision. It was a great idea on our part. It was awesome night, filled with food, fun and lots of laughs.

After playing “cards against humanity” which is basically a grown up version of apples to apples, we moved to battle of the sexes which the girls lost. Horribly!

5…4…3…2…1…Happy New Year…and not long after that we were all ready to bed. Haha. Guess this is called getting old.

Happy New Year

It was neat to stay in on a new years and hang out with close friends. Given that we are getting old and loud noisy bars with tons of people more tend to annoy us than anything else it was neat to just relax and hang out. I think going forward we may try to do this more often! That said, it certainly is not as good as being on the beach in South Africa!

Bromance...